ABOUT MICHAEL SPAHR

Michael Spahr (VJ Rhaps) is an artist, filmmaker and storyteller. He works and lives in Bern (Switzerland).
His biographical data can be downloaded here.



Michael Spahr was born in the Swiss suburbia. At the age of 13 his German teacher, the legendary Bernese gallery owner toni gerber, forced him to recite the poems of Jean Arp. He failed miserably, but began to deal with Dada and Surrealism in a very intense way, so intense that he now called himself a Dadaist and Surrealist. With the altering ego Lö Trösenbeck he wrote sonic poetry. Under the name Mispa he cut and glued collages.
While the iron curtain in Europe crumbled, he learned lumberjack songs, journalism and the art of photography in California’s coastal village Fort Bragg.

Because he wanted to become a storyteller, he studied history and a bit of philosophy, media and film studies in Bern and Amsterdam for five years. In Bern he spent most of his time in the notorious cultural center Reitschule, where he helped to organize concerts, produced light shows and spent long nights with musicians from Japan, the U.S. and the rest of the world drinking trappist beer. In Amsterdam he wrote a master thesis on anarchists, tried everything the city had to offer and ended up in the television business. As an editor, camera man, production and director’s assistant he learned to move images. Eventually he became president of the Foundation Pixels, which produced an experimental TV show in Amsterdam.
After the millennium he returned to Bern, where he worked for a while as a video journalist for the local TV station. The guys from V.I.T. (Visually Interesting Thing) tought him the art of Visualjockeying, which pleased him so much he soon turned pro and henceforth called himself VJ Rhaps. With the groups Mouthwatering, Kamilya Jubran’s Mahattaat and Manufactur he toured clubs and galleries in Europe and Egypt. At the same time, he directed and produced several documentaries, animation flicks and short films. Worth mentioning are the documentaries "Buy More Incense" (with Thomas Burkhalter of norient.com), a story about British Asian musicians, and "Bümpliz – a day in urban Switzerland," a love letter to his neighbourhood. While making the video clip "Chumpnrun“ (filewile) he rediscovered his passion for the collage. Digital technology now allows him to turn his collages into animation movies.
As a video performance artist, he creates interactive video backdrops, in which he manipuklates his video collages in real-time, for example in theatrical productions such as "Die Versuchung, die Romanza der Eluvies von Alfred Wälchli zu spielen" (Matterhorn Produktionen) or "Les pauvres sont tous les mêmes – ou des chevreuils à vive allure "(cie. Marielle Pinsard).
After three years as a member of the multimedia agency Optickle, he felt like leaving Switzerland for a while. He travelled around the world, visiting Russia, Mongolia, China, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Samoa and the U.S. of A. When he returned he collaborated with the Lebanese oud virtuoso and composer Mahmoud Turkmani on the audio-visual project "Ya Sharr Mout" (Arabic, depending on the pronunciation: "Oh, evil, die" or "Son of a bitch"). He again began to play with words and developed calligraphic animations, which he presented with Turkmanis ensemble in Beirut and other cities in the world. Overwhelmed by the cities of the world, he started his new project "Globocity“, a utopian globalized city. He won the Art Prize Kunstschub by gallery Atelier Worb, which led to his first solo exhibition in 2009 with video, images and objects from Globocity.
When he’s not in Globocity working on his art, Michael Spahr works for the music network norient or for the extraterrestrial performance group Blues Horror Brigade.