I’VE SEEN THE WALL
LOUIS ARMSTRONG ON TOUR IN THE GDR 1965
16.9.2023 – 4.2.2024
Tickets

On the ground floor, the focus is on Louis Armstrong and his legendary tour. Artworks and documentary material interweave to paint a complex picture of Armstrong in private and on stage. At the press conference in East Berlin, Louis Armstrong literally sits “on the fence”: between two white men in black suits, between political systems, between translations in different directions. He sits there, between today and tomorrow, between press conference and concert, between journalists and audience—an audience that is hungry for the sound of freedom jazz embodies. When asked about the Wall, Armstrong quickly deflects to his music and his audience. His statements move between what is said and what is to be played the following day. He consistently keeps both in mind and always returns to his music, his trumpet, his upcoming performance. In a new video, which allows words and music to collide, Jason Moran combines film excerpts from the press conference and the concert in East Berlin in 1965, revealing the quandary Armstrong faced on tour.

The upper level goes beyond the historical tour to examine questions related to the production and reception of music, racism, and politics. Works of art are brought together from the 1960s to the present day. Music is the motivation, reference, inspiration, source, metaphor, method, material, or even subject of art. Many of the exhibited works play with the presence or absence of sound. Whether mouthpiece or mute, record player or trumpet: potential sound is central in I’ve Seen the Wall and a metaphor for different forms of activism. What is amplified in society? What is muted? Human history is steeped in racial violence, which is reflected in many of these works. The works exhibited here encourage us to reflect on the connection between music and racism, then and now, because “backstage,” metaphorically speaking, is where actual reality takes place.

In »Ellington and Armstrong« (ca. 1975) collage artist Romare Bearden (b. 1911, North Carolina; d. 1988, New York) works with portraits of two of the twentieth century’s most important artists, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. Community is important to each artist, and in the 1960s, Bearden and Norman Lewis joined »Spiral«, a collective of Black artists originally formed in response to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963. Bearden’s collage finds a beautiful way to represent Armstrong’s ability to present both tragedy and comedy. (JM)

Bearden’s and Armstrong’s collages are shown in close proximity. Like Bearden’s collage, one of Armstrong’s features the two musicians, pianist Duke Ellington and Armstrong himself, captured in a photograph, while the other shares a similarity to Bearden’s in the mask-like faces that repeatedly appear on the paper. Louis Armstrong (b. 1901, New Orleans; d. 1971, New York) was a collage artist as well as a musician. He created over 500 collages as covers to his growing archive of private recordings. Rarely shown in public, Armstrong’s collage works are priceless. In a letter to a friend, he says: “my hobbie is to pick out the different things during whatever I read and piece them together . . . and make a little story of my own.” Armstrong repurposes press clippings to make new poetry. He possesses an ability to synthesize an extravagant life into a humble square. (JM)

Wadada Leo Smith (b. 1941, Leland, Mississippi; lives in New Haven) is a trumpeter and composer. In the paperwork »Louis Armstrong Counterpointing« (2016–17), the artist uses a collection of symbols to create a graphic score for a performer. He says: “The creative performer uses the colors and symbols in an Ankhrasmation symbolic art-score to induce or achieve an inspired musical moment. The lines, spikes, stems, and loupes with encircled imagery materials are to be transformed into musical property by each performer, and the shapes, colors, etc. The special mobile symbols are also used to move across the surface of the panel and to guide the performer from object to object in their performance.” (JM)

“Backstage,” metaphorically speaking, is where the actual reality takes place, not onstage. This is the subject of Darol Olu Kaes’s (b. 1984 in Los Angeles) film »The Spirit of a Thing« (2023), produced especially for the exhibition, which imagines Louis Armstrong’s GDR tour. He imagines the love between Louis and Lucille Armstrong in the spaces of East Berlin’s modernism, as they try to maintain a sense of home along the way. The artist described his own work as follows: “It is a film that ruminates on the humble traces of daily life for a musician traveling on the road observed through memories. . . . [It] touches on themes of history, time, memory, and the relation between truth and inner experience . . . [and] depicts speculative relationships that may have structured the musician’s time in Germany: from intimate moments with his wife to post-concert gatherings with his fellow bandmates to getting to know his German travel companion, a jazz-expert and journalist.” Armstrong’s voice comes from his private recordings, the music from Jason Moran. (PM) 

Jason Moran (b. 1975 in Houston, Texas) combines the film clips from the 1965 press conference and concert in East Berlin into a new video entitled »Louis Armstrong: On Stage / In Concert« (2023), which lets words and music collide, revealing the quandary Louis Armstrong faced on tour. At the press conference in East Berlin, Armstrong literally sits “on the fence”: between two white men in black suits, between political systems, between translations in different directions. He also sits between the press conference and the concert, between journalists and the audience. An audience hungry for the sound of freedom that jazz embodied. When asked about the Wall, Armstrong quickly deflects to his music and his audience. His statements move between what has just been said and what is to be played the following day. (PM)

»My Calling (Card) #3 (Reactive Guerilla Performance for Disputed Territorial Skirmishes)« (2012) by Adrian Piper (b. 1948 in New York) greets the exhibition’s visitors on the upper floor with a clear message: on one side of the card is the instruction in German: “Fassen Sie mich nicht an” (Do not touch me). On the back is written: “Do not touch, tap, pat, stroke, prod, pinch, poke, grope or grab me.” Jason Moran knows what it’s like to be a musician on tour, commenting, “Musicians may need a Piper calling card more frequently than maybe is acknowledged.” (PM)

In the neon installation »Untitled (Bruise/Blues)« by Glenn Ligon (b. 1960 in New York) language, blue light, and music come together. The word “bruise” and “blues” stand far apart from one another and silently blink in the rhythm of Steve Reich’s 1966 musical composition “Come Out,” which repeats and varies a single sentence: “I had to, like, open the bruise up, and let some of the blues blood come out to show them.” Daniel Hamm uttered this sentence about the police after he had been beaten and wrongfully arrested by police officers in 1964 as part of a group of Black youths known as the Harlem Six. The tragic incident led to the Harlem Riots. Hamm reported that he was denied medical assistance because he was not visibly bleeding. Ligon transforms Hamm’s confusion of the words “blues” and “bruise” into a soundless “blues symphony” in the rhythm of Steve Reich’s composition, which reveals “the prevalence of endangered black life,” as author Tina Campt aptly describes in the exhibition’s catalog. (PM)

The “blue light” of Glenn Ligon’s neon sculpture shines into the space of Lorna Simpson’s (b. 1960 in New York) installation »Hypothetical?«, which was created as part of the 1992 Whitney Biennial. At this point, the violent act that Glenn Ligon’s work addresses was thirty years ago, and yet, tragically, it is once again police violence that »Hypothetical?« reflects upon. Mouth pieces are directly mounted on the wall without their respective instruments. The sound of human breathing can be heard. Opposite, a photograph shows the sealed lips of a Black woman. A clipping from a 1992 newspaper article hangs between them with a quote from the Los Angeles mayor. He was asked if, after the acquittal of four police officers charged with violence against African Americans, he would be afraid as a Black person if he were not mayor. He countered: “No, I would not be scared. I would be angry.” Tina Campt writes in the exhibition catalogue: “Seen in concert with Ligon’s installation, what are the limits and possibilities of Black utterance in the face of the enduring violence of white supremacy?” (PM)

Conceptual art from the GDR: »Blue Blues« and »Someday We Shall Overcome (Hommage à Martin Luther King)« are typewriting graphics from the 1970s by Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt (b. 1932 in Wurzen). She typed, mantra-like, this one phrase in solidarity with the civil rights movement in the United States. The word “someday” in the middle is detached from the rest: when will “someday” finally occur? In the work »Blue Blues«, the word “blue” is typed vertically letter by letter, line by line. The letters seem to drip down like tears onto the surface of the paper, gathering in pointed variations below: Blueness, Bluing, Bluebird, Bluish. It’s clearly about jazz, about the blues. Wolf-Rehfeldt shared in an interview that she listens mostly to country and blues, including Armstrong. Like Glenn Ligon, she works with language, transforming its limitations into powerful political statements. She works like a composer of minimal music with repetition and exact shifts. (PM)

The works of Rosemarie Trockel (b. 1952 in Schwerte) in »I’ve Seen the Wall« play with the presence and absence of sound. In Trockel’s minimalist sculpture »Untitled« (1991), a hotplate and crochet hook become a nonfunctional record player. It is a play with form and words that Trockel engages in here because a record player indeed consists of a plate, just not for cooking, and a needle, just not one for crocheting. The sculpture is placed in front of a silkscreen by the artist entitled »Prisoner of Yourself« (1998) that resembles a crochet pattern or a fishing net that encompasses a wall approximately ten meters long. The repeating royal blue pattern was realized on site at DAS MINSK with the help of specially made screens. The installation’s title reminds us that walls also often lurk within: »Prisoner of Yourself« resonates with the realization that there is not only one wall. There are many different walls in this world, then and now. (PM)

The abstract painting »No – 5« (1973) by artist Norman Lewis (b. 1909, New York; d. 1979, New York) is composed of deep-blue paint with light-yellow lines on a black background. He said in 1992: “I used just black—to convey the form,” and he explains further: “I wanted to see if I could get out of black the suggestion of other nuances of color, using it in such a way as to arouse other colors.” In the exhibition, this black-and-blue painting nods to Armstrong’s performance of “Black and Blue,” a song Armstrong begins performing again during this tour. Right before the GDR tour, in Copenhagen in March 1965, Armstrong learned of the events on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, and told the press: “They would beat Jesus if he was Black and marched.” A connection between these events and the reintroduction of this song in the repertoire appears plausible. (JM)

The work »Mauer« (2010) by Adrian Piper (b. 1948 in New York) consists of tube monitors stacked on top of each other, showing disturbance patterns of the American broadcasting station CBS, as well as a live transmission from the hundreds of red roses located inside the work. For the exhibition’s curators, »Mauer« reflects the transition between West and East, East and West, and possibly even the artist’s own departure from New York to Berlin five years earlier. Jason Moran wrote to Piper, “When thinking about your piece »Mauer«, I think about the walls Armstrong and his family have seen throughout their lives. Louis experienced a lot of walls as a child in New Orleans in the early 1900s, to Chicago in the 1920s, and New York by the 1930s, and into the world. Also, I think about how he, as possibly the first ‘pop star’ found a way to perforate the fourth wall of the stage. He stays in contact with his audience.” (PM)

In 1972, paintings honoring civil rights activist Angela Davis were on display at the GDR’s VII Art Exhibition in Dresden. In this context, Willi Sitte’s (b. 1921 in Kratzau, d. 2013 in Halle) large-scale work »Angela Davis und ihr Richter (Angela Davis and Her Judge)« (1972) was also on view, which combines solidarity with African Americans with a critique of the class enemy the United States, which is depicted here as the embodiment of imperialism and war. Angela Davis is elevated to heroine in a tondo resembling a depiction of Mary, while the class enemy is depicted as a martial, threatening creature. Whether the singing Louis Armstrong can be seen in the background is not documented. After Angela Davis’s acquittal in the United States—seven years after Armstrong’s tour through the GDR—she was officially invited and received a celebratory reception in the GDR. The precedent was the action “1 Million Roses,” a public call to show solidarity with the activist through sending her postcards with red roses. (PM)

»Frühling Sommer Herbst Winter (Spring Summer Autumn Winter)«, also known as “Nelken Line,” is an excerpt from the Tanztheater (Dance Theater) piece »Nelken (Carnations)« (1982) by the choreographer Pina Bausch (b. 1940 in Solingen, d. 2009 in Wuppertal), which premiered while the Wall divided Germany. Set designer Peter Pabst filled the entire stage with carnations— a type of flower that was very common in the GDR and which was also presented to Lucille Armstrong upon her arrival at the airport in East Berlin. In sign language, the dancers perform the four movements for spring, summer, fall, and winter to the trailblazing sound of Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues.” The seasons repeat themselves like the performers’ movements, always in the same tempo—no need to hurry, no need to worry: it is but a circle of life in the carnation sea of emotions. Louis Armstrong and Pina Bausch meet in »Frühling Sommer Herbst Winter«. Both seem to be conscious of the limits of language and the boundlessness of music and dance. (PM)

Terry Adkins (b. 1953, Washington, DC; d. 2014, New York) worked in the spirit of jazz music and improvisation, in an interdisciplinary and frequently collaborative manner. He wanted to “find a way to make music as physical as sculpture might be and sculpture as ethereal as music is.” Adkins notes about »Divine Mute« (1998), which features a mute: “this is a sculpture about abolitionist John Brown’s calling to rid the nation of slavery.” Preceding the Civil War, in 1859, Brown incited a slave rebellion at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, for which he was eventually captured and executed. Adkins continues: “It is made in the form of an announcement, and the horn is an announcement of something. Revelations are accompanied by either a big sound or a very bright light.” Armstrong’s revelatory music sought unity and an end to oppression. (JM)

As a young man, artist and saxophonist Peter Brötzmann (b. 1941, Remscheid; d. 2023, Wuppertal) was inspired by the music of Louis Armstrong. He searched for the ways that both music and art could inspire and disturb the discourse. Brötzmann’s unique blend of cultural materials created an entire canon of multidisciplinary work: part saxophonist, part painter, part sculptor, part gardener, part organizer. It is this blend/bend of culture that makes Brötzmann so unique. Brötzmann’s works in »I’ve Seen the Wall« characterize an intimacy of scale. »Soundcloud« (1970s) pushes the metal from the wall, »Windmeter« (1969) measures the force, pressure or velocity of the wind. The wind carries sounds and smells from afar. Armstrong and Brötzmann’s diaphragms accurately measure the amount of air to create the sound for each moment. In one of Brötzmann’s final interviews for »Die Zeit« in June 2023, he speaks of freedom: “Freedom is something very individual. It existed for Louis Armstrong just as it did for Don Cherry—only as an inner attitude, not as a program.” (JM)

Ralph Ellison‘s book »The Invisible Man« was published in 1952. In that same year, he worked with his friend, the photographer Gordon Parks (b. 1912 in Fort Scott, Kansas, d. 2006 in New York) to translate scenes from the novel into a series of photographs for Life magazine. The photograph »Invisible Man Retreat, Harlem, New York« (1952) shows the shelter to which the nameless protagonist of the book retreats from the world that refuses to acknowledge him. 1,369 lightbulbs illuminated the room—for which he tapped the electricity illegally—while playing Louis Armstrong’s “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” on vinyl. In the book, he says, “perhaps I like Louis Armstrong because he’s made poetry out of being invisible.” (PM)

The exhibition was conceived in close collaboration with the Louis Armstrong House Museum (LAHM) in Corona, Queens, New York. With special thanks to the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation.

The exhibition’s co-curator is the jazz pianist, composer, and visual artist Jason Moran. He also
curated the permanent exhibition in the new Louis Armstrong Center of the LAHM, which opened in summer 2023.

A catalogue with contributions by Tina M. Campt, Paola Malavassi, and Jason Moran will be
published by Hatje Cantz Verlag to accompany the exhibition at DAS MINSK, as well as a four-part podcast produced by art/beats. Further information can be found at: www.dasminsk.de.

Thanks to the lenders:

Agentur DDR Fotoerbe, the artist Peter Brötzmann and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, the artist Darol Olu Kae, the artist Glenn Ligon and Regen Projects, Los Angeles, the artist Jason Moran, the artist Dan Perjovschi, the artist Wadada Leo Smith, Billy Hodges Family Collection, Bundesarchiv, Collection of Emily Fisher Landau, Collection of the Adrian Piper Research Archive (APRA) Foundation Berlin, DC Moore Gallery, New York, Deutsche Fotothek, Louis Armstrong House Museum, picture alliance, Pina Bausch Foundation, private collections, Sammlung Berliner Verlag / Archiv, The George Economou Collection, The Gordon Parks Foundation.

[1] Press conference with Louis Armstrong, ARD Video, 22:08 min, March 19, 1965, released by ARD Mediathek, https://www.ardmediathek. de/video/reportagen-und-berichte-des-fernsehfunks/pressekonferenz- mit-louis-armstrong/ard/Y3JpZDovL2hyLW9ubGluZS8xMjg5NTA (accessed July 11, 2023).

[2] The quote first appeared in a tribute to Louis Armstrong in the Saturday Review on July 4, 1970, and was immediately picked up in other articles about Armstrong that appeared that same month. It has since been reproduced virally and as unattributed on the internet and has been translated into many languages, explained Ricky Riccardi, Director of Research Collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum (LAHM).