9 September 2010 – Grosse Halle Reitschule – Bern (CH) – SONIC TRACES: FROM THE ARAB WORLD feat. PRAED
18 November 2010 – Cafe Oto – London (UK) – SONIC TRACES: FROM THE ARAB WORLD
26 November 2010 – Rietberg Museum – Zurich (CH) – SONIC TRACES: FROM THE ARAB WORLD
13 – 15 January 2011 – Kino in der Reitschule – Bern (CH) – 2. NORIENT MUSIKFILM FESTIVAL

Michael Spahr is part of the independent culture network NORIENT. He has just produced an online magazine and a multilingual website for the network. And he writes about music and art.

At the moment he and NORIENT Founder Thomas Burkhalter curate and organize the second NORIENT MUSIKFILM FESTIVAL, which will happen in January 2011. Here’s the official FACEBOOK page.

With Thomas Burkhalter (music scientist and journalist) and Simon Grab (music producer) he has created the scientific audio-visual performance SONIC TRACES: FROM THE ARAB WORLD, in which he is performing as video turntableist.

This is a short preview of the performance:

10 – 18 September 2010 – Abwalden - video installation with students and the project tönstör – Dampfzentrale, Bern (Switzerland)
10 – 18 September 2010 – Agent-Provocateur - short videos – Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern (Switzerland)

Biennale Bern is a festival by Bern’s University of Arts HKB and artists from all over the world. Michael Spahr has paticipated with live video art at the Biennale 2005 (Optingale Quartet with Meret Lüthi, Simon Bucher and Samuel Radvila) and Biennale 2008 (Ya Sharr Mout with Mahmoud Turkmani and ensemble). This time he creates a video installation in collaboration with students and the music project tönstör. The museum Zentrum Paul Klee shows short movies by agent-provocateur.ch, for which Michael Spahr has produced several short videos.

4 – 24 September 2010 – Festival Images 10 – Sammlung Ertle-Ketterer – Vevey, Switzerland

GLOBOCITY is an ongoing art project by Michael Spahr about the globalized urban world. GLOBOCITY consists of videos, pictures, objects and noises. The following video is a short version of the art piece GLOBOCITY – RISE & FALL. Please vote here to get the video on Swiss television.



So far GLOBOCITY has been shown as a solo exhibition at the Atelier Worb gallery in Switzerland. The video GLOBOCITY – RISE AND FALL was part of a video group exhibition at the festival PROGNOSE VOOR DE TOEKOMST in Deventer in the Netherlands and at the exhibition PROYECTO CIRCO in Havanna, Cuba. Upcoming screenings of GLOBOCITY – RISE AND FALL will be at the Mediterráneo centro artístico, MECA, Almería, Andalucía, Spain, and again in Cuba.

More info, videos and images on globocity.com.

25 September 2010 – Chawwerusch Theater – Herxheim (Germany)
6 January 2011 Theater Chur – Chur (Switzerland)
7 January 2011 Theater Chur – Chur (Switzerland)

Play about the peculiar relationship between Germans and Swiss Germans. Written by Guy Krneta and Till Löffler. Directed by Ursina Greuel (Matterhorn Produktionen). With an interactive video backdrop by Michael Spahr.

29 October 2010 – Ya Sharr Mout – documentary by Sabine Gisiger – Kino Reitschule – Bern (Switzerland)
30 October 2010 – Ya Sharr Mout – documentary by Sabine Gisiger – Kino Reitschule – Bern (Switzerland)

Ya Sharr Mout is an audio-visual performance by Mahmoud Turkmani and Michael Spahr with texts by Nadia Tuéni.

The DVD/CD, which has been designed by Michael Spahr, has been released on Enja Records.

The documentary film about Ya Sharr Mout by Sabine Gisiger won the award for Best Portrait at the International Festival of Films on Art in Montreal, Canada. It will be shown soon at the Louvre in Paris, the Studio national des arts contemporains Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing, the AIA/Center for Architecture, the Mid-Manhattan Library and the Morgan Library in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Musée national des beaux-arts in Quebec City, the National Gallery of Canada and the Tate Modern in London.

Bümpliz, a wonderful and notorious neighbourhoood in Switzerland’s capital Bern, is an important source of inspiration for Michael Spahr. At the moment he is working on a video installation called PIMPOLIS for the art project KUNSTACHSE. On 30 July 2010 “Pimpolis, Switzerland” was shown as an audio-visual web performance during the Parallelflux Happening Retrieving Humanity at the Santa Fe Complex in Santa Fe, U.S.A.This is a short video sketch:




Michael Spahr’s film "Bümpliz – A Day In Urban Switzerland" (2005) ist still a classic and is available on DVD (with English subtitles). Order the movie here.

The Blues Horror Brigade is an alien rock’n'roll performance group. They are attacking the planet Earth with weird artistic and non-violent actions. Michael Spahr has produced and directed several documentaries about that group and is responsible for the extraterrestrial live video art.
This is the latest flick:

At the moment the Blues Horror Brigade is working on the new Album “Live on Titan”, which will be released in the beginning of 2011.