Katja Kullmann

Katja Kullmann is a writer, newspaper journalist and freelance sociologist. In her work, she puts the focus on the mechanics of distinction – especially on "lifestyle" as a political feature, always intertwined with matters of social class and identity. Her latest book “Rasende Ruinen. Wie Detroit sich neu erfindet” (2012) is a commentary on the attempts of resurrecting the infamous Motor City. In 2011, she published “Echtleben. Warum es heute so kompliziert ist, eine Haltung zu haben”, an essay about the often absurd exploitation of labor in the post-industrial era. She holds an MA in Political Science, Sociology and American Studies, was awarded with the German Book Prize (2003) and is currently working as leading editor at the daily "taz.die tageszeitung" in Berlin.
Photo by Nane Diehl

Popsalon: “Where I am is where the top is, should I ever be at the bottom, then the bottom is the top”

Date: Day 1 – 20:00
Location: Nivre Studio, Weimar
Language: German

Where does one find the high and the low in popular music? Isn’t pop music necessarily lowbrow, because it originates in the context of commercial exploitation? But if pop is a low art, then it would have to be understood by everybody, because being low implies plainness of contents and direct accessibility. In fact, however, pop was never so difficult to understand as today, so fragmented, ambivalent, and baffling. If that, in turn, means that pop is today’s true high culture – why then is pop, regarding itself as high culture, always of the lowest level? These and other questions will be discussed in a cheerful session of cultural analysis, crossing different forms of expertise, dilettantism and autodidactic efforts. The panelists will watch old and new music videos, asking themselves, what they might mean and at what heights of aesthetic existence they might be positioned.