Altered Zones

Frieder Butzmann & Thomas Kiesel 'Incendio Italiano' (1982)

Thomas Kiesel's film Incendio Italiano first appeared at the New York film exhibition, "Super-8/Berlin: The Architecture of Division," in 1983. Curated by Keith J. Sanborn, the exhibition showcased a Super 8 Renaissance in Berlin that, as Sanborn wrote in the original catalogue, stemmed from his "desire to form a perspective on the interaction of aesthetic and political forces in the historical shifts in our culture of the past five years." Copies of Incendio Italiano are very rare, and the film has never been published or exhibited since; to music lovers, it is important because a certain Frieder Butzmann scored the soundtrack for it. Butzmann was an influential NDW musician and was also an early member of cult acts D.A.F. and Din A Testbild. In the video, Butzmann has created a snarling pastiche of chopped and choking analogue manipulations that vary from rudimentary electronics to undefined vocals. Like a faltering radio transmission from a distant society in collapse, the soundtrack is both haunting in its estrangement and alienating in its familiarity. It mirrors the confused, scratchy images at play in the video, whilst also tapping into something essential of a Berlin (and Germany) caught in the political and creative equivocacy of the Cold War. --Daniel Gottlieb, International Tapes

Frieder Butzmann has a new record, Wie Zeit Vergeht out now on PAN. Check out the aforementioned original catalogue of the exhibition as a pdf here