An electrical banana, a mammoth in the garden, a singing mushroom and the “synthe-sigher” – or avant-garde, cult and underground, all these terms can be applied to this total work of art from Karl-Marx-Stadt. Founded in 1998, the band quickly became an insider’s tip in the relevant clubs of the GDR and managed not to be swallowed by the system until their abrupt end in 1993. Music with electronic elements, dadaist lyrics, monotonous sprechgesang, cryptic or deliberately silly costumes and masks on stage, and the use of painting and film – multimedia before the term was invented – were the hallmarks of AG Geige’s style. Their consistent rejection of sense and worship of the absurd were not just expressions of a whole generation’s attitude to life, but a subversive strategy in a country where even the most banal utterances were seen as political statements.
Carsten Gebhardt, a native of Chemnitz, raises a monument to the band by interviewing its members and reanimating the specific AG Geige aesthetics in collages of music and Super 8 films. Big names like Ronald Galenza, Christoph Tannert and Lutz Schramm describe the concept of a superficial “dilettantism” concealing “professional work and a lived quirkiness”. In that sense, Gebhardt’s film is a worthy amateur film.
The subversive seed flowered, by the way. The sons of two members of the band founded Kraftclub, a contemporary cult band.

Grit Lemke

A hedgehog and a bird run into each other, become friends and help each other with their problems.

Ode to a yellow plastic box - the TelH78 phone booth.