Alfred 23 Harth
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Alfred 23 Harth is a German multimedia artist, band leader, musician, and composer who mixes genres in a polystylistic manner.
Harth was born in 1949 in Kronberg im Taunus, Germany and artistically initiated by visiting a dada exhibition in 1958 in Frankfurt/Main.
With his essay "On Synaesthetics" in 1967 he opened his creative horizons to a large variety of artistic fields. He included classical string players in his free improvisation group Just Music in 1967 and opened the same year the platform centrum freier cunst in Frankfurt—a meeting point for live free music, art exhibitions, experimental poetry, action, and happening events.
At the age of 23 he formed the group E.M.T. with artist and pianist Nicole Van den Plas from Belgium and Sven-Ake Johansson from Sweden. E.M.T. included dada and fragmented classical works from Grieg, Schubert, and others. In 1976 he joined the loft jazz scene in New York a second time and recorded the first LP of the Duo Goebbels/Harth including works from Hanns Eisler and later Johann Sebastian Bach. The same year he started to work with video.In 1979 he began to compose for the theatre and made punk jazz. In 1982 he co-founded Cassiber and initiated Duck and Cover for which he designed a composition in 1983 and co-organized the Marry the World By Conference Call in 1984 at the waschSalon gallery in Frankfurt/Main which he maintained with his then-wife from 1984 to 1991.
In 1985 he adapted the number 23 in his name and short name A23H, see more about his art events: Alfred 23 Harth (A23H). He recorded the LP Nouvelle Cuisine with Gestalt et Jive, and composed a minimalist video installation Sam Lang and in 1986 contributed an Amphibian Match to the underwater concert initiated by Micky Remann in Frankfurt/Main. The same year he produced a remix album Anything Goes. He wrote a manifest Paradigmenwechsel in 1988 in which he proclaims the Instant City Happiness I-culture. The same year he founded the post modern group Vladimir Estragon comprising Einstürzende Neubauten drummer FM Einheit. In 1989 he created the performance Wenn Gott tot ist, dann ist er im Himmel with a sound collage of original interviews with Jean Baudrillard, Villem Flusser, Friedrich Kittler, and a performance with Russian poet Dmitri Prigov at the Documenta Archive in Kassel in 1990.The same year he exhibited William Burrough's Paintings on Paper in Frankfurt/Main and had a retrospective of his own visual arts called 2324 FU at the Dominikanerkloster, Frankfurt. In 1992 he met his wife, Korean artist Yi Soonjoo, and was portrayed by Moscow TV in the short film Balance Action which was shown at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.
In 1994 Harth was a member in the artist group Delicatesy Avantgarde with exhibitions in Gdansk and made a street installation "Wilhelm Leuschner zum Gedenken" in context with his art project Gedankenhotel, 1993-1995, and had a retrospective Tensides at the Deutsches Filmmuseum. He made a remix album Pollock with out-of-print Alfred Harth Lps in 1996 and in 1997-8 he re-arranged, conducted, and performed the West Side Story at the main theatre in Frankfurt. In 2000 he formed Trio Viriditas in New York together with Wilber Morris and Kevin Norton. In 2001-02 he had a grant at Samzie Space in Seoul and created the LaubhuetteStudio Seoul. In 2003 he started composing a five item CD series "Mother-Of-Pearl" about Korea comprising a DVD T_error (2005). Since early 2004 Harth is a steady member in Otomo Yoshihide's groups and in 2007 he created "7k Oaks" together with Massimo Pupillo,Fabrizio Spera and Luca Venitucci in Rome. A23H founded many other bands and composed for film, TV, theatre, ballet, and radio plays. Currently he lives and works mostly in Korea and Japan since the year 2001.
