KIM GORDON VS THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Article
Authors
Marc-Stefan Andres
https://www.ag-text.de/
Marc started out in journalism in 1991 as editor of a music fanzine. For the last 20 years he’s been a freelance journalist, writing for magazines like brand eins, Süddeutsche Zeitung, doing conceptual work and storytelling for companies around the world. He fulfils his musical ambitions with his band Brandt.
Aida Baghernejad
https://aidabaghernejad.tumblr.com/about
As an award-winning freelance music and food writer, Aida eats and listens to music for a living. She’s also currently (and forever) working on her PhD on “identity as a commercial project”. She fights for a better world in her free time.
Maren Barton
Maren has been a translator and proofreader for nine years. She lives near London and frequently works for big publishers like Campus Verlag in Germany as well as for a number of universities, translating and proofreading academic publications.
André Boße
https://www.ag-text.de/
André, based in Cologne, was editor-in-chief of interview magazine Galore from 2005 to 2009. Since then he has been a regular writer for magazines and newspapers like Musikexpress, Rolling Stone, Mint, Visions, Spiegel, Süddeutsche and Berliner Zeitung. He also works as a lecturer.
Cameron Cook
http://www.cameronedwardcook.com/
Cameron is an American arts and culture journalist based in Berlin. His empirical opinions on music and film have appeared in Pitchfork, Noisey, High Snobiety, and others. Half of the Noughties he acted as editor of the influential SUP Magazine.
Nick Currie (Momus)
http://imomus.com/
Nick is responsible for over thirty albums of electronic folk music, six novels, and an apparently endless stream of cultural journalism. He believes that “everyone will be famous for fifteen people” and that “every lie creates the parallel world in which it’s true”. He lives in Berlin and is writing a memoir for Farrar, Straus & Giroux in New York.
Bill Drummond
An ex-gardener; ex-milkman; ex-steel worker; ex-lunatic asylum nursing assistant; ex-apprentice trawlerman; ex-chippy; ex-fly poster; and sometime van driver and publisher of printed matter. And full-time serial father.
Adi Englman
https://www.marcel-art-projects.org/team
Adi is an art curator specialising in modern and contemporary art. She was born and remains based in Tel Aviv. Adi is founder and artistic director of Marcel, a nonprofit organisation that initiates and produces special artistic projects and products. She is also co-founder and co-editor of the visual arts periodical Picnic Magazine.
Wolfgang Frömberg
Wolfgang is a freelance writer from Cologne. He was an editor for magazines SPEX and Intro and has published two novels – Spucke and Etwas Besseres als die Freiheit – and a collection of stories, essays and poems called How to Play Fußball. He also hosts readings under the name of “Literatur zur Zeit”.
Peter Gaide
https://www.ag-text.de/
Peter began playing electric home organ at the age of 10. Back then he admired Franz Lambert, who played an impressive white electric organ. Today, Peter listens to recordings of Jimmy and Johnny “Hammond” Smith while he sips booze in the gloomy jazz bars of Tokyo, carrying out research for CHART.
Kerstin Grether
http://www.kerstin-grether.de/
Kerstin is an author (“Zuckerbabys”) and pop culture journalist. Since her early teenage days, she’s been writing for German music magazine SPEX and is known as one of the originators of pop feminism in Germany. She is singer and songwriter of the chanson rock band Doctorella alongside her sister Sandra Grether.
Britta Helm
https://medium.com/britta-helm
Britta writes about pop music. Her work has appeared in Visions, Galore, Die Zeit Online and Missy Magazine, among others. She lives in Berlin.
Olaf Karnik
http://www.olafkarnik.com/
Olaf is a freelance journalist and author for Neue Züricher Zeitung, WDR 3, Spex, Deutschlandfunk and more. He has published articles, radio features and books about Hauntology, Library Music, Reggae in Germany and Afro-American Pop. He has been working as an university lecturer and as curator for club events. Olaf hosts the online radio DJ show “Do The Wrong Thing” on 674FM.
Jan Kedves
Jan is a freelance journalist based in Berlin. He writes on pop culture, fashion, art and anything in between, mostly for Süddeutsche Zeitung and occasionally for magazines like Fantastic Man or Glamour. From 2010 to 2012 he was the editor of German pop culture magazine Spex.
Lydia Lunch
Lydia is closely associated with the No Wave scene of Downtown New York of the late 70s/early 80s, acted in the early movies of Richard Kern alongside Henry Rollins and shared stages with everybody from James White over Glenn Branca to Richard Hell. She is still always on the run for readings and concerts.
Alexander Mayor
Alexander is a writer and musician based in London. He has written for The Independent, Kaput – Magazin für Insolvenz & Pop and Intro, publishes short stories and produces British pop music under the name Alexander’s Festival Hall.
Severin Mevissen
Severin moved from Hamburg to the United States as a correspondent for German magazines in 1992. His work has been published in Geo, Merian, Spiegel, Stern, Musikexpress, Rolling Stone and many others. He currently lives in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, where he spins records at his wife’s vinyl bistro “Bunny” whenever he doesn’t write.
Eric Pfeil
http://xn--dierealitt-y5a.de/
Eric is an author and singer/songwriter based in Cologne. In 2014 he was awarded the Rocco Clein Award for his monthly column „Das Pop-Tagebuch“ for Rolling Stone Magazine. As a musician he has just released his third album 13 Wohnzimmer, a LP entirely recorded in 13 different living rooms.
Eugene Robinson
Eugene is a journalist, author, novelist, actor and singer who has won awards for at least one of those things. He recently published records with his bands Oxbow (“Thin Black Duke”) and Buñuel (“Boys to Man”) and toured pain- and joyfully through the USA and Europe.
Anja Rützel
Anja writes about popular culture, TV, travel and animals (and everything else, really, even about soccer and the secrets of successful marriage dodgers). She just published her third book, an essay in defence of loneliness called “Better to be alone than having no friends at all”.
Johann Scheerer
https://cloudshill.com/
Johann is a music producer from Hamburg. He has worked with artists like Faust, Peter Doherty and At the Drive-In. Since 2005 he has run the analogue recording studio Clouds Hill Recordings and its related indie label, Clouds Hill.
Annett Scheffel
Annett is a freelance journalist who writes about music, film, feminism, contemporary culture, and the political in the personal. She’s based in Berlin and works, among others, for Süddeutsche Zeitung, Musikexpress, Radio Eins and Dummy Magazine.
Thomas Venker
Thomas, based in Cologne, acted from 2000–2014 as editor-in-chief of Intro magazine. He runs the electronic label onitor as well as the art imprint Edition Fieber. Since 2015 he has been publisher and editor-in-chief of Kaput – Magazin für Insolvenz & Pop, he also works as an lecturer and manages DJ and producer Lena Willikens.
Henrik von Holtum
http://www.henrikvonholtum.com/
Henrik is a musician and author. Since 1994 he has been the MC and producer of the german hip hop band Kinderzimmer Productions. He studied classical music, started working as a radio producer and journalist in 2006 and has been teaching at the Folkwang University since 2014.
Patrick Wagner
Patrick is godfather of the band Gewalt, Germany’s most expressive art thing. His back catalogue lists involvement in the labels Kitty Yo and Louisville and the band Surrogat. He is an expert for children’s soccer and visionary producer of Berlins “FuckUp Nights”, a monthly event, where people talk about their business failures.
Klaus Walter
Klaus, born in 1955, lives in Frankfurt a. M. He began working as writer and DJ in the late 1970s. Since 1984 he has been a DJ for public radio in Germany. He also works for the internet radio station ByteFM. He regularly writes for various newspapers and magazines like Süddeutsche Zeitung, die tageszeitung and SPEX.
Illustrators/Artists
Dennis Busch
https://dennisbusch.tumblr.com/
Dennis lives and works as a freelance artist, illustrator, musician and crystal/lightworker in Bremen.
Geoff Grandfield
http://geoffgrandfield.co.uk/
Geoff is an illustrator, having worked on series such as the novels of Patricia Highsmith, Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene. This assignment was a welcome opportunity to illustrate a live conversation. He is currently working on a graphic novel exploring mind control.
Lewis Khan
https://lewiskhan.co.uk/
Lewis is a visual artist from London, working with still and moving images. His portrait-based work is a study of emotion, relationships, and identity. Lewis’ practice has taken him further afield, shooting projects across Europe and the Americas. His project “Theatre” is published by The Lost Light Recordings.
David Markey
David Markey is a self-taught filmmaker and musician. His work is noted as documenting the punk scene in Southern California throughout the 1980s, growing to find a larger audience in the 1990s while continuing to produce work throughout the 2000s and 2010s. Markey has worked with Sonic Youth, Nirvana, The Ramones and more.
Anna Möller
Anna is an artist from Hamburg. She has had several international artistic residencies, including one in Tel Aviv in 2007. Her works were most recently shown at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Galerie Karin Guenther. She is studying psychology and surrounds herself with a big family to gain a better understanding of total strangers.
Tobias Trost
https://einsdreiundsiebzig.de/
Tobias runs the independent design office Einsdreiundsiebzig in Berlin, a one man dog and pony show set up in 2003. Since then he’s been taking care of the design part of all kinds of printed matters while his drum kit gathers dust in the cellar.
Photographers
Julia Baier
https://www.juliabaier.de/
Julia works as a freelance photo­grapher in Berlin. She likes to travel – one of her favourite adventures as a photographer was a trip around the world with a German orchestra. She’s also very much into diving and underwater photography.
Giulia Bruno
http://www.giuliabruno.com/
Giulia is a Berlin-based artist working with film and photography. Her artistic and photographic research focuses primarily on the interaction between space of identity, space of technology, pragmatical space and contemporary contradictions.
Jonathan Forsythe
http://www.jonathanforsythe.com/
Jonathan is a Canadian photographer living and working in New York. He has published a book called Ngorongoro Smells Delicious with photographs of his cat Ngorongoro.
Stephanie Füssenich
http://www.stephaniefuessenich.de/
Stephanie is based in Paris. She works for magazines like Neon, Nido, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Der Spiegel, and Die Zeit as well as for big companies like BMW.
Mikael Gregorsky
http://www.mikaelgregorsky.com/
Mikael is a Swedish photographer based in London. Working on commissions and exhibiting, his work is found in various museum collections throughout the world.
Brian Guido
Brian is a Los Angeles based portrait and documentary style photographer.
Matthias Haslauer
https://matthiashaslauer.com/
Matthias is a freelance photographer based in Hamburg. He was born in Emsdetten in Westphalia, now he’s traveling the world. Since 2007 he works for various magazines like Zeit Magazin, Der Spiegel, brand eins, Vice, Neon, 11 Freunde, and DOGS. At the age of 16 he played drums in Uterous Ungerous, officially the worst band in Germany. Since then he’s collecting records of other great bands.
Tanja Kernweiss
http://www.tanjakernweiss.com/
Tanja studied photography in Munich from 2002 to 2007. She visited Arno Fischer’s master class at the Ostkreuzschule in Berlin. Her favourite part of the job is to make portraits of faces. Tanja’s photographs get printed in the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Die Zeit, Vice Magazine and Neon. Tanja lives and works in Munich.
Marco Krüger
Marco’s main profession is his work as a sound assistant (“boomoperator”) on movie sets. For Christian Petzold’s movie Transit he also shot the stills. He only shoots on film. He lives in Berlin.
Sannah Kvist
https://sannahkvist.se/
Sannah is a Swedish photographer and artist who collects animal bones and soviet memorabilia when she is not driving big trains across the country. She just bought a small house to live in waiting for the apocalypse.
David Markey
David Markey is a self-taught filmmaker and musician. His work is noted as documenting the punk scene in Southern California throughout the 1980s, growing to find a larger audience in the 1990s while continuing to produce work throughout the 2000s and 2010s. Markey has worked with Sonic Youth, Nirvana, The Ramones and more.
Ye Rin Mok
https://www.yerinmok.com/
Ye Rin is a Los Angeles-based photographer. She has shot portraits and interiors for Apartamento, Dwell, The Telegraph, WSJ among many others.
Anna Möller
Anna is an artist from Hamburg. She has had several international artistic residencies, including one in Tel Aviv in 2007. Her works were most recently shown at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Galerie Karin Guenther. She is studying psychology and surrounds herself with a big family to gain a better understanding of total strangers.
Jacob Park
http://texturedetroit.com/
Jacob is the lead curator and a resident DJ of “Texture Detroit”, an event series focused on cutting edge house and techno, featuring mind-bending spatial installs. He spends his time travelling, usually with a camera in his hand.
Charles Peterson
Charles is renowned for his documentation of the Seattle grunge scene. As a photographer, he’s gone on to do everything from a book on breakdancing to documenting an art museum. These days his kids are muses for a project titled “Child’s Play” that evokes the universal child in all of us.
Katharina Poblotzki
http://katharinapoblotzki.com/
Katharina is a photographer, restless traveller, native of Cologne, legal alien in New York City, terrible morning person and lover of fall.
Katja Ruge
https://www.katjaruge.de/
Katja is a photographer and Dj based in Hamburg. She loves the music of synthesizers and the work of musicians and other creative people. Her photo exhibition “Ladyflash” at kulturreich gallery Hamburg focused on women in rock and pop.
Armin Smailovic
https://www.arminsmailovic.com/
Armin studied at the “Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photographie” in Munich. His documentary work focuses on post-conflict societies and political issues. He is a founding member of the „Fotodoks“ Festival in Munich and was a co-curator until 2017. Since April 2017 he has taught documentary photography at the Fachhochschule Bielefeld.
Kathrin Spirk
https://www.kathrinspirk.de/
Kathrin is a Hamburg-based photographer for newspapers and magazines. However she likes to ride with her bike through the busy streets of London, humming songs from PJ Harvey’s album "Let England Shake".
Matt Veal
https://www.mattvealphotography.co.uk/
Matt is a London-based photographer and videographer. His work includes documentary, portraiture, still life and travel. He is currently working on a project that is documenting the world of female boxers.
Lisa Wassmann
https://www.lisawassmann.com/
Lisa is a photographic and video artist based in Berlin. Her work has led her to collaborations with Dazed & Confused, Zeitmagazin, I-D, Vice, Pitchfork, and Stella McCartney among others. She is currently working on her new book "Don’t you cry".
Erik Weiss
https://www.erikweiss.de/
Erik is one of Germany’s leading ­music photographers. His portraits of artists such as Jared Leto, Kendrick Lamar, Muse, Beastie Boys, Green Day and The Black Keys have been published in Rolling Stone, Q Magazine and NME, amongst others.
Staff
Marc-Stefan Andres [Editor]
https://ag-text.de/
Marc started out in journalism in 1991, as editor of a music fanzine, and has been a freelance journalist for the last 20 years. He writes for magazines like Brand Eins and works on branding and storytelling for companies around the world. He fulfils his musical ambitions with his band Brandt.
Maren Barton [Translator]
Maren has been a translator and proofreader for nine years. She lives near London and frequently works for big publishers like Campus Verlag in Germany as well as for a number of universities.
André Boße [Editor]
https://ag-text.de/
André, based in Cologne, was editor-in-chief of Galore Interview Magazine. Since then he has written for magazines and newspapers like Musik­express, Mint, Visions, Spiegel, Süddeutsche and Berliner Zeitung. He also works as a lecturer.
Alfred Bradford [Translator]
Alfred invented Punk at the tender age of six. Then – by an absolutely unexpected stroke of genius – also invented Post-Punk shortly thereafter. He has now retired to an 18th century windmill in the Westphalian countryside and lives off the royalty payments.
Matthias Haslauer [Photo Editor]
https://matthiashaslauer.com/
Matthias is a freelance photographer based in Hamburg. He was born in Emsdetten in Westphalia, now he’s traveling the world. Since 2007 he works for various magazines like Zeit Magazin, Der Spiegel, brand eins, Vice, Neon, 11 Freunde, and DOGS. At the age of 16 he played drums in Uterous Ungerous, officially the worst band in Germany. Since then he’s collecting records of other great bands.
Joe Kroll [Translator]
Joe is a freelance editor, translator and writer. An intellectual historian by training, he has contributed to publications including Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Times Literary Supplement. His translation of Hans Blumenberg’s “Rigorism of Truth” is forthcoming from Cornell University Press.
Alexander Mayor [Lector]
Alexander is a writer and musician based in London. He has written for The Independent, Kaput – Magazin für Insolvenz & Pop and Intro, publishes short stories and produces British pop music under the name Alexander’s Festival Hall.
Anna Möller [Editorial Consultant]
Anna is an artist from Hamburg. She has had several international artistic residencies, including one in Tel Aviv in 2007. Her works were most recently shown at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Galerie Karin Guenther. She is studying psychology and surrounds herself with a big family to gain a better understanding of total strangers.
Johann Scheerer [Editor, Publisher, Managing Director]
https://cloudshill.com/
Johann is a music producer from Hamburg. He has worked with artists like Faust, Peter Doherty and At the Drive-In. Since 2005 he has run the analogue recording studio Clouds Hill Recordings and its related indie label, Clouds Hill.
Maria Seidl [Proofreader]
Maria is a translator, editor and proofreader based in Berlin. She proofreads the daily newspaper Berliner Zeitung and translates fiction and non-fiction from English to German. Waiting for George RR Martin’s “The Winds of Winter” occupies much of her spare time.
Tobias Trost [Designer]
https://einsdreiundsiebzig.de/
Tobias runs the independent design office Einsdreiundsiebzig in Berlin, a one man dog and pony show set up in 2003. Since then he’s been taking care of the design part of all kinds of printed matters while his drum kit gathers dust in the cellar.
Thomas Venker [Editor]
Thomas, based in Cologne, was edi­tor-in-chief of Intro Magazine from 2000 to 2014. He runs three electronic labels – onitor, Scheinselbständig and Cereal/Killers – as well as the art imprint Edition Fieber. He is the publisher of Kaput – Magazin für Insolvenz & Pop and works as lecturer at universities.

The idea of “CHART – Notes to consider” is to publish a magazine totally outside of the conventional business circle. The high-class roundabout 200 pages magazine won’t be sold at stores. And it won’t be given away thoughtless. We have established a distribution model based on partners: Every partner of CHART will get up to ten copies. The person is then requested to give away these copies to ten people she or he identifies as readers. This model guarantees that chart won’t be a waste of paper, won’t be a magazine in the dirt or in the shelves. It really will wander from hand to hand. With a circulation of 2,000 copies. Published in English. Given away by partners from all over the world.

 

The first issue of CHART came out 2017 and dealt with “silence”. It was followed by the 2018 edition about “pain”. The newest issue of 2019 deals with “money”.

 

For CHART, our writers and photographers met with people like Little Simz and Jenny Wilson, Japandroids and Holly Herndon, Omar Rodríguez-López and Dieter Meier, The Mekons and Robert Forster. Other artists like Momus, Lydia Lunch or Bill Drummond of KLF wrote for us.

 

Please enjoy selected CHART stories on this homepage. If you are interested in getting the newest or the next issues, please contact us: editors@notestoconsider.com. But please be aware that the printed issues are strictly limited.

 

 

Imprint

CHART
Notes to consider
Billwerder Neuer Deich 72
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Germany
https://chart.cloudshill.com

 

Verantwortlich i.S.d. § 5 TMG für diese Website sind:
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Germany
js@notestoconsider.com

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h) ProcessorProcessor is a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which processes personal data on behalf of the controller.

i) RecipientRecipient is a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or another body, to which the personal data are disclosed, whether a third party or not. However, public authorities which may receive personal data in the framework of a particular inquiry in accordance with Union or Member State law shall not be regarded as recipients; the processing of those data by those public authorities shall be in compliance with the applicable data protection rules according to the purposes of the processing.

j) Third partyThird party is a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or body other than the data subject, controller, processor and persons who, under the direct authority of the controller or processor, are authorised to process personal data.

k) ConsentConsent of the data subject is any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her.

2. Name and Address of the controller

Controller for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), other data protection laws applicable in Member states of the European Union and other provisions related to data protection is:

Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG
Billwerder Neuer Deich 72
20539 Hamburg
Germany
Phone: +49(0)40 98260501
Email: US@cloudshill.com
Website: https://cloudshill.com

3. Cookies

The Internet pages of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG use cookies. Cookies are text files that are stored in a computer system via an Internet browser.

Many Internet sites and servers use cookies. Many cookies contain a so-called cookie ID. A cookie ID is a unique identifier of the cookie. It consists of a character string through which Internet pages and servers can be assigned to the specific Internet browser in which the cookie was stored. This allows visited Internet sites and servers to differentiate the individual browser of the dats subject from other Internet browsers that contain other cookies. A specific Internet browser can be recognized and identified using the unique cookie ID.

Through the use of cookies, the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG can provide the users of this website with more user-friendly services that would not be possible without the cookie setting.

By means of a cookie, the information and offers on our website can be optimized with the user in mind. Cookies allow us, as previously mentioned, to recognize our website users. The purpose of this recognition is to make it easier for users to utilize our website. The website user that uses cookies, e.g. does not have to enter access data each time the website is accessed, because this is taken over by the website, and the cookie is thus stored on the user’s computer system. Another example is the cookie of a shopping cart in an online shop. The online store remembers the articles that a customer has placed in the virtual shopping cart via a cookie.

The data subject may, at any time, prevent the setting of cookies through our website by means of a corresponding setting of the Internet browser used, and may thus permanently deny the setting of cookies. Furthermore, already set cookies may be deleted at any time via an Internet browser or other software programs. This is possible in all popular Internet browsers. If the data subject deactivates the setting of cookies in the Internet browser used, not all functions of our website may be entirely usable.

4. Collection of general data and information

The website of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG collects a series of general data and information when a data subject or automated system calls up the website. This general data and information are stored in the server log files. Collected may be (1) the browser types and versions used, (2) the operating system used by the accessing system, (3) the website from which an accessing system reaches our website (so-called referrers), (4) the sub-websites, (5) the date and time of access to the Internet site, (6) an Internet protocol address (IP address), (7) the Internet service provider of the accessing system, and (8) any other similar data and information that may be used in the event of attacks on our information technology systems.

When using these general data and information, the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG does not draw any conclusions about the data subject. Rather, this information is needed to (1) deliver the content of our website correctly, (2) optimize the content of our website as well as its advertisement, (3) ensure the long-term viability of our information technology systems and website technology, and (4) provide law enforcement authorities with the information necessary for criminal prosecution in case of a cyber-attack. Therefore, the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG analyzes anonymously collected data and information statistically, with the aim of increasing the data protection and data security of our enterprise, and to ensure an optimal level of protection for the personal data we process. The anonymous data of the server log files are stored separately from all personal data provided by a data subject.

5. Subscription to our newsletters

On the website of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG, users are given the opportunity to subscribe to our enterprise’s newsletter. The input mask used for this purpose determines what personal data are transmitted, as well as when the newsletter is ordered from the controller.

The Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG informs its customers and business partners regularly by means of a newsletter about enterprise offers. The enterprise’s newsletter may only be received by the data subject if (1) the data subject has a valid e-mail address and (2) the data subject registers for the newsletter shipping. A confirmation e-mail will be sent to the e-mail address registered by a data subject for the first time for newsletter shipping, for legal reasons, in the double opt-in procedure. This confirmation e-mail is used to prove whether the owner of the e-mail address as the data subject is authorized to receive the newsletter.

During the registration for the newsletter, we also store the IP address of the computer system assigned by the Internet service provider (ISP) and used by the data subject at the time of the registration, as well as the date and time of the registration. The collection of this data is necessary in order to understand the (possible) misuse of the e-mail address of a data subject at a later date, and it therefore serves the aim of the legal protection of the controller.

The personal data collected as part of a registration for the newsletter will only be used to send our newsletter. In addition, subscribers to the newsletter may be informed by e-mail, as long as this is necessary for the operation of the newsletter service or a registration in question, as this could be the case in the event of modifications to the newsletter offer, or in the event of a change in technical circumstances. There will be no transfer of personal data collected by the newsletter service to third parties. The subscription to our newsletter may be terminated by the data subject at any time. The consent to the storage of personal data, which the data subject has given for shipping the newsletter, may be revoked at any time. For the purpose of revocation of consent, a corresponding link is found in each newsletter. It is also possible to unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time directly on the website of the controller, or to communicate this to the controller in a different way.

6. Newsletter-Tracking

The newsletter of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG contains so-called tracking pixels. A tracking pixel is a miniature graphic embedded in such e-mails, which are sent in HTML format to enable log file recording and analysis. This allows a statistical analysis of the success or failure of online marketing campaigns. Based on the embedded tracking pixel, the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG may see if and when an e-mail was opened by a data subject, and which links in the e-mail were called up by data subjects.

Such personal data collected in the tracking pixels contained in the newsletters are stored and analyzed by the controller in order to optimize the shipping of the newsletter, as well as to adapt the content of future newsletters even better to the interests of the data subject. These personal data will not be passed on to third parties. Data subjects are at any time entitled to revoke the respective separate declaration of consent issued by means of the double-opt-in procedure. After a revocation, these personal data will be deleted by the controller. The Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG automatically regards a withdrawal from the receipt of the newsletter as a revocation.

7. Contact possibility via the website

The website of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG contains information that enables a quick electronic contact to our enterprise, as well as direct communication with us, which also includes a general address of the so-called electronic mail (e-mail address). If a data subject contacts the controller by e-mail or via a contact form, the personal data transmitted by the data subject are automatically stored. Such personal data transmitted on a voluntary basis by a data subject to the data controller are stored for the purpose of processing or contacting the data subject. There is no transfer of this personal data to third parties.

8. Routine erasure and blocking of personal data

The data controller shall process and store the personal data of the data subject only for the period necessary to achieve the purpose of storage, or as far as this is granted by the European legislator or other legislators in laws or regulations to which the controller is subject to.

If the storage purpose is not applicable, or if a storage period prescribed by the European legislator or another competent legislator expires, the personal data are routinely blocked or erased in accordance with legal requirements.

9. Rights of the data subject

    • a) Right of confirmationEach data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator to obtain from the controller the confirmation as to whether or not personal data concerning him or her are being processed. If a data subject wishes to avail himself of this right of confirmation, he or she may, at any time, contact any employee of the controller.

 

    • b) Right of accessEach data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator to obtain from the controller free information about his or her personal data stored at any time and a copy of this information. Furthermore, the European directives and regulations grant the data subject access to the following information:
      • the purposes of the processing;
      • the categories of personal data concerned;
      • the recipients or categories of recipients to whom the personal data have been or will be disclosed, in particular recipients in third countries or international organisations;
      • where possible, the envisaged period for which the personal data will be stored, or, if not possible, the criteria used to determine that period;
      • the existence of the right to request from the controller rectification or erasure of personal data, or restriction of processing of personal data concerning the data subject, or to object to such processing;
      • the existence of the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority;
      • where the personal data are not collected from the data subject, any available information as to their source;
      • the existence of automated decision-making, including profiling, referred to in Article 22(1) and (4) of the GDPR and, at least in those cases, meaningful information about the logic involved, as well as the significance and envisaged consequences of such processing for the data subject.

      Furthermore, the data subject shall have a right to obtain information as to whether personal data are transferred to a third country or to an international organisation. Where this is the case, the data subject shall have the right to be informed of the appropriate safeguards relating to the transfer.

      If a data subject wishes to avail himself of this right of access, he or she may, at any time, contact any employee of the controller.

 

    • c) Right to rectificationEach data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator to obtain from the controller without undue delay the rectification of inaccurate personal data concerning him or her. Taking into account the purposes of the processing, the data subject shall have the right to have incomplete personal data completed, including by means of providing a supplementary statement.If a data subject wishes to exercise this right to rectification, he or she may, at any time, contact any employee of the controller.d) Right to erasure (Right to be forgotten)Each data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay, and the controller shall have the obligation to erase personal data without undue delay where one of the following grounds applies, as long as the processing is not necessary:
      • The personal data are no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected or otherwise processed.
      • The data subject withdraws consent to which the processing is based according to point (a) of Article 6(1) of the GDPR, or point (a) of Article 9(2) of the GDPR, and where there is no other legal ground for the processing.
      • The data subject objects to the processing pursuant to Article 21(1) of the GDPR and there are no overriding legitimate grounds for the processing, or the data subject objects to the processing pursuant to Article 21(2) of the GDPR.
      • The personal data have been unlawfully processed.
      • The personal data must be erased for compliance with a legal obligation in Union or Member State law to which the controller is subject.
      • The personal data have been collected in relation to the offer of information society services referred to in Article 8(1) of the GDPR.

      If one of the aforementioned reasons applies, and a data subject wishes to request the erasure of personal data stored by the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG, he or she may, at any time, contact any employee of the controller. An employee of Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG shall promptly ensure that the erasure request is complied with immediately.

      Where the controller has made personal data public and is obliged pursuant to Article 17(1) to erase the personal data, the controller, taking account of available technology and the cost of implementation, shall take reasonable steps, including technical measures, to inform other controllers processing the personal data that the data subject has requested erasure by such controllers of any links to, or copy or replication of, those personal data, as far as processing is not required. An employees of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG will arrange the necessary measures in individual cases.

 

  • e) Right of restriction of processingEach data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator to obtain from the controller restriction of processing where one of the following applies:
    • The accuracy of the personal data is contested by the data subject, for a period enabling the controller to verify the accuracy of the personal data.
    • The processing is unlawful and the data subject opposes the erasure of the personal data and requests instead the restriction of their use instead.
    • The controller no longer needs the personal data for the purposes of the processing, but they are required by the data subject for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.
    • The data subject has objected to processing pursuant to Article 21(1) of the GDPR pending the verification whether the legitimate grounds of the controller override those of the data subject.

    If one of the aforementioned conditions is met, and a data subject wishes to request the restriction of the processing of personal data stored by the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG, he or she may at any time contact any employee of the controller. The employee of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG will arrange the restriction of the processing.

    f) Right to data portability

    Each data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator, to receive the personal data concerning him or her, which was provided to a controller, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. He or she shall have the right to transmit those data to another controller without hindrance from the controller to which the personal data have been provided, as long as the processing is based on consent pursuant to point (a) of Article 6(1) of the GDPR or point (a) of Article 9(2) of the GDPR, or on a contract pursuant to point (b) of Article 6(1) of the GDPR, and the processing is carried out by automated means, as long as the processing is not necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.

    Furthermore, in exercising his or her right to data portability pursuant to Article 20(1) of the GDPR, the data subject shall have the right to have personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible and when doing so does not adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others.

    In order to assert the right to data portability, the data subject may at any time contact any employee of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG.

  • g) Right to objectEach data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator to object, on grounds relating to his or her particular situation, at any time, to processing of personal data concerning him or her, which is based on point (e) or (f) of Article 6(1) of the GDPR. This also applies to profiling based on these provisions.The Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG shall no longer process the personal data in the event of the objection, unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override the interests, rights and freedoms of the data subject, or for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.If the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG processes personal data for direct marketing purposes, the data subject shall have the right to object at any time to processing of personal data concerning him or her for such marketing. This applies to profiling to the extent that it is related to such direct marketing. If the data subject objects to the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG to the processing for direct marketing purposes, the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG will no longer process the personal data for these purposes.In addition, the data subject has the right, on grounds relating to his or her particular situation, to object to processing of personal data concerning him or her by the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG for scientific or historical research purposes, or for statistical purposes pursuant to Article 89(1) of the GDPR, unless the processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out for reasons of public interest.In order to exercise the right to object, the data subject may contact any employee of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG. In addition, the data subject is free in the context of the use of information society services, and notwithstanding Directive 2002/58/EC, to use his or her right to object by automated means using technical specifications.
  • h) Automated individual decision-making, including profilingEach data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her, or similarly significantly affects him or her, as long as the decision (1) is not is necessary for entering into, or the performance of, a contract between the data subject and a data controller, or (2) is not authorised by Union or Member State law to which the controller is subject and which also lays down suitable measures to safeguard the data subject’s rights and freedoms and legitimate interests, or (3) is not based on the data subject’s explicit consent.If the decision (1) is necessary for entering into, or the performance of, a contract between the data subject and a data controller, or (2) it is based on the data subject’s explicit consent, the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG shall implement suitable measures to safeguard the data subject’s rights and freedoms and legitimate interests, at least the right to obtain human intervention on the part of the controller, to express his or her point of view and contest the decision.
    If the data subject wishes to exercise the rights concerning automated individual decision-making, he or she may, at any time, contact any employee of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG.
  • i) Right to withdraw data protection consentEach data subject shall have the right granted by the European legislator to withdraw his or her consent to processing of his or her personal data at any time.If the data subject wishes to exercise the right to withdraw the consent, he or she may, at any time, contact any employee of the Clouds Hill GmbH & Co. KG.

10. Data protection provisions about the application and use of Facebook

On this website, the controller has integrated components of the enterprise Facebook. Facebook is a social network.

A social network is a place for social meetings on the Internet, an online community, which usually allows users to communicate with each other and interact in a virtual space. A social network may serve as a platform for the exchange of opinions and experiences, or enable the Internet community to provide personal or business-related information. Facebook allows social network users to include the creation of private profiles, upload photos, and network through friend requests.

The operating company of Facebook is Facebook, Inc., 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, CA 94025, United States. If a person lives outside of the United States or Canada, the controller is the Facebook Ireland Ltd., 4 Grand Canal Square, Grand Canal Harbour, Dublin 2, Ireland.

With each call-up to one of the individual pages of this Internet website, which is operated by the controller and into which a Facebook component (Facebook plug-ins) was integrated, the web browser on the information technology system of the data subject is automatically prompted to download display of the corresponding Facebook component from Facebook through the Facebook component. An overview of all the Facebook Plug-ins may be accessed under https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/. During the course of this technical procedure, Facebook is made aware of what specific sub-site of our website was visited by the data subject.

If the data subject is logged in at the same time on Facebook, Facebook detects with every call-up to our website by the data subject—and for the entire duration of their stay on our Internet site—which specific sub-site of our Internet page was visited by the data subject. This information is collected through the Facebook component and associated with the respective Facebook account of the data subject. If the data subject clicks on one of the Facebook buttons integrated into our website, e.g. the “Like” button, or if the data subject submits a comment, then Facebook matches this information with the personal Facebook user account of the data subject and stores the personal data.

Facebook always receives, through the Facebook component, information about a visit to our website by the data subject, whenever the data subject is logged in at the same time on Facebook during the time of the call-up to our website. This occurs regardless of whether the data subject clicks on the Facebook component or not. If such a transmission of information to Facebook is not desirable for the data subject, then he or she may prevent this by logging off from their Facebook account before a call-up to our website is made.

The data protection guideline published by Facebook, which is available at https://facebook.com/about/privacy/, provides information about the collection, processing and use of personal data by Facebook. In addition, it is explained there what setting options Facebook offers to protect the privacy of the data subject. In addition, different configuration options are made available to allow the elimination of data transmission to Facebook. These applications may be used by the data subject to eliminate a data transmission to Facebook.

11. Data protection provisions about the application and use of Google AdSense

On this website, the controller has integrated Google AdSense. Google AdSense is an online service which allows the placement of advertising on third-party sites. Google AdSense is based on an algorithm that selects advertisements displayed on third-party sites to match with the content of the respective third-party site. Google AdSense allows an interest-based targeting of the Internet user, which is implemented by means of generating individual user profiles.

The operating company of Google’s AdSense component is Alphabet Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043-1351, United States.

The purpose of Google’s AdSense component is the integration of advertisements on our website. Google AdSense places a cookie on the information technology system of the data subject. The definition of cookies is explained above. With the setting of the cookie, Alphabet Inc. is enabled to analyze the use of our website. With each call-up to one of the individual pages of this Internet site, which is operated by the controller and into which a Google AdSense component is integrated, the Internet browser on the information technology system of the data subject will automatically submit data through the Google AdSense component for the purpose of online advertising and the settlement of commissions to Alphabet Inc. During the course of this technical procedure, the enterprise Alphabet Inc. gains knowledge of personal data, such as the IP address of the data subject, which serves Alphabet Inc., inter alia, to understand the origin of visitors and clicks and subsequently create commission settlements.

The data subject may, as stated above, prevent the setting of cookies through our website at any time by means of a corresponding adjustment of the web browser used and thus permanently deny the setting of cookies. Such an adjustment to the Internet browser used would also prevent Alphabet Inc. from setting a cookie on the information technology system of the data subject. Additionally, cookies already in use by Alphabet Inc. may be deleted at any time via a web browser or other software programs.

Furthermore, Google AdSense also uses so-called tracking pixels. A tracking pixel is a miniature graphic that is embedded in web pages to enable a log file recording and a log file analysis through which a statistical analysis may be performed. Based on the embedded tracking pixels, Alphabet Inc. is able to determine if and when a website was opened by a data subject, and which links were clicked on by the data subject. Tracking pixels serve, inter alia, to analyze the flow of visitors on a website.

Through Google AdSense, personal data and information—which also includes the IP address, and is necessary for the collection and accounting of the displayed advertisements—is transmitted to Alphabet Inc. in the United States of America. These personal data will be stored and processed in the United States of America. The Alphabet Inc. may disclose the collected personal data through this technical procedure to third parties.

Google AdSense is further explained under the following link https://www.google.com/intl/en/adsense/start/.

12. Data protection provisions about the application and use of Google Analytics (with anonymization function)

On this website, the controller has integrated the component of Google Analytics (with the anonymizer function). Google Analytics is a web analytics service. Web analytics is the collection, gathering, and analysis of data about the behavior of visitors to websites. A web analysis service collects, inter alia, data about the website from which a person has come (the so-called referrer), which sub-pages were visited, or how often and for what duration a sub-page was viewed. Web analytics are mainly used for the optimization of a website and in order to carry out a cost-benefit analysis of Internet advertising.

The operator of the Google Analytics component is Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043-1351, United States.

For the web analytics through Google Analytics the controller uses the application “_gat. _anonymizeIp”. By means of this application the IP address of the Internet connection of the data subject is abridged by Google and anonymised when accessing our websites from a Member State of the European Union or another Contracting State to the Agreement on the European Economic Area.

The purpose of the Google Analytics component is to analyze the traffic on our website. Google uses the collected data and information, inter alia, to evaluate the use of our website and to provide online reports, which show the activities on our websites, and to provide other services concerning the use of our Internet site for us.

Google Analytics places a cookie on the information technology system of the data subject. The definition of cookies is explained above. With the setting of the cookie, Google is enabled to analyze the use of our website. With each call-up to one of the individual pages of this Internet site, which is operated by the controller and into which a Google Analytics component was integrated, the Internet browser on the information technology system of the data subject will automatically submit data through the Google Analytics component for the purpose of online advertising and the settlement of commissions to Google. During the course of this technical procedure, the enterprise Google gains knowledge of personal information, such as the IP address of the data subject, which serves Google, inter alia, to understand the origin of visitors and clicks, and subsequently create commission settlements.

The cookie is used to store personal information, such as the access time, the location from which the access was made, and the frequency of visits of our website by the data subject. With each visit to our Internet site, such personal data, including the IP address of the Internet access used by the data subject, will be transmitted to Google in the United States of America. These personal data are stored by Google in the United States of America. Google may pass these personal data collected through the technical procedure to third parties.

The data subject may, as stated above, prevent the setting of cookies through our website at any time by means of a corresponding adjustment of the web browser used and thus permanently deny the setting of cookies. Such an adjustment to the Internet browser used would also prevent Google Analytics from setting a cookie on the information technology system of the data subject. In addition, cookies already in use by Google Analytics may be deleted at any time via a web browser or other software programs.

In addition, the data subject has the possibility of objecting to a collection of data that are generated by Google Analytics, which is related to the use of this website, as well as the processing of this data by Google and the chance to preclude any such. For this purpose, the data subject must download a browser add-on under the link https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout and install it. This browser add-on tells Google Analytics through a JavaScript, that any data and information about the visits of Internet pages may not be transmitted to Google Analytics. The installation of the browser add-ons is considered an objection by Google. If the information technology system of the data subject is later deleted, formatted, or newly installed, then the data subject must reinstall the browser add-ons to disable Google Analytics. If the browser add-on was uninstalled by the data subject or any other person who is attributable to their sphere of competence, or is disabled, it is possible to execute the reinstallation or reactivation of the browser add-ons.

Further information and the applicable data protection provisions of Google may be retrieved under https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/ and under http://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html. Google Analytics is further explained under the following Link https://www.google.com/analytics/.

13. Data protection provisions about the application and use of Google-AdWords
On this website, the controller has integrated Google AdWords. Google AdWords is a service for Internet advertising that allows the advertiser to place ads in Google search engine results and the Google advertising network. Google AdWords allows an advertiser to pre-define specific keywords with the help of which an ad on Google’s search results only then displayed, when the user utilizes the search engine to retrieve a keyword-relevant search result. In the Google Advertising Network, the ads are distributed on relevant web pages using an automatic algorithm, taking into account the previously defined keywords.

The operating company of Google AdWords is Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043-1351, UNITED STATES.

The purpose of Google AdWords is the promotion of our website by the inclusion of relevant advertising on the websites of third parties and in the search engine results of the search engine Google and an insertion of third-party advertising on our website.

If a data subject reaches our website via a Google ad, a conversion cookie is filed on the information technology system of the data subject through Google. The definition of cookies is explained above. A conversion cookie loses its validity after 30 days and is not used to identify the data subject. If the cookie has not expired, the conversion cookie is used to check whether certain sub-pages, e.g, the shopping cart from an online shop system, were called up on our website. Through the conversion cookie, both Google and the controller can understand whether a person who reached an AdWords ad on our website generated sales, that is, executed or canceled a sale of goods.

The data and information collected through the use of the conversion cookie is used by Google to create visit statistics for our website. These visit statistics are used in order to determine the total number of users who have been served through AdWords ads to ascertain the success or failure of each AdWords ad and to optimize our AdWords ads in the future. Neither our company nor other Google AdWords advertisers receive information from Google that could identify the data subject.

The conversion cookie stores personal information, e.g. the Internet pages visited by the data subject. Each time we visit our Internet pages, personal data, including the IP address of the Internet access used by the data subject, is transmitted to Google in the United States of America. These personal data are stored by Google in the United States of America. Google may pass these personal data collected through the technical procedure to third parties.

The data subject may, at any time, prevent the setting of cookies by our website, as stated above, by means of a corresponding setting of the Internet browser used and thus permanently deny the setting of cookies. Such a setting of the Internet browser used would also prevent Google from placing a conversion cookie on the information technology system of the data subject. In addition, a cookie set by Google AdWords may be deleted at any time via the Internet browser or other software programs.

The data subject has a possibility of objecting to the interest based advertisement of Google. Therefore, the data subject must access from each of the browsers in use the link www.google.de/settings/ads and set the desired settings.

Further information and the applicable data protection provisions of Google may be retrieved under https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/.

14. Data protection provisions about the application and use of Instagram

On this website, the controller has integrated components of the service Instagram. Instagram is a service that may be qualified as an audiovisual platform, which allows users to share photos and videos, as well as disseminate such data in other social networks.

The operating company of the services offered by Instagram is Instagram LLC, 1 Hacker Way, Building 14 First Floor, Menlo Park, CA, UNITED STATES.

With each call-up to one of the individual pages of this Internet site, which is operated by the controller and on which an Instagram component (Insta button) was integrated, the Internet browser on the information technology system of the data subject is automatically prompted to the download of a display of the corresponding Instagram component of Instagram. During the course of this technical procedure, Instagram becomes aware of what specific sub-page of our website was visited by the data subject.

If the data subject is logged in at the same time on Instagram, Instagram detects with every call-up to our website by the data subject—and for the entire duration of their stay on our Internet site—which specific sub-page of our Internet page was visited by the data subject. This information is collected through the Instagram component and is associated with the respective Instagram account of the data subject. If the data subject clicks on one of the Instagram buttons integrated on our website, then Instagram matches this information with the personal Instagram user account of the data subject and stores the personal data.

Instagram receives information via the Instagram component that the data subject has visited our website provided that the data subject is logged in at Instagram at the time of the call to our website. This occurs regardless of whether the person clicks on the Instagram button or not. If such a transmission of information to Instagram is not desirable for the data subject, then he or she can prevent this by logging off from their Instagram account before a call-up to our website is made.

Further information and the applicable data protection provisions of Instagram may be retrieved under https://help.instagram.com/155833707900388 and https://www.instagram.com/about/legal/privacy/.

15. Data protection provisions about the application and use of Twitter

On this website, the controller has integrated components of Twitter. Twitter is a multilingual, publicly-accessible microblogging service on which users may publish and spread so-called ‘tweets,’ e.g. short messages, which are limited to 280 characters. These short messages are available for everyone, including those who are not logged on to Twitter. The tweets are also displayed to so-called followers of the respective user. Followers are other Twitter users who follow a user’s tweets. Furthermore, Twitter allows you to address a wide audience via hashtags, links or retweets.

The operating company of Twitter is Twitter, Inc., 1355 Market Street, Suite 900, San Francisco, CA 94103, UNITED STATES.

With each call-up to one of the individual pages of this Internet site, which is operated by the controller and on which a Twitter component (Twitter button) was integrated, the Internet browser on the information technology system of the data subject is automatically prompted to download a display of the corresponding Twitter component of Twitter. Further information about the Twitter buttons is available under https://about.twitter.com/de/resources/buttons. During the course of this technical procedure, Twitter gains knowledge of what specific sub-page of our website was visited by the data subject. The purpose of the integration of the Twitter component is a retransmission of the contents of this website to allow our users to introduce this web page to the digital world and increase our visitor numbers.

If the data subject is logged in at the same time on Twitter, Twitter detects with every call-up to our website by the data subject and for the entire duration of their stay on our Internet site which specific sub-page of our Internet page was visited by the data subject. This information is collected through the Twitter component and associated with the respective Twitter account of the data subject. If the data subject clicks on one of the Twitter buttons integrated on our website, then Twitter assigns this information to the personal Twitter user account of the data subject and stores the personal data.

Twitter receives information via the Twitter component that the data subject has visited our website, provided that the data subject is logged in on Twitter at the time of the call-up to our website. This occurs regardless of whether the person clicks on the Twitter component or not. If such a transmission of information to Twitter is not desirable for the data subject, then he or she may prevent this by logging off from their Twitter account before a call-up to our website is made.

The applicable data protection provisions of Twitter may be accessed under https://twitter.com/privacy?lang=en.

16. Payment Method: Data protection provisions about the use of PayPal as a payment processor

On this website, the controller has integrated components of PayPal. PayPal is an online payment service provider. Payments are processed via so-called PayPal accounts, which represent virtual private or business accounts. PayPal is also able to process virtual payments through credit cards when a user does not have a PayPal account. A PayPal account is managed via an e-mail address, which is why there are no classic account numbers. PayPal makes it possible to trigger online payments to third parties or to receive payments. PayPal also accepts trustee functions and offers buyer protection services.

The European operating company of PayPal is PayPal (Europe) S.à.r.l. & Cie. S.C.A., 22-24 Boulevard Royal, 2449 Luxembourg, Luxembourg.

If the data subject chooses “PayPal” as the payment option in the online shop during the ordering process, we automatically transmit the data of the data subject to PayPal. By selecting this payment option, the data subject agrees to the transfer of personal data required for payment processing.

The personal data transmitted to PayPal is usually first name, last name, address, email address, IP address, telephone number, mobile phone number, or other data necessary for payment processing. The processing of the purchase contract also requires such personal data, which are in connection with the respective order.

The transmission of the data is aimed at payment processing and fraud prevention. The controller will transfer personal data to PayPal, in particular, if a legitimate interest in the transmission is given. The personal data exchanged between PayPal and the controller for the processing of the data will be transmitted by PayPal to economic credit agencies. This transmission is intended for identity and creditworthiness checks.

PayPal will, if necessary, pass on personal data to affiliates and service providers or subcontractors to the extent that this is necessary to fulfill contractual obligations or for data to be processed in the order.

The data subject has the possibility to revoke consent for the handling of personal data at any time from PayPal. A revocation shall not have any effect on personal data which must be processed, used or transmitted in accordance with (contractual) payment processing.

The applicable data protection provisions of PayPal may be retrieved under https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full.

17. Legal basis for the processing

Art. 6(1) lit. a GDPR serves as the legal basis for processing operations for which we obtain consent for a specific processing purpose. If the processing of personal data is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party, as is the case, for example, when processing operations are necessary for the supply of goods or to provide any other service, the processing is based on Article 6(1) lit. b GDPR. The same applies to such processing operations which are necessary for carrying out pre-contractual measures, for example in the case of inquiries concerning our products or services. Is our company subject to a legal obligation by which processing of personal data is required, such as for the fulfillment of tax obligations, the processing is based on Art. 6(1) lit. c GDPR.
In rare cases, the processing of personal data may be necessary to protect the vital interests of the data subject or of another natural person. This would be the case, for example, if a visitor were injured in our company and his name, age, health insurance data or other vital information would have to be passed on to a doctor, hospital or other third party. Then the processing would be based on Art. 6(1) lit. d GDPR.
Finally, processing operations could be based on Article 6(1) lit. f GDPR. This legal basis is used for processing operations which are not covered by any of the abovementioned legal grounds, if processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by our company or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data. Such processing operations are particularly permissible because they have been specifically mentioned by the European legislator. He considered that a legitimate interest could be assumed if the data subject is a client of the controller (Recital 47 Sentence 2 GDPR).

18. The legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party

Where the processing of personal data is based on Article 6(1) lit. f GDPR our legitimate interest is to carry out our business in favor of the well-being of all our employees and the shareholders.

19. Period for which the personal data will be stored

The criteria used to determine the period of storage of personal data is the respective statutory retention period. After expiration of that period, the corresponding data is routinely deleted, as long as it is no longer necessary for the fulfillment of the contract or the initiation of a contract.

20. Provision of personal data as statutory or contractual requirement; Requirement necessary to enter into a contract; Obligation of the data subject to provide the personal data; possible consequences of failure to provide such data

We clarify that the provision of personal data is partly required by law (e.g. tax regulations) or can also result from contractual provisions (e.g. information on the contractual partner).

Sometimes it may be necessary to conclude a contract that the data subject provides us with personal data, which must subsequently be processed by us. The data subject is, for example, obliged to provide us with personal data when our company signs a contract with him or her. The non-provision of the personal data would have the consequence that the contract with the data subject could not be concluded.

Before personal data is provided by the data subject, the data subject must contact any employee. The employee clarifies to the data subject whether the provision of the personal data is required by law or contract or is necessary for the conclusion of the contract, whether there is an obligation to provide the personal data and the consequences of non-provision of the personal data.

21. Existence of automated decision-making

As a responsible company, we do not use automatic decision-making or profiling.

22. Data protection provisions about the application and use of YouTube

On this website, the controller has integrated components of YouTube. YouTube is an Internet video portal that enables video publishers to set video clips and other users free of charge, which also provides free viewing, review and commenting on them. YouTube allows you to publish all kinds of videos, so you can access both full movies and TV broadcasts, as well as music videos, trailers, and videos made by users via the Internet portal.

The operating company of YouTube is YouTube, LLC, 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066, UNITED STATES. The YouTube, LLC is a subsidiary of Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043-1351, UNITED STATES.

With each call-up to one of the individual pages of this Internet site, which is operated by the controller and on which a YouTube component (YouTube video) was integrated, the Internet browser on the information technology system of the data subject is automatically prompted to download a display of the corresponding YouTube component. Further information about YouTube may be obtained under https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/en/. During the course of this technical procedure, YouTube and Google gain knowledge of what specific sub-page of our website was visited by the data subject.

If the data subject is logged in on YouTube, YouTube recognizes with each call-up to a sub-page that contains a YouTube video, which specific sub-page of our Internet site was visited by the data subject. This information is collected by YouTube and Google and assigned to the respective YouTube account of the data subject.

YouTube and Google will receive information through the YouTube component that the data subject has visited our website, if the data subject at the time of the call to our website is logged in on YouTube; this occurs regardless of whether the person clicks on a YouTube video or not. If such a transmission of this information to YouTube and Google is not desirable for the data subject, the delivery may be prevented if the data subject logs off from their own YouTube account before a call-up to our website is made.

YouTube’s data protection provisions, available at https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/, provide information about the collection, processing and use of personal data by YouTube and Google.

23. Use of web fonts from Google™ LLC

This website uses web fonts provided by Google™ LLC 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA for graphical representation. When you visit the website, your browser loads the required web fonts into your browser cache to display the corresponding fonts correctly. If your web browser does not support the web fonts, a standard font is used by your computer. Further information about Google™ Web Fonts can be found at https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq and in the privacy policy of Google™ LLC: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/

24. Use of web fonts from Monotype GmbH

External fonts from fonts.com are used on our website for graphical representation. This is a type service of Monotype GmbH, 61352 Bad Homburg, Werner-Reimers-Straße 2-4. When you request a page of our website, your browser loads the required web fonts into your browser cache so that textscontents and fonts are displayed correctly. The browser you use must therefore connect to the servers of the web font provider (see above). If your browser does not support this feature, your computer will use a default font for display. In the interest of a uniform and informative presentation of our website, the web fonts are used. This represents a special interest within the meaning of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f DSGVO. More information about Fonts.com can be found at https://www.monotype.com/legal/privacy-policy

This Privacy Policy has been generated by the Privacy Policy Generator of the DGD – Your External DPO that was developed in cooperation with German Lawyers from WILDE BEUGER SOLMECKE, Cologne.

KIM GORDON VS THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Text
Julia Lorenz
Photography
David Markey

Sonic Youth are one the most influential American bands since The Velvet Underground. Hardly any other band’s work has such intrinsic roots in the history of their own country, intertwining their own narrative with the political and social developments of the USA. Over the decades, Sonic Youth have provided a mirror image of sub- and countercultural realities, spanning the crimes of the Manson Family, the appointment of Ronald Reagan as president of the USA and finally the Götterdämmerungin the guise of Donald Trump. Julia Lorenz talked to Kim Gordon, Sonic Youth’s bass player who also works as a songwriter, an artist and curates her own fashion collection. She reviews the counterculture icon’s biography through the lens of seven US presidencies, beginning with a man who didn’t make the cut.

Prelude: Bernie Sanders

Kim Gordon is sitting in her house in Los Angeles, silent and not very talkative. It is the beginning of 2020, the time of the American pre-elections. The professional musician, who does not like to be labeled as such – preferring to be called self-taught or at best a „rock star with a lower case ’r’“ – only starts to warm up when she talks about the presidential nominee Bernie Sanders. Gordon considers the democrat to be „the real deal“, a kind of saviour in the guise of an old, yet youthfully impulsive and fearless white man. She feels certain that he could have banished many of the bad spirits that have beset not only the USA but also her life and her art over the past decades. She had teamed up with other artists such as Cardi B, Lizzo, and Public Enemy’s Chuck D. to support Sanders’ campaign with their social media presence. With no success, as we find out later.

 

When she is not talking about Sanders, Gordon chooses her words carefully, mulling over what she’s planning to say, taking her time before finally verbalising her thoughts. But once she does, her remarks are surprisingly matter-of-fact and austere. Talking about her own biography, it is as if she were in the role of a knowledgable and seasoned museum guide, forced to dwell on an exhibit that really just doesn’t do anything for her anymore. Perhaps she simply isn’t a very sentimental person. Or maybe an artist of her standing, who – together with her band Sonic Youth – managed to smash up punk rock once it became as bloated and self-aggrandising as everything it once stood against, doesn’t want to contribute to her own glorification. Then again, maybe she is fed up of being the go-to testimonial for quotes on the history of US underground of the second half of the past century. After all, Kim Gordon’s story could be blown up for the big screen, her life full of sudden disruptions matches the evolution of American alternative culture, a history of estrangement outlined and defined by particular presidents.  

Lyndon B. Johnson

The Democrat was elected the 36th President of the United States and served from 1963 to 1969. He was the singular embodiment of conservative and liberal America, enemy of the flower children, yet at the same time a strong supporter of the US Civil Rights movement. On the one hand, he escalated the war in Southeast Asia and on the other hand, he stood for the expansion of the welfare state, urging Congress to vote in favour of John F. Kennedy’s Civil Rights Act.

 

Kim Gordon was born in 1953 and grew up in Rochester, New York and Los Angeles. For a short period she moved to Hawaii with her family (as sociologists both her mother and father worked in science and research) where she claims to have felt like a real outsider for the very first time. Shortly thereafter they moved to the British crown colony of Hong Kong. „I lived there when I was 12, and that was really eye opening,“ she says. „It was the first time I really saw poverty and was surrounded by chaos and noise and dirt, just kind of a chaotic environment. I think it was really good for me.“

 

Remembering the USA of her childhood, California in the sixties, Kim Gordon primarily recalls cars. In those times, even more so than today, Los Angeles was a city that the middle class made its own not on foot but rather by driving. The car took on the function of a spacecraft, a mobile comfort zone transporting the driver – across class boundaries – within his own microcosm (today you would say „bubble“) from A to B. „I had this almost nauseous feeling about living in suburbia,“ Gordon looks back. „I was living in a flat house next to another flat house. They were nice Spanish houses, but something about that conventionality or ordinariness depressed me.“ In direct comparison, she actually preferred the chaos she had witnessed in Hong Kong. Especially since the supposed security of suburban Californian was nothing more than a façade. Later on, in the song „Pacific Coast Highway“ off of the 1987 Sonic Youth album „Sister“, Kim Gordon sings about the Californian cars of the sixties, about the terror of a young woman traveling with a stranger, uncertain whether she is headed towards freedom or doom: „You make me feel so crazy / I want to take your breath away / Come on, get in the car, let’s go for a ride somewhere, I won’t hurt you as much as you hurt me.“

 

In the sixties, America was on a mission – full of confidence, the birthplace of counter culture, epicenter of the beatnik- and hippie movements. Was it possible to overcome the system, to shape a better world? Quite a few Americans believed that this could be more than a dream. However, they soon faced an abrupt wake-up-call: in 1965, 34 people died in the Watts riots which tore across a predominantly black neighbourhood of Los Angeles. Angry flower children protested against president Johnson who was a supporter of civil rights back home in America yet waged war in Vietnam. Later still, Charles Manson and his murderous „family“ prowled the Hollywood Hills. In those days, Kim Gordon herself got a little too close for comfort to the serial killer Manson: in 1985, she told the „Melody Maker“ that her brother’s girlfriend at the time was killed by the Manson Family. „I never really thought of the idea that things were safe. I actually felt that California was a bit of a police state and that the police was kind of fascist. There was a lot of darkness,“ Gordon says of the inspiration for a song such as „Pacific Coast Highway“, one of quite a few songs written by her that address the terror lurking in the Hollywood Hills.

Ronald Reagan

By pushing his neo-conservative agenda, the former Hollywood actor successfully secured the strict evangelical voters’ support for the Republican party. Following his time as governor of California from 1967 to 1975, Reagan was elected the 40th president of the USA in 1981, serving two terms until 1989. Not many people are aware of the fact that he studied economics, sociology and drama. He coined the iconic slogan: „Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!“  

 

Every person has a personal ‘zero hour’, a singular event or pivotal moment on which all memories hinge, such as the death of the mother, a move to a new city, a calamity such as the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Kim Gordon claims that the largest social disruption of her lifetime was the election of Ronald Reagan.

 

John Lennon was shot and killed 34 days after Reagan beat the incumbent democratic president Jimmy Carter – an event of somewhat symbolic nature for Kim Gordon: the icon of the „Imagine“ generation, who represented everything that was right and at the same time also wrong about hippie culture, was gone, while the tough guy America, presided over by the lead cowboy in the White House, made a triumphant return. However, it must be acknowledged that the „Summer of Love“ – whatever that was supposed to have been – was ancient history already. Moreover, it had not even begun to realise the high flying dreams and aspirations espoused by so many. „The centre was not holding,“ Joan Didion wrote in her essay „Slouching Towards Bethlehem“, a bitter and very sombre requiem for that mythical period. „It was a country of bankruptcy notices and public-auction announcements and commonplace reports of casual killings and misplaced children and abandoned homes and vandals who misspelled even the four-letter words they scrawled. It was a country in which families routinely disappeared, trailing bad checks and repossession papers.“

 

As governor of California, Reagan had wasted no time in cutting back on government welfare spending. „In the image of Reagan, the whole of America has become California,“ the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote in his 1986 essay „America“. He adds: „In reality it is not always sunny in California. You often get fog with the sun, or smog in Los Angeles. And yet you retain a sun-filled memory of the place, a sunny screen memory. That is what the Reagan mirage is like.“

 

Kim Gordon’s take sounds like this: „Reagan cut resources for the social safety net of people and destroyed the school system in California.“ When he was elected president of the USA, Reagan brought the Republican idea of the lean government to the White House and – urged on by evangelical lobbyists – asserted his hard-line fundamental ideas. „Basically, this is how we ended up where we are,“ Gordon adds, drawing a direct line from the early 80s to the year 2020 and the chaos of Trump’s administration. Kim Gordon considers Reagan and the „Reaganomics“ – the American equivalent to British „Thatcherism“ – to be the original sin and directly responsible for the current political and social climate in the USA. Reagan’s NeoCons have such a tight grip on American politics that they have practically become part of the country’s DNA, still controlling decisive positions and therefore dominating the cultural discourse on fundamental conservative issues such as gun laws and abortion, the economy and energy management, thereby throwing the whole country absurdly off-kilter: „It’s kind of insane that in April 2020 the Dow Jones Index had its best week since 1987 – a week during which many people suffered from unemployment. There’s something wrong.“ She takes a short moment to think then comes up with an analogy reflecting the state of the country since Ronald Reagan: „We are digging this hole, and it’s getting deeper and deeper.“

 

Social equality took a very bad hit during the Reagan years, making Ronald Reagan public enemy no. one in pop cultural terms. Unlike any president before or after, Reagan became the object of derision across the board, regardless of anyone’s scene- or genre affiliation. Whereas in the sixties, it was mostly the folk- and rock musicians who made fun of and taunted the former Hollywood actor, suspicious of his ambitions and his budding career as governor of California, in the eighties, Ronald Reagan became the favourite target for the punk and hardcore scene and achieved an undisputed rank in the iconography of pop- and subculture. Today, you can even find a Wikipedia article on the bands that raged against Reagan, including the New York band Reagan Youth as well as a plethora of Californian punk bands such as the Dead Kennedys and JFA. Sonic Youth’s former record label SST Records also released records by bands that were critical of Reagan: „If, if Reagan played disco / He’d shoot it to shit / You can’t disco in Jackboots,“ the Minutemen sang in 1982.

 

At this point, Kim Gordon had already moved from Los Angeles to New York City. Here she had taken up with the downtown „off“ art scene and met Thurston Moore, the man who would initially be her partner in Sonic Youth and then also in life. Sonic Youth’s first gig was in June 1981. On stage was a band you would only ever see in the New York of the early 1980s: the beat-up glamour of the sixties and the laissez-faire attitude of the seventies imploded in a noisy amalgamation of creativity, crime and a pervasive fear of nuclear armageddon. This new movement that Sonic Youth felt part of was hastily christened No Wave – a scene that did not want to be pigeonholed, bands that played and thought outside of the box, fusing music and art, casting a cynical or disapproving glance on what was going on in their homeland and in their country.

 

„Things were freer and people were more open in the seventies,“ Kim Gordon recalls, „while in the eighties there was a lot of paranoia. People were doing lots of coke.“ Following the era of pot, America had now decided to run on stimuli and amphetamines. Gordon felt as if she were living in an „embalmed country.“ For the cover of „Daydream Nation“, the 1988 album which Sonic Youth dedicated to their hyper sped-up, predatory and yet somehow sedated homeland of America, the band used Gerhard Richter’s famous 1982 painting „Candle“, a solitary, solemn beacon.

 

„From the wizened perspective of the mid-1990s, it is difficult to recall the heady mix of hope and cynicism that clouded the American psyche at the end of 1980,“ Alec Foege writes in the Sonic Youth band biography „Confusion Is Next“. At the end of a long century, the enemy had caught up with counter culture and its proponents and was dead set on reversing everything that the hippies and punks had achieved: all the pacifistic, anti-imperialistic or at least antagonistic ideas, rock’n’roll and its promise of liberation, drug culture, sexual laissez-faire. Sonic Youth’s reaction was to release „Daydream Nation“, an album they have always called their „political record“, the most popular track being „Teen Age Riot“ – a song conjuring a very special presidential nominee with an excellent reputation in the alternative music scene: „… You better look it, we’re gonna shake it, up to him / He acts the hero, we paint a zero on his hand …“ Who were they talking about? „It was actually about appointing J. Mascis as our de factoalternative dream president,“ Thurston Moore would later explain. The indie rock role model J. Mascis, the nerdy and shy, silent singer and guitar player for the band Dinosaur Jr as the head of state of the daydream nation? Looking back at it today, it seems as if Sonic Youth were way ahead of their time in anticipating the slackers and anti-heroes of the impending nineties.
George Bush Senior

The republican George Bush Senior was the 41st president of the USA and served a four year term between 1989 and 1993. As his sons Jeb and George Bush Jr. also went into politics, the Bush family is considered to be „the Kennedys of the Republicans“.

 

In the final stretch of the eighties, the enemy faded. However, Reagan’s successor George Bush Senior was not really an improvement. He started a war in Iraq and Kuwait which the French theorist Jean Baudrillard would later call an historic turning point: „The Gulf War did not take place. We are no longer in a logic of the passage from virtual to actual but in a hyperrealist logic of the deterrence of the real by the virtual.“

From Baudrillard’s point of view, the second Gulf War was a virtual battle, a simulacrum of an armed conflict and therefore a „clean war“: The presentation of the imagery broadcast by CNN and the computer simulations provided by the US Army kept the the actual horrors of the war away from the American people. The war turned into a media spectacle, presented by „embedded reporters“ and consequently it was much too real to be authentic – the entertainment society entered a new stage.

 

In 1990, just after the second Gulf War had begun, Sonic Youth agreed to go on a tour with Neil Young. For the band this was like diving head-first into the mainstream. „I’m the biggest Neil Young fan in the world. The tour was a lot of fun, but it was also a weird time for the country, during the first Gulf War,“ Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley says about the occasion. The same year, Sonic Youth signed a major label deal with David Geffen and just one year later they went on tour with a young, hardly known band – Nirvana. The movie documentary „The Year Punk Broke“ follows the bands on tour, the idea being that, after the release of the Sex Pistols’ album in 1977, this would be the second time that „punk“ had died. According to the rule of law every big bang is followed by a sell out. For Kim Gordon, however, it was not so much of a groundbreaking event. „The title was a joke,“ she states. „When we made that film nobody knew who Nirvana was.“ Nevertheless, suddenly Nirvana had this enormous, chart topping song, „Smells Like Teen Spirit“, and Sonic Youth were forthwith seen as the unrivalled godfathers of grunge. Albeit, kings without a realm, as they never attained the huge commercial success of those bands they had championed or inspired – the fate of the pioneers.

 

Yet, Sonic Youth were now part of a traditional and conventional business. They had switched to a major label and were suddenly forced to play along, often against their will. „Meet and greet“ events were one of the things Kim Gordon does not remember very fondly: „Hi, I’m Kim, and who are you?“ However, their willingness to challenge mainstream expectations also became very clear. The working title for their album „Goo“, with a cover drawing by the artist Raymond Pettibon, was initially „Blowjob?“ – a title clearly designed to test the boundaries and nerves of their new label. The song „Kool Thing“, still one of their biggest hits in a conventional sense, played with revolutionary symbolism and was full of references to the revolutionary Black Panther party. Kim Gordon used the video, which simultaneously established and played to grunge- and nineties rock’n’roll cliches, to voice her criticism of „male white corporate oppression“. On the occasion of an interview with the NME supporting the release of the album, she asks the journalist the rhetorical question: “Why were women such as Jane Fonda and Patty Hearst so into the Black Panther and black-revolutionary movements of the sixties?“ And continues: „I think it was because there was something appealing about wanting to be an anarchist or a terrorist for a woman… I think it is very appealing myself.“

 

In the clip for the song „100%“, taken from Sonic Youth’s 1992 album „Dirty“, Kim Gordon famously sports a shirt depicting the acclaimed Rolling Stones logo in the form of a tongue below the slogan „Eat Me“. MTV played the video, though only grudgingly. Gordon recalls being told that the shirt would send a negative message to the MTV viewers – in a time when the networks were constantly broadcasting war images in real time and there was never a shortage of sexualised female bodies being shown by MTV itself.

 

In a way, not only was the US media simulating a war in Iraq, the rock scene was also simulating a novel kind of post modern counterculture – labeled alternative and with an edgy demeanour, yet playing along by the rules. However, Kim Gordon will not make excuses for signing to a major label. „We didn’t regret it then,“ she deadpans. „It was just not the most fun process, but it was just our own fault. We really didn’t know what we were doing. And so some of the songs were just a little stiff. Let me just be clear: The music industry has always been pretty much straight forward as a commercial enterprise. It has a different premise than art. I never had expectations that the music world is not gonna be commercial. Our intention was not to become rich and famous, we just wanted to make weird shit. But the music world is all about money.“

Bill Clinton

The Democrat Bill Clinton served as the 42nd president of the USA between 1993 and 2001. He was the first man in the Oval Office who was born after the second World War. Fun fact: Clinton openly acknowledged that he had smoked marijuana, bringing some of the spirit of the sixties into the White House.

 

In 1990 following the German reunification, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama declared that the dissolution of the Soviet Union had led to the „end of history“. Communism had lost the battle of the political systems, capitalism was the best option for humankind, end of the debate. The nineties might have begun with Bush and the Gulf War, however, the year of Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993 represented the silver lining. It had been a long time since the country was doing so well: the years between 1992 and 1999 saw continuous annual growth of the US economy, an average of 1.7 million jobs a year were created and the unemployment rate dropped from eight percent in 1992 to four percent by the end of the decade. The AIDS crisis seemed to be under control and even the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line decreased from 15 percent to 11 percent in the course of the nineties.

 

What did Kim Gordon and Sonic Youth think of the „end of history“? „Truthfully, I wasn’t paying that much attention,“ she says. In 1997, she and Thurston Moore had left New York and relocated to Northampton, Massachusetts. Their daughter Coco was born in 1994 and Gordon and Moore did not want to raise „a Manhattan child under constant observation. We also didn’t want to move to Brooklyn or to one of those commuter towns. If we were to move, then somewhere completely different. New York is a very self-centred place, there’s always something going on and that makes it difficult, especially for parents, to keep on top of things.“ Manhattan was no longer their home.

 

While the post-modern age of the 90s saw Sonic Youth’s tongue-in-cheek flirtation with pop music, the next album „Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star“, which sounded a lot more unaccommodating than „Goo“ or „Dirty“, marked a retreat into more private and idiosyncratic territory. Having spent the last decade and a half finding and carving out their niche in between the underground and mainstream, they now withdrew, heralding a period marked by a mix of defiant and tranquil phases. Not at all unlike their peers: counterculture as a whole was forced to recalibrate, after all the enemy was no longer as easily distinguishable as in the Reagan era. What Clinton had achieved in the USA would be emulated by Tony Blair and New Labour with „Cool Britannia“ in the UK. This candid, personal style of politics masked Clinton’s successful establishment of the Democrats as a party of the liberal middle class. Or, as Gordon puts it today: „Clinton brought the Democrats to the centre. And Obama was where the tale ended. That’s the evolution of America into a giant consumer economy.“

George W. Bush

The Republican was the 43rd president of the USA from 2001 to 2009 after having served as governor of Texas. In the late 1980s, before going into politics, Bush Junior – as he was also known – managed the „Texas Rangers“. He used the funds from the sale of his shares in the baseball team to finance his 1999 political campaign.

 

Since the end of the nineties, Sonic Youth had their studio in New York’s Murray Street, just a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. Jim O’Rourke, who had just joined the band on guitar, was in the studio when the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11th. „He saw some terrible things,“ Kim Gordon recalls. The events turned out to mark the beginning of a new withdrawal on behalf of Sonic Youth and resulted in a phase where they took on the role of private custodians of their own band and body of workwith their label Sonic Youth Records.

 

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were the beginning of a new era – for the USA, for the whole world and for the band. Bush began his „war on terror“, military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq destabilised the Middle East, commercial airline travel turned into a security marathon and any- and everything unknown or foreign was treated with increasing suspicion. New York was traumatised by the measures put in place. This general state of mind also rubbed off on Sonic Youth: the band used to draw on and define itself by picking up on the current political climate, however, they now began to resolutely focus on their own microcosm.

 

Sonic Youth had already begun saying farewell to New York in 2000, some time before the attacks, by recording and releasing their album „NYC Ghosts & Flowers“, the first part of a trilogy covering a city that had already inexorably slipped away from them at the beginning of the new millennium. The mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, had lowered the crime rate by implementing his “zero tolerance” law and order policy and consequently the city had metamorphosed into a paradise for investors. Rundown Manhattan and its underground scene which had once given birth to Sonic Youth did not exist anymore. TV series such as „Sex and the City“ gave rise to a new, glamorous and almost mythical idea of New York, while Michael Moore’s polemic documentaries created the image of a half-witted, violent redneck America under George W. Bush, a country which did not have very much in common with New York City. The nation’s division now was plain to see.

 

While the pop business – and even the Dixie Chicks in Nashville – started rebelling against Bush’s policies, Sonic Youth’s career as baton-holders for the protest generation was over. „Murray Street“ and „Sonic Nurse“, parts two and three of their New York trilogy, were no angry rants against the „wartime president“ and sounded more accessible than the band’s often vague and defiant anti-hits of the late nineties. However, commercial success still eluded them. „The only way we’re going to sell records is if we break up the band or one of us dies,“ Thurston Moore once said. As a consequence, the band left the major label Geffen Records in 2008, after years of struggle, and signed with the indie company Matador, at a time when George Bush had begun his final year as president and Barack Obama’s political campaign was stirring up hope across the nation.

Barack Obama

The Democrat Obama served as the 44th president of the USA from 2009 to 2017. He was the first black man at the head of the nation and also the first to tweet. He received the Nobel Peace Prize only one year into his presidency.

 

The man from Hawaii brought back hope. The same passion that had united large parts of the pop business in the fight against George W. Bush, the politician who – according to many – had turned the USA into a caricature of a warmongering nation, now led the country’s progressives to join forces in the support of Barack Obama, following the announcement of his candidacy in 2007. And then he actually won. The political newcomer and beacon of hope was suddenly the „Black Messiah“, loaded down with the whole world’s hopes and expectations. Kim Gordon also had large expectations when she praised Obama in a 2009 interview with the newspaper Die Zeit. According to her he was a man of moral integrity who deserved her respect. „This is really a dream come true, and at exactly the right point in time,“ she said. „It’s almost too good to be true. It always has something slightly disturbing when so many people rally behind one dream.“

 

Almost eleven years later, her judgement is a little more sombre. Talking about how it was possible for the USA to become a „giant consumer’s economy“, she emphasises the Democratic party’s failings, the part Joe Biden played in outsourcing companies to China and precisely Obama’s support for these measures. „Obama was kind of where the tale ended,“ Gordon acknowledges now. However at that time, in the early years of the millennium’s second decade, the USA were in this short yet intensely hopeful, jubilant phase: it seemed like anything was possible if a cool, young black man could oust the gun-slinging redneck Texan Bush and become president of the USA. Barack Obama – simply by being who he was – offered a new prospect and the promise to leave behind that version of America that Sonic Youth had always fought against. However, while the whole world was chanting „Yes, we can“, ironically Sonic Youth had reached the end of their rope.

 

In November 2011, the band played the last concert of their career in Sao Paolo, Brazil. After 30 years the members all went their separate ways. The final Sonic Youth album „The Eternal“ had already been released in 2009. The history of rock’n’roll does not feature many couples growing old together in dignity and harmony. Up to that point, the story of Gordon and Moore had gone against the grain – however, their tale had now been told. Today, Gordon says that she is only sporadically in touch by email with the other band members.

 

The pop business changed during Barack Obama’s presidency. The classic heroes of the counter culture, the punk bands and street rappers, were no longer the only ones to voice their political opinions. Politics were increasingly part of huge mainstream acts such as Beyoncé. Movements such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter were born and were assimilated by pop culture, blatant woke-ness was no longer financial suicide but rather a selling point. Yet Sonic Youth, the guitar band of the post modern era, couldn’t or wouldn’t comment on the disparities of those times. However, subsequently Kim Gordon did everything she could not to be regarded as the simple custodian of a bygone era. She published her autobiography „Girl In A Band“ and took advantage of her newfound freedom from the band to fully grow into what she – from her point of view – had been for all those years: an artist, who by coincidence was also a musician and part of numerous projects, the duo Body/Head or Glitterbust, yet who also maintained and concentrated on her career as visual artist and curator with exhibitions in New York and London. After years of being a first-hand witness of a music scene that had gone under a long time ago, she now came back home to the art world. This home now belonged to the very rich. And the protest music was being written by others.

Donald Trump

Republican, 45th President of the USA, 2017-2021.

 

Kim Gordon is sitting in a moving car, just like in her childhood images, only that now she is the one at the wheel. She’s a taxi driver with an icy stare, picking up all the beautiful and lonely creatures of the night – chauffeuring her passengers straight to a netherworld. The Berlin based artist Loretta Fahrenholz made this video to accompany Gordon’s solo single „Sketch artist“. It is a document of an iridescent and superficial city, Gordon playing the role of the driver gifting the hipsters who have collapsed by the side of the road with an enigmatic fake intensity. The car she is driving is an „Unter“. Out of fear of being sued by the company with a similar name, she has chosen to send obviously obfuscated regards to Silicon Valley.

 

The video goes online at a time when the Oval Office has been occupied for two years by a president who appeals to the basest instincts of Americans; who has established ignorance and disinformation as the paradigm of political behaviour. Nobody had believed that Donald Trump could be elected president: a Machiavellian narcissist who was destructive and reactionary in a completely different way than all the conservative presidents before him, who was impulsive rather than diplomatic, staggering in his banality and arrogance. The ultimate foe that not even the Reagan critics of the 80s could have anticipated. Although there was protest following his election, such as the movement which led to the „Women’s March“, the pop world never addressed Trump as directly as it did Reagan years ago. It seems as if his vulgarity renders him immune against mere slogans. In an interview with the British „Guardian“ Gordon once claimed that for her, Trump was the living person she most despised, „because he’s a narcissist and doesn’t care about the world. He doesn’t care about anything except himself.“

 

Gordon lives in L.A. again, the city of her adolescence. She says that the art scene, the circle she moves in most, is a lot more vibrant, not as formal as in New York. „Hollywood money isn’t like Wall Street money,“ she now knows.

 

California, the former epicenter of the hippie movement, yet also the site of discomfort and broken dreams, has turned into a tech-millionaire’s paradise. Today, it’s not so much about rebellion as it is about ‘disruption’, about innovations that will rock the foundations of the market and completely replace complete sectors and everything that has been established beforehand. This is how Silicon Valley giants such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are selling a remake of the American dream to the global society. Today, if you want to be successful and make it from rags to riches, you not only have to be prepared to work hard and live sparingly, you also have to display a constant capacity for innovation, be flexible and – above all – show a readiness to slog on as a lone warrior with no full-time contract and plenty of mercenary competition from like-minded professionals. A select few have followed this path to a life of luxury, however, the overwhelming majority of people end up working low-paying jobs in the creative industry or the „gig economy“, for example as Uberdrivers.

 

Kim Gordon’s first solo album „No Home Record“ is also a swan song for Los Angeles, the place where so much started for her and where she plays the role of the ice cold representative of the nice, new working world and „sharing economy“, driving the tourists and scenesters from A to B all the while the poor and disenfranchised of the city congregate in a kind of „downtown ghetto“ for the homeless. The video for her song „Air BnB“ consists of simple white letters on a black background. In the lyrics to the song, Gordon describes a minimalist, digital-bohemian Air BnB apartment, making it to the epicenter of her rock’n’roll show.

 

Twenty-five years ago this would have been typical for Sonic Youth. Today, this type of criticism is so cliched that all you need to do is apply your imagination in order to visualise the corresponding images. The artist Kim Gordon has outlasted an aesthetic that she helped to create, as well as outlasting numerous paradigm shifts.

Joe Biden, President-elect 2020

On November 8th 2020 the large networks declared Joe Biden the designated 46th president of the USA. There is partying in the streets of New York and Washington, Portland and Los Angeles. Kim Gordon attacks Trump via Twitter and calls him out on his inability to accept defeat. On the evening that Joe Biden talks to his fellow Americans for the first time as president-elect from his home town Wilmington, Delaware, Gordon also drops some acerbic tweets commenting on the celebration which is – as expected – heavy on the pathos. She wonders: „Who is this person god? Why do politicians always mention him?“ And she goes on to critique the Biden camp’s music choices for the evening: Coldplay’s „Sky Full Of Stars“, „You Make My Dreams Come True“ by Hall & Oates or – so obvious it hurts – Tina Turner’s „The Best“: „Terrible music choices but great fireworks and adorable grandchildren.“ Better than nothing. The last tweet of the night: „Rockin’ in the free world.“ Sounds easy. But it’s a life’s mission. 

 

As much as Kim Gordon – just like everybody else with a democratic mindset – is happy to see Joe Biden now in charge as the next president of the USA after those awful four Trump years, she is no one colouring the world with a blue sky and pink clouds. First of all Gordon would have preferred to see Bernie Sanders as president as he would have symbolised a real new deal. And secondly she is very well aware that Trump is not yet out of the picture for ever-ever. In a recent interview with German news magazine Der Spiegel she said: „I am afraid that we will not see one minute less of Trump on air in the next four years, he will comment every step by Joe Biden. With all the media power behind him, he will keep on getting on our nerves.”