Free Music Production/FMP: The Living Music

The exhibition 'Free Music Production/FMP: The Living Music' presents the history of the FMP music label, which was active from 1968 to 2010 as a Berlin-based platform for the production, presentation and documentation of music. Ever since the late 1950s, there have been repeated attempts by musicians to design their production and working conditions in a self-determined manner. Due to the fact that the saxophonist Peter Brötzmann could not guarantee the organisers of the Berliner Jazztage (today Jazzfest Berlin) that his group would perform in black suits, leading to cancellation of the invitation, he organised the first Total Music Meeting (TMM) in 1968, together with the bassist Jost Gebers. Within a very short time FMP developed into an international hotspot for contemporary and, in the beginning, sometimes highly controversial improvised music. The music was first documented on vinyl in 1969. As the first western label, FMP recorded musicians from the GDR in both East and West Berlin. 

The exhibition, documenting a unique musical and cultural history between West and East, presents the most important concert formats developed by FMP, often copied to the present day - for example, the Workshop Freie Musik or the Total Music Meeting. The many hundreds of concerts are exemplified through recordings, photographs, posters, flyers and interviews as well as numerous documentary videos never seen before and unreleased recordings from Jost Gebers' FMP archive. FMP is thus returning to its original venue at the Akademie at Hanseatenweg.

An exhibition in cooperation with Haus der Kunst, Munich and Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Curated by Markus Müller. Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Goethe-Institut.

The exhibition shows works by/cooperations with: Peter Brötzmann, Jost Gebers, Peter Kowald, Detlef Schönenberg, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Paul G. Deker, Werner Bethsold, Gerard Rouy, Roberto Massotti, Dagmar Gebers, Cecil Taylor, Feminist Improvising Group (Corinne Liensol, Lindsay Cooper, Sally Potter, Annemarie Roelofs und Georgina Born), Hannes Bauer, Konrad Bauer, Heinz Becker, Manfred Hering, Ulrich Gumpert, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, Manfred Schulze, Africa Djolé, Pina Bausch, Min Tanaka, Ōno Kazuo, Christine Brunel, Tomas Schmit, A. R. Penck, Albert Oehlen, Günther Förg, Günter Grass and many more.