Phil Collins. In every dream home a heartache: Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Hav­ing grown up in the North of Eng­land in the 70s and 80s, Phil Collins has al­ways had a pas­sio­nate in­ter­est in mu­sic, tele­vi­sion and pop­u­lar cul­ture. In his films, pho­to­graphs and live events, he in­vesti­gates the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the cam­era and its sub­jects, and the af­fec­tive po­ten­tial of vari­ous re­cord­ing me­dia in their ev­ery­day con­text. Collins’ prac­tice is fo­cused on close en­gage­ment with peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties, which over the years have in­clud­ed, amongst others, dis­co-danc­ing Pales­ti­nians, fans of The Smiths over three conti­nents, and teach­ers of Marx­ism-Lenin­ism in the former DDR. The pro­jects are of­ten an­nounced through news­pa­per ads and poster cam­paigns, or take the form of cast­ings and press con­fer­ences, so as to pro­vide a wide-reach­ing plat­form for en­coun­ters pred­i­cat­ed on high emo­tio­n­al stakes. Through­out, Collins’ work re­flects his com­mit­ment to myri­ad forms of ex­pe­ri­ence across the so­cial spec­trum, and his be­lief in the pow­er of in­ti­ma­cy and de­sire within the public sphere.

For his ex­hi­bi­tion at the Mu­se­um Lud­wig, Collins and his pro­duc­tion ini­tia­tive Shady Lane Pro­duc­tions have re­alised my heart’s in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand’s in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught, a new work in col­lab­o­ra­tion with guests of GUL­LIV­ER, a sur­vi­val sta­tion for the home­less lo­cat­ed in the cen­tre of Cologne. There, Collins in­s­talled a phone booth with a free line that any­one could use for un­limit­ed in­ter­na­tio­n­al calls on the agree­ment that the con­ver­sa­tions were anony­mous­ly re­cord­ed. The se­lect­ed ma­te­rial was then post­ed to a group of in­ter­na­tio­n­al mu­si­cians, serv­ing as the start­ing point for orig­i­nal new songs pre­sent­ed in the ex­hi­bi­tion as 7” vinyl re­cords in spe­cial­ly de­signed lis­ten­ing booths which over­look the ci­ty’s cen­tral sta­tion. The pro­ject in­cludes con­tri­bu­tions by le­g­endary fig­ures such as David Syl­vian, Scrit­ti Polit­ti, Læti­tia Sadi­er and Da­mon & Nao­mi, the trail­blaz­ing ex­per­i­men­tal and in­die acts (Demdike Stare, Plan­n­ing­torock, Maria Min­er­va, Heroin In Tahi­ti, Pye Corn­er Au­dio, Peak­ing Lights), lo­cal heroes across dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions (Elek­tronische Musik aus: Köln, Plu­ra­mon, Cologne Tape), and a spe­cial guest turn from the orig­i­nal Ger­man su­per­s­tar Ju­lia Hum­mer.

my heart’s in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand’s in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught is a head­first dive in­to a ci­ty, tun­ing in to its many un­heard sto­ries and facets of its life that are routine­ly over­looked. Collins is in­ter­est­ed in the lyri­cal and epic po­ten­tial of the hu­man voice, spe­cif­i­cal­ly in re­la­tion to a de­clin­ing lan­d­line tech­nol­o­gy. He looks at the emo­tio­n­al re­la­tion­ship we have with the tele­phone when it func­tions as a mea­sure of our so­cial ex­is­tence. The pro­ject brings back in­to fo­cus the al­most for­got­ten as­pects of a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion: its phys­i­cal­i­ty and ro­mance; its cer­e­mo­nial and per­for­ma­tive na­ture; its abil­i­ty to cre­ate and coun­ter dis­tance, and to con­jure up the po­et­ry of the spo­ken word – turn of phrase, the long­ing for some­one or some­where. Struc­tur­ing it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for a bar­gain, Collins iso­lates and dra­ma­tis­es the mo­ment of com­mu­ni­ca­tion as an in­ti­mate and am­bi­va­lent en­coun­ter.

Other works in the ex­hi­bi­tion are spawns of the same un­ho­ly al­liance be­tween pop and politics. They both fea­ture orig­i­nal sound­tracks by Welsh mu­si­cian Gruff Rhys and North Wales surf band Y Ni­wl. This Un­for­tu­nate Thing Be­tween Us (2011) is an in­s­tal­la­tion based on TUT­BU.TV, an al­ter­na­tive shop­ping chan­nel per­formed and broad­cast live on Ger­man na­tio­n­al tele­vi­sion. Host­ed by a cast of ac­tors and porn work­ers (Ju­lia Hum­mer, Su­sanne Sachsse, Sharon Smith, Judy Minx, Pau Pap­pel, Mat­thias Matschke, Trys­tan Püt­ter, Niels Bor­mann, Chris­tian Kärgel, Mar­cel Sch­lutt), TUT­BU.TV sold re­al life ex­pe­ri­ences in place of mass-pro­duced com­modi­ties, of­fer­ing a tan­tal­is­ing glimpse in­to what could be the fu­ture of con­sumer tele­vi­sion. Con­ceived on the other side of the world in Malaysia, the short film the mean­ing of style (2011) is a trop­i­cal fan­ta­sy fea­tur­ing a cast of an­ti-fas­cist sk­in­heads and ex­ot­ic but­ter­flies, which pro­vides the frame for a po­et­ic med­i­ta­tion on the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Bri­tish colo­nial his­to­ry and youth sub­cul­tures in South-East Asia.