INTERVIEW SERIES 202524.04.2026
In January 2025, we invited people to take part in our interview series. Twenty years earlier, there had already been a similar interview series in the Wildcat, which focused on the crisis of the music industry, the hope for open-source alternatives (peer-to-peer) in the then-new internet, as well as the (re)production of musicians. We expanded the questions to include the topic of "listening to music," but otherwise asked the same questions.
Our idea was simple: to find musicians among the people around us who don't get lost in the individualized content of major platforms and social media, but instead remain "invisible." We wanted to find out how they make music, listen to it, and organize themselves. And we wanted to gather ideas about where and with whom we might organize events in the future.
We conducted most of the 12 interviews with individuals; almost all of them came from our circle of friends. Getting people to actually commit to interviews proved surprisingly difficult, and the fact that they ended up being almost exclusively with guys was striking.
The responses didn't reveal much that was new to us. Instead, we were looking into a mirror of our own reality—sobering, disillusioned, almost depressive. Many of the answers felt familiar. For example, with one exception, everyone makes music alongside their job. At the same time, the interviews were provocative, because being confronted with our own, often apolitical arguments alarmed us. It was also striking that the interviews were almost entirely devoid of utopias and big plans.
Yet what sounds like a widespread blues was ultimately what we were looking for. There are people beyond the "amazing" social media crowd who deliberately push into non-digital public spaces to engage in direct contact (for example, street music). And we got into conversations—sometimes even discussions—and made initial plans to take things a step further.
Two texts were important in the 2005 interview series.
We discussed the first in autumn 2025, when eight of us met for a week. No one would have expected us to compare our work with traditional folk music, but in fact that is exactly where we stand: beyond state and institutional control, sharing knowledge across regions, across genres, and across technologies, and working together — and therefore less alone!
We only read the second article later. The questions surrounding making music and earning a living from it would likely have been discussed differently. Only two of those interviewed are trying to make a living from music; all the others are seeking independent, self-determined paths. This is not a lament about the sad existence of amateurs, but about independence—even independence from having to sell one's work. It is about being able to pursue ideas without profit motives, ideas that appear pointless within capitalism.
A conclusion in three steps:
Structure 1: Organizing musical readings and discussions. We tested this format in the summer of 2025 on the roof of Paste, a co-operative living space, and it led to an animated discussion and jamming together. The idea is simple: a concert is not just a concert, but also a reading. We don't want to hide behind a wall of equipment or "pretend on stage," but instead show everything that goes into making music.
Structure 2: Building Wueste MLP (modular live performer) collectively instead of programming in isolation. January 2026 marks MLP's first anniversary. What initially was meant to be a copy of an analog drum machine has evolved into an independent modular system. The focus is not on technology as something neutral, but on the decision to build an instrument that can be played live by several people at once and, above all, does without GAS ("gear acquisition syndrome"). We are aware that with this technology we could just as easily develop drones. This point connects us with the entire open-source community, and we will confront you with it in community labs and open workshops.
Structure 3: Self-archiving. We have already had many conversations, but how valuable is a conversation if it is repeated over and over again—endless loops? What's clear is that we don't need exchange for the sake of good vibes. Instead, we want to sort out our own chaos, document and archive what we've sorted through, and pass it on. We want to remember what was yesterday, what is today, and where we want to go—even if only so that we can question ourselves again. An end to this feel-good self-centeredness, and toward archiving the present. The answer to the question of publishing remains: the diary.
#interviews #2026
