Kraftwerk Music Festival at PS1 MoMA

MoMA PS1 hosted a two day music festival showcasing the work of Juan Atkins, and Francois K on April 14 th and 15th to celebrate Retrospective 12345678, an exhibition of Kraftwork. Kraftwork, noted one of the forefathers of Techno is preforming at the MoMA, but this two day festival was ment to highlight two of the industry's most influential djs. I attended on April 15th and witnessed Francois K spin. Francois is one of New York Cities most legendary djs and has worked with Kraftwerk multiple times. Momaps1.org discusses his relationship to Kraftwerk, and his own musical history. Francois was behind legendary New York City parties such as "BODY & SOUl" and Deep Space Mondays nights at Cielo. The shows introduction was good. The music was enjoyable, and it was easy to hear. I could definitely relate this type of "original" techno to what we call "modern" techno. The base of the music was very rich and could be used in many different generals of music such as hip hop rap dance and electronic music. It could be related to darker forms of music like speedcore. The background images related to the tone of the music, but at times were slightly stranche. A lot of the images related to radioactivity, and machinery, but the political message behind the images never came together. Visually it was nice to look at in the 360 degree dome, but the music and the images were very repetitive. I was waiting for the show to really get going, and it never fully picked up. The MoMA PS1 website doesn't give an artist statement in respect to what the two day festival was trying to accomplish, so it was really up to me to interpret the work, and because it was very abstract I do not know exactly what to make of it.