Dissonance: Day 10

Day Ten
April 19

Schneider turned on the sound system in his office – an inappropriately massive PA – and listened to his field recordings of Kraftwerk’s Techno Pop concert at the MoMA at full volume. The bootleg was packed full of highs. To equalize, Schneider doubled the input in the 150 kHz range and cut some of the peaks. The result was something unexpected: ‘Musique Non-Stop’ without the highs sounded like an African tribal piece driven by monotonous percussive energy.

For lunch, he cut a Mozzarella di Buffala from Campania into two halves and poured some extra virgin olive oil on it. No tomatoes, no basil.

Later that afternoon, he received an email from Bernard Sumner confirming their interview for the first week of May.

Still suffering from jetlag, Schneider went home early in the evening. As the sky grew dark, he turned on his video projector and watched Lars von Trier’s Europa. In this black-and-white experimental feature from 1991, Barbara Sukowa plays the role of a Nazi femme fatale who seduces, and then marries and manipulates a young American (Jean-Marc Barr), a character who eagerly wants to “show some kindness to the suffering German people” in the aftermath of the Second World War. In a key scene, Barr is confronted by his wife while US military police are arresting her.

Sukowa: “In my eyes, YOU are the criminal.”

Barr: “How can you say that?! I was on neither side, I didn’t take sides.”

Sukowa: “That’s exactly your crime.”

Published April 30, 2012.