Thursday 3 June 2021

Arthur Berkhoff - I Know Fiction At Space 13 -1983- (Cassette, APB5), Netherlands

Here is another cassette by Dutch home-taper, neoist and multimedia mail-artist Arthur Berkhoff. Neoism is an art movement that was based on playing with collective identities, the reproduction of artworks as well as the usage of fake art, plagiarism and mockery. Most of the neoist artists created and published under the commonly used moniker of Monty Cantsin. Neoism became strong within mail-art and cassette culture circuits throughout the 80's because of the relatively easy way of combining various media and the possibilty to create and publish artistic expressions anonymously.

Arthur Berkhoff created many cassettes during the 80's based on his self-envisioned futuristic "Pregroperativism" movement. It was a strange one-man mythology that consisted (from what I can tell) of a mix of space, technology, cybernetics and neoist and multimedia art concepts. All the music connected to it was recorded in his Orguna Laboratory in Amsterdam.

I Know Fiction At Space 13 is another lost piece of Berkhoff's alienating music. It consists of different longer pieces of analog experimental electronics containing processed casio keyboards in combination with dark and eerie synthesizer sounds. I tried to index the cassette but gave up eventually.

Korm Plastics D has recently released a nice reissue of the industrial cassette Katacombe Vol.3 (1984) which also features Arthur Berkhoff and many other Dutch cassette culture protagonists.

From the Collection Allard Pierson/NPI

Get it HERE

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