Die Tödliche Doris
Sesselgruppe Kleid | 1991
Die Tödliche Doris (1980–87) emerged in equal measure from the punk movement and the Hochschule der Künste in West Berlin. As a group, the artists’ collective created conceptual art using a range of media, including music, performance, video, painting, found objects, and literature. In particular, they often questioned habits of seeing and hearing. The art students Wolfgang Müller and Nikolaus Utermöhlen were the founding members. Tabea Blumenschein and Chris Dreier were the first additional members who joined. Later members include Dagmar Dimitroff, Max Müller, Elke Käthe Kruse, Gunter Trube, David Steeves, and Hermoine Zittlau.
The group released numerous cassette tapes and LPs, including one “invisible” record. It is the result of the LPs sechs and Unser Debut being played simultaneously. The lyrics and music are perfectly coordinated and become woven together. Die Tödliche Doris also performed with deaf people and hired entertainers through the German employment office’s placement service for performing artists to play live accompaniment to noise tapes.
One of Die Tödliche Doris’s most important visual works is a series started in 1979, titled Material für die Nachkriegszeit. It is made up of hundreds of discarded, often torn, pictures from passport photo booths, which they reconstructed and assembled like a puzzle. They created an accompanying super 8 mm film by the same name, which was shown for the first time at the Paris Biennale in 1981. As a variation on the subject matter, 1983 saw the release of the film Der Fotomatonreparateur, in which discarded test pictures, as made by the technician responsible for repairing the photo booth, were filmed. Both films thus beat the film Amélie to certain central motifs.
In mid-1984, Die Tödliche Doris released Chöre und Soli, a green box containing eight tiny records, a battery-powered playback device, and an accompanying book. The box was an edition brought out under Ursula Block’s “Gelbe Musik ” and is considered to be the first musical artist’s multiple.
When the group dissolved in 1987, Die Tödliche Doris was internationally renowned. Exhibitions, film screenings, and concerts took place in numerous cities in Germany and around the world, including New York, Amsterdam, Brussels, Basel, Helsinki, Budapest, Warsaw, Vienna, Paris, Bordeaux, and Tokyo. Die Tödliche Doris took part in documenta 8 in Kassel. The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, as well as many other museums worldwide invited the group to perform and show their films.
The group’s super 8 mm films are in the collections of, among others, the Hamburger Bahnhof, Moritzburg Art Museum, and the Hannover Sprengel Museum. The original reels are stored at the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin. Galerie K' manages the film rights and houses a complete archive of Die Tödliche Doris’s work.
Works
Die Tödliche Doris’s archive has been housed at Galerie K' since 2021, where the works are preserved while the collection is also expanded. In addition to the group’s works, original recordings, and all their films and correspondence, the archive also includes a substantial collection of photographs.
Links
Sound Collection Guy Schraenen
Die Tödliche Doris und das Westberlin der 80er Jahre - Deutschlandfunk, 2013
CV
Tödlichen Doris Writtings
Die Gesamtheit allen Lebens und alles Darüberhinausgehende | 1987 | Verlag Georg Büchner Buchhandlung
Volume 1 | Vorträge, Memoiren, Essays, Hörspiel, Postwurfsendungen, Stücke, Flugblatt, Dichtung | 1991 | Verlag Martin Schmitz, Kassel
Weißer Burgunder aus Schweigen | 1993 | Verlag Martin Schmitz, Kassel
Volume 2 | Musik | 1999 | Verlag Martin Schmitz, Berlin
Volume 3 | Kunst | 1999 | Verlag Martin Schmitz, Berlin
Volume 4 | Kino | 2004 | Verlag Martin Schmitz, Berlin
Volume 5 | Performance | 2017 | Hybriden Verlag, Berlin
Volume 6 | Ephemera (in preparation)
Volume 7 | Kostüme | 2018 | Hybriden Verlag, Berlin
Volume 8 | Theater | 2019 | Hybriden Verlag, Berlin
Volume 9 | Werkverzeichnis | 2020 | Galerie K', Bremen
Volume 10 | Oper | 2022 | Hybriden Verlag, Berlin
Collections
Museum Moritzburg, Halle
Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
Sprengel Museum, Hannover
Schwules Museum, Berlin
Sammlung Julia und Mario von Kelterborn, Frankfurt am Main
Kunsthalle Hamburg
Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg
Hochschule für Design Kobe, Japan
Studienzentrum für Künstlerpublikationen/Weserburg - Museum für moderne Kunst, Bremen
Discography
Der siebenköpfige Informator | 1980 | MC | Die Tödliche Doris
Das typische Ding | 1981 | MC | Das Cassetten Combinat
Tabea und Doris dürfen doch wohl noch Apache tanzen | 1981 | MC | Das Casetten Combinat
Ohne Titel |1981 | LP | Zickzack
Die Tödliche Doris | 1982 | LP | Zickzack
Chöre & Soli | 1983 | 8 x 4" | Gelbe Musik
Die Über-Doris | 1985 | MC | Die Tödliche Doris
Naturkatastrophen | 1984 | 7" | Gelbe Musik
Unser Debut | 1985 | LP | Ata Tak
Live im SO 36 19.11.1982 | 1986 | MC | Die Tödliche Doris
Chöre & Soli Live im Delphi-Palast | 1986 | MC | Die Tödliche Doris
Sechs | 1986 | LP | Ata Tak
Live Playbacks | 1986 | LP | Reinhard Wilhelmi
Kinderringelreihen für Wahren Toren des Grals | 2002 | CD | Psychodelic Pig
Stigfinnareträffande II / Zwei Herzen | 2004 | 7 " | Vinyl-on-demand
Fallersleben | 2004 | EP | Vinyl-on-demand
Welten - Worlds - Ohontsa'shón:'a Morphologische Modemusik | 2005 | LP | Vinyl-on-demand
Musiken | 2009 | 2 x 7" | Squoodge Records
Stop (der Information) - Unvollendete Version 1983 | 2013 | EP | Squoodge Records
Sprechpause | 2017 | LP | Fang Bomb
Reenactment (I) | 2019 | LP + Druckmappe | Major Label
Filmography
Sabine – aus meinem Tagebuch | 10 min. | 1980
Material für die Nachkriegszeit | 25 min. | 2. dramatisierte und gekürzte Fassung | 9 min. | beide 1981
Das Leben des Sid Vicious | 12 min. | 1981
Energiebeutel und Zeitblase“, 12 min. | 1981
Fliegt schnell laut summend | 10 min. | 1981
Niemand sieht die Blindschleiche | 3 min | 1981
Das Graupelbeerhuhn | 20 min. | 1982
Berliner Küchenmusik | 5 min. | 1982
Textfilm | 3,5 min. | 1983
Die Tödliche Doris live auf Helgoland, 23. Juli 1983 | 6 min. | 1983
Blumen am Grab des Vaters | 12 min. | 1983
Der Fotomatonreparateur | 2 min. | 1983
LIVE | 2,5 min. | 1983
Wasserballet | 3 min. | 1984
Tapete | 23 min. | 1984
Mädchenherzen | 3 min. | 1984
Kulisse | 60 min. | 1984
Tanz 2 | 0,5 min. | 1984
Zwei Witwen | 2,5 min. | 1984
Die Tödliche Doris | 9 min. | 1984
Zoom | 2,5 min. | 1985
Die unsichtbare 5. LP materialisiert als Super-8-Film“ | 3 min. | 1985
Städte | 105 min. | 1987
Unbefleckte Empfängnis | 1 min. | 1986
Die Gesamtheit allen Lebens und alles Darüberhinausgehende | 1,83 Sekunden |1987
Eine Frau zur selben Zeit an einem anderen Ort | 9 min. | 1987