Wolf Vostell and the Music of Life

Abstract

The paper addresses a number of artistic initiatives by Wolf Vostell that incorporate music and sound. Vostell´s multimedia art, which very frequently juxtaposes apparently antagonistic realities and processes, gives essential relevance to sound in his happenings, installations, video art works, fluxes concerts and one fluxes opera. The research also addresses Vostellian concepts such as schwebung or dé/coll-age musik and the use by the Spanish-German artist of everyday sounds which are musically organized. Recalling Vostell´s words “life as noise, noise as life” the paper pays significant amount of attention to the notion of noise. The latter can be traced back in the Futurism and Dadaism years and the research looks back in time taking account of the fact that neither Wolf Vostell nor his Fluxus peers are untied from the history of art and music. The research reflects how Wolf Vostell´s sound/music precepts are developed in Malpartida de Cáceres, a town in Extremadura where he founded the Museo Vostell Malpartida in 1976. According to the view of its founder, this museum is interested in the aforementioned combination of opposing forces that are interrelated and reinforce themselves, and this refers also to the name of the museum… and also refers to sound.