Claus Böhmler
record archive on videotape

The hundredth edition of Edition Block is a rediscovery of Claus Böhmler’s record archive on videotape from 1987. Claus Böhmler is one of the most important intermedia artists of the first hour. The record archive on videotape is considered a masterpiece of this art. It is a meditative video work that confronts the still relatively young medium with dry humor. For over 184 minutes, the rotating of various long-playing records on a record player, filmed from above with a static camera, can be observed on a monitor while the tonearm constantly slides from the outermost groove to the inside. The artist’s hands appear at the end to change the records. The sound experience accompanying the visually rather monotonous video is described by art historian Michael Glasmeier as follows: “We hear all kinds of sounds – ethnological, documentary, scientific, political, meditative or even cinematic, such as the music from ‘Psycho’ or the noisy ‘Ed Sullivan TV show’. Böhmler shows us a feast of sounds and provokes the most diverse atmospheres, associative and mental spaces with the simplest of means. The single, unwavering camera angle on the apparatus creates a calm and willingness to concentrate, with which hearing through seeing oscillates between object realism and psychedelia. Time, passing time, becomes almost visible and audible. It is a pleasure to indulge in the groove rides, where subtle humor is ready to stretch into infinity.”¹ The record archive comprises 184 minutes of the following content, which is reproduced in English on the leaflet: Aborigines, Noise record, Salvador Dali, Pinocchio (children’s story), Film music, South-African Radio “Voice of Liberation”, Bird calls, TV-show, Yoga (exercise), Sounds of Videogames.
Text: Eva Scharrer

¹ Michael Glasmeier cited from: Claus Böhmler. Record archive on videotape, leaflet Edition Block, Berlin, 2020.