Hermann Nitsch
Musik Der 60. Aktion, Berlin 1978 / Musik Für Rita Nitsch Geburtstag

Alga Marghen is an Italian label founded in 1996 by Emanuele Carcano.

I tried to find out a bit more and found an interview on Vimeo, skipped two minutes in, and there's Carcano, not well-microphoned, rambling in English about “contemporary art.” I turn it off.

One of the first productions of this label is a record by Hermann Nitsch, the guy from Viennese Actionism who makes installations with animal carcasses thrown here and there, complete with dancing and music, in a sort of disturbing gesamtkunstwerk.

In the end, I have even defended Viennese Actionism, the Wiener Gruppe, and all those post-aranudians traumatized by Nazism. I also defended Nitsch until the day when, justifying the much-contested use of animals, he gave an interview where he stated: “The animals we use for the installations do not die in vain. Then we eat them. I have a farm.”

And after this transformation from a disturbing cruel controversial artist to a bean-stew guy showing his grandchild the fields with a sigh, saying “That's my farm, one day it will be yours,” I confess one is left somewhat taken aback.

I mean, what do you explain to me that the cow's intestines that toured over this and that person's privates, you then roll them in shallots and pass them over the grill? Just leave it at that, no? You're Nitsch, not Cracco.

The album collects two moments, the first is the live recording of Musik der 60, recorded in April 1978 during an art performance where organ drones and soundscapes mingle with the sound of PVC, a Berlin punk band among the most influential, which lends its distortions for the second track of this collection: Musik In 2 Sätzen Für Rita Nitsch Geburtstag. I'm not really good with German, but I believe that in this case, Nitsch was paying tribute (amid sitars, drones, and noise) to his wife Rita's birthday (cute!).

Hermann Nitsch is also a music enthusiast, the albums are in his name, and in many performances of the Orgies Mysteries Theatre, he dedicated himself to playing the organ (he also plays it in the tribute to his wife, contained in this mini collection). His shaman-like stereotypical figure, acting as a metronome for his works between one drone and another, speaks of a certain attachment to everything good Germany produced in those years: from krautrock to the cosmic sound of Tangerine Dream, through the new Berlin music scenes and beyond.

When I see Fassbinder do the mental Nitsch, narrating the same disturbing process of humiliation of the human limit, seasoned with psychological mutilations, I cannot help but recognize the impact Viennese Actionism has had on Austrian and German art, and in constituting a genre that can also encompass Ciprì and Maresco, passing through Jodorowski, Miike Takashi, Günter Brus, and the Beatles cover, later censored, with the fab four covered in animal carcasses and mutilated dolls.

Nitsch's albums are absolutely pertinent and in line with all those artistic realities that are often exalted when attacking the 20th century: from Shankar's sitars, through Penderecki's Poland narrating, with the same terror, the sacred. The unsettling sacredness of Jacob, of Christ, the terror of Hiroshima, justified by a sacred necessity: to win, to save, and to sacrifice. Because sacredness is terrifying. Sacred is sacrifice. Apocalypse, violent struggle, good that, to triumph over evil, becomes evil, brandishes swords, saves by killing.

If Nitsch and his extreme attempt to exorcise these Freudian limits impress you, if Penderecki's Kanon Paschy terrifies you, try reading the diaries of Saint Veronica Giuliani, stuff that an installation by our Hermann will then seem like the dollhouse path at Disneyland.

If the avant-garde of Viennese Actionism had skipped, we wouldn't have had quite a lot of stuff. I know, it's a cruel consideration, which not by chance, also applies to wars, which have always been moments of great artistic inspiration.

All our civilization passes through sacrifice: a mental journey of self-harm capable of erasing every form of life from the world, in the name of something passing from the mind but believed to be ideal, soul. History explains this, Freud explains this, and he explains it too, but, album in hand, he also finds time for a personal “happy birthday to you” to his wife, because in the end, everyone's dream is to live in peace like a family immortalized in a Polaroid, illuminated by the light of candles on the cake, while the scent of skewers rises from the garden, prepared with the latest artwork.