2022
Hybriden-Verlag, Berlin
66 pages

Price
€85,– (incl. VAT, excl. shipping)

Orders
versand@k-strich.de

The volume contains five series of drawings from 2018 by Tabea Blumenschein; the drawings deal with the history of Die Tödliche Doris
Bound, cover embossed with a drawing by Tabea Blumenschein
Texts by Hartmut Andryczuk and Wolfgang Müller
Supplement with images from Tabea und Doris dürfen doch wohl noch Apache tanzen, 1981, stamped by Wolfgang Müller

In Ulrike Ottinger’s films, Tabea Blumenschein could enter the scene with a femme or a butch identity, or she might show up as a man or a sexy pin-up girl. Some of the most popular subjects in her drawings included bearded women, hermaphrodites, sailors, skeletal girls, and trans and queer characters. Tabea Blumenschein was queer before this term even existed, as Philipp Meinert once noted in the Berlin-based magazine Siegessäule.

When Hartmut Andryczuk asked Tabea whether she would like to draw five works with an accordion fold for an edition to be published by Hybriden-Verlag, she was in the process of completing her designs for the red tote bag in which the artist book Die Tödliche Doris – Kostüme und Kulissen would be placed. The book itself was illustrated with her costume designs. To jog her memory, I had some weeks prior brought Tabea photographs from our 1980s performances. Among others, these photographs depicted one of Tabea’s closests friends, the artist Mark Brandenburg, performing as the resurrected Doris in an elegant white fur jacket in East Berlin in May 1989. There was also the squatter Elke Kruse, in a skeletal costume, designed by Nikolaus Utermöhlen, whose matted hair made her look like a rasta-ghost. Tabea’s memory lit up and she told me how complicated it had been to dye the batik costumes in her large kitchen in her place on Erdmannstraße. She had decided to make these voodoo doll costumes herself, for the open-air performance on Heligoland in the North Sea.

These memories were the foundation for the series of drawings titled The Bone Band, a total of fifty drawings across five accordion folded pieces, which Tabea drew over three weeks in 2018. In them, we see Doris singing about the Schuld-Struktur (structure of guilt) or performing in Tabea’s voodoo doll costume. The Bone Band celebrates Oktoberfest in folk costume or sings about the “Apache dance” while doing tango steps. Whether Tödliche Doris or Doris mortelle – all people are like Doris: deadly and mortal.

Wolfgang Müller

With Wolfgang Müller

2021
Hybriden-Verlag, Berlin
64 pages
Signed and numbered
Edition: 100

Price
€100,– (incl. VAT, excl. shipping)

Orders
versand@k-strich.de

On August 27, 2018, Wolfgang Müller arranged to meet his longtime friend Tabea Blumenschein for an interview at her apartment in Allee der Kosmonauten. He had noted personal and artistic stations of her life. At that time, he had no idea that it would be the last interview with Tabea.

This interview, actually more of a personal conversation between two artist friends, is now being published in a limited edition by Hybriden-Verlag. Tabea Blumenschein was one of the most idiosyncratic and dazzling personalities of the West Berlin subculture of the 1970s and 1980s. Whether as an actress, artist, performer, model, fashion designer, singer, filmmaker, glamour and queer punk icon, her unique presence and style made her unmistakable. Her friends were filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger, dancer Valeska Gert, actor Udo Kier, artist Martin Kippenberger, fashion designer Claudia Skoda and writer Patricia Highsmith. And Tabea Blumenschein was part of the cult band Die Tödliche Doris, founded by Wolfgang Müller and Nikolaus Utermöhlen, since its founding in 1980.

Photographs by Gerhard Dorrie and Wolfgang Müller
Stills taken from Eva Vitijas film Loving Highsmith, 2021
German to English translation by Walter Crasshole

Supplements
Chris Dreier: Hero Worship Special – Tabea Blumenschein, audio CD, Cashmere Radio, 2020. (Interview with Wolfgang Müller with original recordings from Die Tödliche Doris).

Wolfgang Müller: Tabea and Doris may surely still be present and absent at the same time?, black and white photograph of the band from 1983, colour edited by Gerhard Dörries in 2021 following a concept by Wolfgang Müller.

Wolfgang Müller & Tabea Blumenschein: Zoo: Drawings from DRY (reproduction), 1983