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[Zita Joyce]

Oh zoe that's a very uncomfortable experience!

Markus Popp was indeed brought over by Artspace in 1998, and I  
managed to get him to Christchurch to play at the Harbourlight  
theatre in lyttelton.

He almost didn't make it - i think he was a little freaked out by  
being booked to spend quite a long time in New Zealand, and he really  
just wanted to get back to the comfortable Goethe Institute space he  
had been staying in in Tokyo so that he could keep working on music.

In the end he arrived late on the friday he was due to play, because  
he could fly straight to Tokyo from Christchurch early the next morning.

He was pretty stressed when I got to the airport (ahem, a little late  
- his flight from auckland arrived early), but he was surprisingly  
pleasant and we chatted all the way to his hotel in the car and I  
bought him some cold remedies because he was really sick.

As we turned off Ferry road to drive towards the Port Hills he  
suddenly said 'oh, this is lovely' in a very surprised way. And then  
when we came out of the tunnel into a slightly foggy lyttelton he  
said 'Oh yes, I could imagine retiring here' + from then he seemed  
very comfortable indeed.

I had been told that all he would want to do would be to focus on the  
performance and that we shouldn't try to talk to him beforehand, but  
in the end I had to drag him away from various conversations with  
audience members to get him to actually play. He was great - standing  
up with his laptop on a plinth of some sort (a powerbook 1400 or  
slightly earlier of all antiquated seeming things in retrospect),  
doing this funny flarey thing with his nostrils, which I like to  
think expressed some kind of passion, if not actual feelings....

So he turned out to be incredibly lovely, but I think was not really  
in a good headspace for dealing with the new zealandness of new  
zealand...

+ the So album really is that good.






On 12/05/2008, at 8:01 PM, Zoe Drayton wrote:

> well, this is a long time ago now but markus popp presented a  
> lecture at beautiful music around 98 (?) having been brought over  
> by artspace to play here.
>
> i attended the lecture...it was all about the methodological (CD  
> skipping etc) systems created and his theory behind it...he was  
> very very clear that there was no emotional investment in his making.
>
> I stupidly ventured a question to him - something about - was there  
> some sort of emotional or aesthetic decision and selection making  
> there... as it came across to me as being quite melodic and  
> melancholic work.
>
> he became very angry and ranted for a while about there being no  
> room for feelings in his music and any effect on the listener was  
> beside the point.
>
> it wasn't a hugely comfortable experience
>
> anyone know what he's up to these days?
>
>
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