For more than a decade now Holger Adam spends a fair amount of time not just buying records and listening to music but also organizing and curating shows (for the Phantom Limbo and Broken Sound concert series) and – as one of the co-editor’s of German magazine testcard – writing about music (promo sheets, reviews and stories/articles on music/artists). In all of these activities there’s mostly no or just a little money involved. No need to complain, but even more reason to talk about what drives artists and activists to keep spending time and money in a more or less (economically) non-lucrative, niche-market?
Hosting a talk at Meakusma Festival he’s about to discuss that kind of underground activities (and further implications) with some of this years’ participating artists. Artists and activists that (for now, at least) work on the fringes of the cultural map (i.e. the underground). The talk will question/focus on the motivation to make music, set up and/or play shows, run a record-label etc. in a non-mainstream environment, the joy and frustration these activities bring, the economic conditions one has to deal with and – in the long run – the life-defining perspectives those activities may hold or not (having a family or not, getting your art/work-life balance right, staying sane, growing old in a scene, growing out of a scene – and what’s a scene anyway?) etc.
Yeah, it may be old news, but the topic’s an evergreen. As long as people are creative on a grass-root-level talking/thinking/debating about everything that comes with it is still relevant.
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