Culture Club

If you are visiting Zurich and looking for a different type of a Swiss museum – Cabaret Voltaire is for you.

Dadahaus Cabaret Voltaire – the place in Zurich where dada movement was founded in 1916 by Hugo Ball. This art museum in Zurich has a collection of weird dada-style objects, a shop and a Duda bar on the second floor, decorated accordingly. Entry to the bar is free, and it's open Tuesday through Saturday until midnight.

The Dada art movement was a "protest against the madness of the times", and involved musicians, painters, writers, poets and dancers who gathered in Cabaret Voltaire and protested with their art against the propaganda of World War I. Dada rejected idealistic values of capitalists and nationalists, and tried to create the most anti-aesthetic, anti-rational and anti-idealistic art. After the war, Dada movement practiced a Surrealist mode. Some of the artists involved in the movement were René Magritte, Man Ray, Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí.

Hugo Ball:  

Delia Ann Derbyshire (5 May 1937 – 3 July 2001[1]) was an English musician and composer of electronic music[2] and musique concrète.

Early life[edit]

Derbyshire was born in Coventry, daughter of Emma (née Dawson) and Edward Derbyshire.[3] of Cedars Avenue, Coundon, Coventry.[4] Her father was a sheet-metal worker.[5] She had one sibling, a sister, who died young.[3] Her father died in 1965 and her mother in 1994.[6]

During the Second World War, immediately after the Coventry Blitz in 1940, she was moved to Preston, Lancashire for safety. Her parents had moved from there originally[3] and most of her surviving relatives still live in the area.[6] She was very bright and, by the age of four, was teaching others in her class to read and write in primary school,[3] but said "The radio was my education".[7] Her parents bought her a piano when she was eight years old. Educated at Barr's Hill Grammar School from 1948 to 1956, she was accepted at both Oxford and Cambridge, "quite something for a working class girl in the 'fifties, where only one in 10 [students] were female",[3] winning a scholarship to study mathematics at Girton College, Cambridge but, apart from some success in the mathematical theory of electricity, she claims she did badly.[3] After one year at Cambridge she switched to music, graduating in 1959 with a BA in mathematics and music, having specialised in medieval and modern music history.[3] Her other principal qualification was LRAM in pianoforte.[6]

She approached the careers office at the university and told them she was interested in "sound, music and acoustics, to which they recommended a career in either deaf aids or depth sounding".[3] Then she applied for a position at Decca Records only to be told that the company did not employ women in their recording studios.[8][9] Instead, she took positions at the UN in Geneva,[1] from June to September, teaching piano to the children of the British Consul-General and mathematics to the children of Canadian and South American diplomats,[3] then from September to December as assistant to Gerald G. Gross,[3] Head of Plenipotentiary and General Administrative Radio Conferences at the International Telecommunications Union. She returned to Coventry and from January to April 1960 taught general subjects in a primary school there, then to London where from May to October she was an assistant in the promotion department of music publishers Boosey & Hawkes.[6]
BBC Radiophonic Workshop[edit]

In November 1960 she joined the BBC as a trainee assistant studio manager[3] and worked on Record Review, a magazine programme where critics reviewed classical music recordings. She said: "Some people thought I had a kind of second sight. One of the music critics would say "I don't know where it is, but it's where the trombones come in" and I'd hold it up to the light and see the trombones and put the needle down exactly where it was. And they thought it was magic."[3] She then heard about the Radiophonic Workshop and decided that was where she wanted to work. This was received with some puzzlement by the heads in Central Programme Operation because people were usually "assigned" to the Radiophonic Workshop, and in April 1962 she was indeed assigned there[6] in Maida Vale, where for eleven years she would create music and sound for almost 200 radio and television programmes.[10]

In August 1962 she assisted composer Luciano Berio at a two-week summer school at Dartington Hall, for which she borrowed several dozen items of equipment from the BBC.[11] One of her first works, and the most widely known, was her 1963 electronic realization of a score by Ron Grainer for the theme tune of the Doctor Who series, one of the first television themes to be created and produced by entirely electronic means. Doctor Who theme excerpt
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An excerpt from the theme music to Doctor Who
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When Grainer first heard it, he was so amazed by her rendering of his theme that he asked "Did I really write this?" to which Derbyshire replied "Most of it".[12] Grainer attempted to get her a co-composer credit but the attempt was prevented by the BBC bureaucracy, which then preferred to keep the members of the workshop anonymous.[13] The theme was reworked over the years, to her horror, and the version that had her "stamp of approval" is her original one.[14] Delia also composed some of the incidental music for the show, including Blue Veils and Golden Sands and The Delian Mode.'

In 1964-65 she collaborated with the British artist and playwright Barry Bermange for the BBC's Third Programme to produce four Inventions for Radio, a collage of people describing their dreams, set to a background of electronic sound.[15][16]
Unit Delta Plus[edit]

In 1966, while still working at the BBC, Derbyshire with fellow Radiophonic Workshop member Brian Hodgson and EMS founder Peter Zinovieff set up Unit Delta Plus,[1] an organisation which they intended to use to create and promote electronic music. Based in a studio in Zinovieff's townhouse at 49 Deodar Road in Putney, they exhibited their music at a few experimental and electronic music festivals, including the 1966 The Million Volt Light and Sound Rave at which The Beatles' "Carnival of Light" had its only public playing.

In 1966, she recorded a demo with Anthony Newley entitled Moogies Bloogies, although as Newley moved to the United States, the song was never released. After a troubled performance at the Royal College of Art, in 1967, the unit disbanded.[17]
Kaleidophon[edit]

Also in the late sixties, she again worked with Hodgson in setting up the Kaleidophon studio at 281-283 Camden High Street in Camden Town with fellow electronic musician David Vorhaus.[1] The studio produced electronic music for various London theatres and in 1968 the three used it to produce their first album as the band White Noise. Although later albums were essentially solo Vorhaus albums, the début, An Electric Storm, featured collaborations with Derbyshire and Hodgson and is now considered an important and influential album in the development of electronic music.[citation needed]

The trio, using pseudonyms, also contributed to the Standard Music Library.[18] Many of these recordings, including compositions by Derbyshire using the name "Li De la Russe" (from an anagram-esque use of the letters in "Delia" and a reference to her auburn hair), were later used on the seventies ITV science fiction rivals to Doctor Who: The Tomorrow People[19] and Timeslip,.[20]

In 1967, she assisted Guy Woolfenden with his electronic score for Peter Hall's production of Macbeth with the Royal Shakespeare Company.[1] The two composers also contributed the music to Hall's film Work Is a Four-Letter Word (1968).[21] Her other work during this period included taking part in a performance of electronic music at The Roundhouse,[1] which also featured work by Paul McCartney, the sound-track for the Yoko Ono film,[22] the score for an ICI-sponsored student fashion show[1] and the sounds for Anthony Roland's award-winning film of Pamela Bone's photography, entitled Circle of Light.[23]

Written with a harrowing harmonic narrative evoking near pitch black imagery of submerged sound as heard by an arctic diver encapsulated in a diving bell fathoms below the surface in extreme northerly latitudes. Most remarkably, Köner sourced the cavernous sounds here from recordings of gongs, precisely captured with contact microphones underwater in order to manipulate the illusory physicality of their ultra-subtle

Lydia Lunch (born Lydia Kaylee Koch, June 2, 1959, Rochester, New York)[1][4] is an American singer, poet, writer, actress and self-empowerment speaker whose career was spawned by the New York No Wave scene.[5] The Boston Phoenix named Lunch "one of the 10 most influential performers of the 1990s."[6]

Her work typically features provocative and confrontational noise music delivery and has maintained an anti-commercial ethic[7] operating independently of major labels and distributors.[8] Lunch's moniker was given to her by the rock band Mink DeVille because she stole food for her friends.

wiki

Early life[edit]

Lunch moved to New York City from Rochester at the age of 16[4] in 1976 with what she described having nothing but "a small red suitcase, a winter coat, and a big fucking attitude."[9] Lunch moved into a communal household of artists and musicians in NYC. Soon Willy DeVille gave her the name "Lunch" because she often stole lunches from The Dead Boys.[10]
Music[edit]

After befriending Alan Vega and Martin Rev at Max's Kansas City, she founded the short-lived but influential No Wave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, with James Chance.[11] Both Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and The Contortions, Chance's subsequent band, played on the No Wave compilation No New York, produced by Brian Eno. Lunch later appeared on two songs on James White and the Blacks album, Off-White.

Lunch's solo career featured collaborations with musicians such as J. G. Thirlwell, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Nick Cave, Marc Almond, Billy Ver Planck, Steven Severin, Robert Quine, Sadie Mae, Rowland S. Howard, Michael Gira, The Birthday Party, Einstürzende Neubauten, Sonic Youth, Oxbow, Die Haut, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Black Sun Productions, and French band Sibyl Vane, who put one of her poems to music.

In the mid-1980s, she formed her own recording and publishing company called "Widowspeak Productions" (also known as just "Widowspeak"), on which she continues to release her own material, from music to spoken word. Two albums published by Lunch's label were released in 2013: Collision Course & Trust The Witch, by Big Sexy Noise (released on Cherry Red), and Retrovirus (released on Interbang Records); both albums are by Lunch's musical projects.[12]

Lunch released her studio album Smoke in the Shadows in November 2004, through Atavistic Records and Breakin Beats, after a six-year break from music.[13][14] Nels Cline, the lead guitarist of alternative rock band Wilco, was featured on the album.[15] Smoke in the Shadows was met with positive reviews by Allmusic,[16] PopMatters,[13] and Tiny Mix Tapes.[17] In 2009 Lunch formed the band Big Sexy Noise. The group features Lunch on vocals, James Johnston (guitars), Terry Edwards (organ, saxophone), and Ian White (drums).[18] Johnston, White and Edwards being members of the British band Gallon Drunk.[19] A six-track eponymous EP was released on June 1, 2009 through Sartorial Records,[20] and included a cover of Lou Reed's song "Kill Your Sons," as well as "The Gospel Singer", a song co-written with Kim Gordon.[15] The debut, self-titled album Big Sexy Noise was released in 2010, followed by Trust The Witch in 2011. For both albums, Lunch and her band completed tours throughout Europe.[21][22]

In 2010, The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project launched We Are Only Riders, the first of a series of four albums featuring Pierce's previously-unreleased works-in-progress. The album features interpretations of Pierce's work by friends, collaborators, and admirers, including Lunch.[23] Lunch also contributed to the second album from the project (The Journey is Long, released in April 2012)[24] and will appear on the project's third and final album, The Task Has Overwhelmed Us (due for release in late 2012).[25]

Lunch released the album Retrovirus (also the name of the band Lunch plays with) in 2013 on Interbang Records and ugEXPLODE (the vast majority of the album tracks are published by Widowspeak).[26] Together with band members Weasel Walter, Algis Kizys, and Bob Bert, Lunch performed a show following the album's release at the Bowery Electric venue in New York City, US in May 2013.[27]
Film[edit]

She appeared in two films by directors Scott B and Beth B. In the Black Box (1978) she played a dominatrix, and in Vortex (1983) she played a private detective named Angel Powers. During this time, she also appeared in a number of films by Vivienne Dick, including She Had Her Gun All Ready (1978) and Beauty Becomes The Beast (1979), co-starring with Pat Place.[28] In 2011, Lunch appeared in Mutantes: punk, porn, feminism, a film directed by Virginie Despentes, also featuring Kaylee Sprinkle and Catherine Breillat She also wrote, directed and acted in underground films, sometimes collaborating with underground filmmaker and photographer Richard Kern.
Spoken word[edit]

Lunch has recorded and performed as a spoken word artist, collaborating with artists such as Exene Cervenka, Henry Rollins, Juan Azulay, Don Bajema, Hubert Selby Jr., and Emilio Cubeiro, as well as hosting spoken-word performance night The Unhappy Hour at the Parlour Club.[29]
Literature[edit]

In 1997, Lunch released Paradoxia, a loose autobiography, in which she documented her early life, sexual history, substance abuse and mental health problems.[30] Time Out New York gave it a favorable review,[31] while Bookslut ambiguously concluded "It's to the reader to determine whether Lunch's study goes deeper than that, or if instead, it's a kind of literary and philosophical repetition compulsion, a reprisal of greatest hits from male nihilists, sexual adventurers and chroniclers of deviance."[31] PopMatters called it a "brutal but boring and predictable circus, about which Lunch shows no emotions. Only fatigue seems to have given her pause."[32] Other reviewers praised Lunch's candor while expressing reservations about her prose.[33][34]

Additionally, Lunch has authored both traditional books and comix (with award-winning graphic novel artist Ted McKeever).
Other work[edit]

In 2007, Lunch appeared on a viral video that was recorded backstage after a Joe Rogan comedy show, in which she confronts Rogan for making jokes about "dumb women" in his comedy act. The interaction becomes inflamed when Rogan takes exception to Lunch's confrontational approach, whereby she asks the comedian to make eye contact and comments: "I was going to put my cigarette up his nose, but that's okay." Lunch then withdraws from her initial approach, claiming that her cigarette comment was not serious.[35]

In 2013 Lunch ran self-empowerment workshops in locations such as Ojai, California, US and Rennes, France. In regard to the Rennes workshop, her inaugural self-empowerment event, Lunch recalled: "Every day people would come in that would have to get a hug. I felt like mother India."[3]