Kuemmerling Trio Nr.1 (1979)

Album title: Kuemmerling Trio No. 1 & 2
Title: Kuemmerling Trio No. 1 (Track 01)
Publisher: Edition Hanjörg Mayer, Stuttgart
Label:
Date: 1979
Medium: record 30 cm
Edition: 300
Cover: Dieter Roth
Performers: Hansjörg Mayer, Dieter Roth, Emmett Williams.

The Kümmerling Trio consists of the action artist Dieter Roth, the performance artist Emmett Williams and the publisher Hansjörg Mayer. They met twice for the recordings found on this record. The exact place and day of the two meetings are registered on the record label.

The first of the two pieces, Kümmerling Trio No.1, is a radio piece based on a concept developed by Dieter Roth. Roth, as an influential follower of the Fluxus movement, also obeys the following guiding principle in his musical works: everything is art-worthy, and nothing is art-valid.

Kümmerling Trio No.1 is an experimental piece that uses the means of voice and noise. Roth's urge to make perishable materials and waste products the subject of art is also evident here. Roth meets with his artist friends Hansjörg Mayer and Emmett Williams in his flat at Danneckerstr. 32 in Berlin on May 23rd 1979. On emptying Kümmerling bottles,
they create the desired sound by blowing into the neck of the bottle. The concept itself is only tested during the recording. A large part of the performance thus involves conversations between the actors. Among other things, they discuss how to implement Roth's concept. The idea is explained at the beginning by Roth himself. Nevertheless, the approaches of the individual actors differ. Williams refuses to follow the given plan and deviates from it in the implementation. Mayer, who initially insists on sticking to the original concept, becomes increasingly isolated from the conversations between Williams and Roth. He repeatedly makes noises with the bottle while Williams and Roth are talking. The loose spontaneous topics of conversation change and are not always specifically devoted to the concept itself. In the later course of the piece, one notices, among other things, incidental
noises such as the release of a camera or the striking of piano keys. The conversations take place mainly in English. Individual words or sentences are also spoken in German. In the end, the trio synchronously produces a whistling noise with the bottles.

The piece, characterised by disagreement and destruction, thus comes to a common conclusion. But disunity and destruction, the unpractised and spontaneous, are also typical of Dieter Roth's artistic and musical practice.

NK, PS