Marcus Maeder – Die Wunschmaschinen

Marcus Maeder

DVD – Domizil
Since the mid-nineties, the experiments of Marcus Maeder permeated the Kombirama of Zurich with a certain conceptual freshness, which was both seminal and intuitive. It was at this time – for the first time – that the term “digital culture” found its application. They were the same years in which Bernd Schurer founded Domizil Music, which now, after more than a decade, is home to this interesting project inspired by the Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Based on this essay, filled with premonitions on the schizophrenic process at the heart of capitalism, Maeder sketched an oblique radio play, skillfully extricated from distinctive musical elements and “actorial” narratives (where the characters take the form of Artaud, Freud, Ivan Chtcheglov and Guy Débord). A very brilliant cast – it seems – but difficult to keep together. As if this were not enough there are also musical tributes added, ranging from Kraftwerk to Velvet Underground, from Nick Cave to Richard Wagner. A greater lack of constraint seems to add something to the sonorizations here, thanks to an eccentric synthetic “cabaret”, confined in a pathological consume of drum machines and hypnotic choruses that take shape in cyber-existential “ballads.”