Tales of the Nexialist Organization

Critical Void encapsulates everything the Nexialist Organization set out to do: create projects at the intersection of architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry.  A site-specific audio analysis and performance, Critical Void examined the planning crisis of Munich’s MaximiliansForum through sound, dialogue, and documentation. Critical Void performance, MaximiliansForum München. Photos: Andreas Graf  Critical Void is an analytical audio work based on an urban study of Munich’s MaximiliansForum and its complex planning history. Developed by Z’EV and Mark Kammerbauer, the project combined interviews, archival research, and live performance into a sonic investigation of urban transformation. The MaximiliansForum, located beneath the intersection of Maximilianstraße and Altstadtring, was originally conceived as a traffic tunnel but repurposed as a pedestrian underpass and later as an art space. Its ambiguous spatial identit...

Working with Z'EV was key to the Nexialist Organization – aimed at creating projects at the intersection of architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry. We collaborated on recordings and performances from our first meeting in 2005 until his passing in 2017. Marcelo Aguirre (Spastic Dementia, Evil Spirit, Æternum Sacro) was key to facilitating a collaboration between us. THE.BÄND initially featured Z’EV, Alexandra von Bolz’n, Marcelo and I, as Fragment King. The project combined percussion, bass, and voice into an extreme, physical form of metal-drone performance art. The Bänd emerged in 2008 from a collaboration between legendary percussionist and sound artist Z’EV, drummer Marcelo Aguirre,  vocalist Alexandra von Bolz’n, and bassist Fragment King. Their partnership began with a live performance in Berlin and developed into a long-distance creative exchange between Germany and England. Critical Void, Munich, 2013. photo: Andreas ...

Playing live with Z’EV was precisely what the Nexialist Organization set out to do – creating projects at the intersection of architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry.  At Gallery Wallywoods in Berlin in 2008 an improvised performance took place uniting percussion legend Z’EV, Alexandra von Bolz’n, Marcelo Aguirre, and Fragment King in a visceral half-hour of physical sound energy.  On September 13, 2008, Nexialist members joined experimental percussion pioneer Z’EV for a live performance at Gallery Wallywoods in Berlin. The line-up featured Marcelo Aguirre (Evil Spirit, Spastic Dementia) on drums, Alexandra von Bolz’n on vocals, and Mark Kammerbauer (Fragment King) on treated bass guitar. The ensemble performed a single, thirty-minute piece of throbbing, droning intensity — a physical encounter between rhythm, noise, and space. Superfast grindcore percussion collided with detuned, slow-motion bass riffage, accompanied b...

Urban Evolution was a key performance that materialized the ethos of the Nexialist Organization as a transdisciplinary platform connecting architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry. A public-space performance in Weimar, Urban Evolution visualized cycles of construction and destruction to explore the city as a living, self-transforming system. Cities embody the continuous processes of building, destruction, and renewal — processes triggered by crisis, politics, or market forces. Urban Evolution sought to make these transformations visible and experiential through a live performance on the Theaterplatz in Weimar, Germany. Developed within a research project at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, the work reimagined urban history as a performative cycle of creation, collapse, and rebirth. Temporary structures made of wooden frames and cardboard (3.5 × 3.5 × 7 feet) were moved by individual performers across the square. As they shifted pos...

The Grey Album is the culmination point of multiple years of recordings featuring electric guitar, electric bass guitar, vocals, various effects, and electronic beats and sounds. The entire process took place in multiple countries, multiple cities, and various spaces. As such, it reflected the Nexialist Organization's coda as a transdisciplinary platform connecting architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry. An evolution of Fragment King’s hybrid sound, Grey Album fused treated bass, digital rhythm, and voice into a dense, cinematic soundscape that defined the project’s mature phase. Cover of the 2005 Grey Album CD-r version, Invasion Wreck Chords The cover is the part of the album that was created first. It shows a segment of one of Donald Judd's aluminum boxes exhibited in Marfa, Texas, one of 100 untitled works in mill aluminum, created between 1982–1986. I happened to be there in 1999 when I took the photo. In 1999 I als...

The Mimesis Operation was a true manifestation of what the Nexialist Organization was about: a transdisciplinary platform connecting architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry. A site-specific sound operation conducted within an architectural space, Mimesis transformed a building’s pneumatic facade into a resonant instrument, revealing the acoustic identity of architecture itself. Nexialist Operation Mimesis was realized with technical assistance from N. Tezkosar.   On May 15, 2004, the Nexialist Organization conducted an operation in the studio building Mimesis in Putzbrunn, near Munich, designed by architect Peter Haimerl. The building itself — two cube-shaped structures approximately six meters per side — served as the sound creation device. One of these cubes featured two pneumatic transparent vinyl facades that became the focus of the experiment. The operation used electroacoustic, digital-acoustic, and video recording...

Nexicon was an extension of the Nexialist Organization ethos, conceived as a transdisciplinary platform connecting architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry.  A collaboration between the Nexialist Organization and Annihilvs, Nexicon merged improvised digital sound and live performance into a raw experiment in real-time composition and technological deconstruction. Nexicon consisted of Mark Kammerbauer, Lee Bartow, and Tim Spann. The project represented a digital tour-de-force of improvisational sound — non-linear, non-semantic, and uncompromising. The trio sought truly spontaneous uses of digital tools, often pushing their equipment to destruction. This is what free jazz might eventually sound like in fifty years. Simple Things Are Often Monstrous von Nexicon   The recordings of Nexicon range from introspective and mysterious to violent and explosive. Initially intended as a one-off live appearance at Pyramid in New...

The Nexialist Organization, founded in 2000, was intended as a transdisciplinary platform connecting architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry. One of its key projects of the early years was Torso. I recorded and produced material extensively for this project. This blogpost deals with one set of recordings in particular: An experimental study in sonic architecture, Generating Space transformed digitally processed sound into an exploration of imaginary spatial perception. Generating Space is an experimental audio–spatial study in which generated and processed sonic environments serve as perceptive catalysts for the creation of imaginary architectural spaces. The process reverses conventional creation: imagined structures become the origin of the sounds, forming the tectonic substrate that defines the audible phenomena. The compositions employ a minimal, industrial, and digital ambient aesthetic — clicks, noise, an...