Masterclass with Dirk Schaefer

A talk by German composer and sound designer Dirk Schaefer on his practice and collaborations with the Austrian filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky.

Dirk Schaefer lives and works in Berlin and Cologne as a composer of original soundtrack scores and soundscapes for film. He offers a ‘total concept’ of sound scoring, using music, speech and noise to compose ‘aesthetical units’ that lead and disturb their visual counterpart in equal measure. The purge.xxx album of his complete collaborations with Peter Tscherkassky is his debut record release. His most regular collaborations are with Peter Tscherkassky and Matthias Müller, with whom he has worked since 1985, as well as Claudia Schillinger, Davo Defurne, Michael Bynntrup, Antoni Pinent and others. Schaefer works in parallel as a writer, publishing a book on Friedrich Nietzsche and his sisters, as well as numerous articles on diverse topics: King Kong, Joseph Cornell, opening titles. He is a frequent lecturer in Germany and internationally on film and sound.

Programmed by Oliver Dickens for Sonic Cinema. Special thanks to Stanley Schtinter (purge.xxx).

Supported by IKLECTIK, the Austrian Cultural Forum London, Goethe-Institut, and sixpackfilm.