The Deadly Doris
Cinema
Artist
The Deadly Doris
Title
cinema
Year of creation
1980s
Technology and dimensions
3 DVDs, Edition 2/7
Year of acquisition
2005
In 1980, the art students and members of a music band Wolfgang Müller, Nikolaus Utermöhlen and Chris Dreier founded the Berlin group "The Deadly Doris". In 1981 Dagmar Dimitroff replaced Chris Dreier and around 1981 Wolfgang Müller's brother Max was also involved in the project for a short time. In 1982 Käthe Kruse replaced Chris Dreier and from 1982 to 1984 the group was supplemented by Tabea Blumenschein. In 1987 the group officially disbanded. The diverse work of the Berlin group emerged from music and successively covered all areas of art, from the media of film, literature and photography to performance and video to painting and sculpture.
The artist group "Tödliche Doris" no longer exists today, although its former members are extremely active, with the exception of Nikolaus Utermöhlen, who died of AIDS. Trying to catch them isn't that easy; a punk band wouldn't be enough; brilliant dilettantes, as they called themselves, would be more likely. You are definitely one of the most interesting artists who settled the strange biotope of West Berlin, or more precisely Kreuzberg, in the 1970s. They are the heroes of an anti-art attitude who questioned and enlivened the established art scenes with ironic strategies. In addition to the punk music and unconventional forms of performance they performed, a complex visual work was created that uses all genres. The film has played a major role in her work from the beginning. The proximity to the experimental filmmaker Heinz Emigholz, who works in Berlin and New York, inspires her to create her own productions. The filmic work of “Tödliche Doris” anticipates many later inventions by other artists. Its originality is unique among artists' films. It goes without saying that it belongs in the collection of films by visual artists that Hamburger Bahnhof has been gradually building up for several years.
“Death,” sang the Berlin artist collective Deadly Doris in 1982, “is a scandal.” Others were soon to follow. It wasn't enough that the group around Wolfgang Müller was the driving force of the Geniale Dilletanten (sic!) movement, which was free of taboos and virtuosity and filled the capital's underground with sound, they also quickly appropriated other cultural fields. The fatal Doris was soon met as a painter, photographer, performance and video artist in clubs and galleries between New York, Warsaw and Helgoland. "'The deadly Doris'," Dietrich Kuhlbrodt recognized in the Frankfurter Rundschau in 1982, "is always where you don't expect her. For example in the cinema."
Gregor Kessler
