Hard times for softies

Peter Sempel’s early punk shorts from the first years of the 1980s combine his two main interests, music and film, in a very idiosyncratic way. They were to become the springboard for all his later film work. The short collages of music and film are complex formations that take the medium in all sorts of new directions, moving around between documentary film and medleys of pictures and sounds. Rarely shown, they are a highlight of Sempel’s 30-year career in filmmaking.

Oliver Tepel is a regular contributor to the magazines SPEX, DU and Texte zur Kunst. He curates exhibitions, gives lectures and interviews artists. In this conversation, he will ask Peter Sempel to define his concept of art and to explain what it is that fascinates him about the combination of music and art.