How and why did the Nexialist Organization come into existence? It may have started with my childhood in the US Tri-State Area, where my father managed a racing team for the Pocono, Indy 500 and Can-Am races, with the high-octane deep bass growl of the Porsche 917 as soundtrack. It may have started in my teenage years after relocating to Germany when I discovered all forms of underground music from Grindcore to Industrial. It may have started in my years as an architecture student when I discovered Iannis Xenakis and how to create sequences using a PC. It was a small step from tape experiments to DAT demos, from live sets to vinyl releases – under the alias of Fragment King. Moving to the US after my uni years came with a plan: record music and release it. The Nexialist Organization was born and the Halforganic Series came to life. Many collaborations took place during these years and continued when I returned to Germany. The music shifted into metallic realms by using electric and bas...

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 ...

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 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...

While it predates the founding of the Nexialist Organization, the Xenakis Emulator encapsulates its core intention as a transdisciplinary platform connecting architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry.  An audiovisual homage to architect–composer Iannis Xenakis, the Xenakis Emulator recreated the structural logic of his composition Metastaseis and Le Corbusier’s monastery facade La Tourette through synchronized digital sound and animation. The Xenakis Emulator is a digital reinterpretation of these two key works. The project transformed the mathematical and musical relationships underlying both works into a synchronized audiovisual experience. In the 1950s, Xenakis collaborated with Le Corbusier on La Tourette, developing the rhythmic spacing of the vertical facade elements. These intervals mirrored the glissandi patterns of Metastaseis, composed at the same time. The Nexialist project translated this relationship into sound ...

Before the Nexialist Agency, there was the Nexialist Organization, a platform for my media projects. It all began 25 years ago ... The Nexialist Organization was conceived as a transdisciplinary platform connecting architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry.    Astronaut logo created by Liis Roden Nexialist was founded to establish a platform for creative enterprises located between tangible architecture and audible music, with visual text as the binding element. Hence our motto: sound as architecture, architecture as text, text as design, design as sound. The nexus between these disciplines also inspired the tri-head — the un-copyrightable emblem of the Nexialist Organization. Rooted in methodologies derived from architectural and media theory, Nexialist applies these principles to projects spanning audio and visual production, design, text, action, and live performance.  The platform Nexialist.com was created in 2000 b...

Sometimes I write about music and how it influences society – and vice versa. Here is a letter to experimental percussion pioneer and master Z'EV that was intended as an invited contribution to a workshop on the topic of "doom and gloom". The letter was never published, however, until now. From 2005 to 2017, when he passed, I had the honor and opportunity of learning from him and playing and recording music with him. This letter was part of our conversation at the time. Resilient Ears for Doom - Extreme Music and Coping Capacity Dear z'ev, there was something I was wondering about and given your knowledge on music I hope we can discuss the matter somehow. It actually relates to two of my main interests - disaster and music. The thing that I am wondering about is whether music can contribute to the capacity of people to cope with stressful situations or even disaster. I'll try to be more specific: in developed countries, there are forms of emergency management and ...

Sometimes I write about music and how it influences architecture and the city – and vice versa. Here is a text about interrelations between music and cities from an urbanistic viewpoint, with Los Angeles and Slayer as examples.  Lost Angeles: Slayer's Hell Urbanism Author: Mark Kammerbauer Publication details: unpublished manuscript, 2024 1. Introduction: The city as mirage of counter-culture The music, lyrics and visuals created by bands can be indicative of the urban life their members experience. Their work can be seen as a form of dialogue between the music cultures they participate in and the urban spaces they inhabit. This dialogue establishes an interrelation between the musician's city of reality and the music's city of imagination. Perceived this way, music becomes a medium of alternative visions of the city or audible utopias and dystopias. The question this perception raises is: What kind of imaginary city do musicians envision and what does it tell us about the ...

Live At SI von Fragment King This track is special to me in a number of ways. Black Iron Prison was only played live, since it is the superimposition of the sequencing parts of two independent tracks. There is no "original" studio recording version. It was exclusively released on the LIVE AT SI tape cassette issued by Nexialist in 2001 in the "Halforganic" series. Live, it turned into a juggernaut that paved the way towards the angry metal noise machine that Fragment King would soon become. And then, the title ... it is, of course, a reference to Philip K. Dick and his novel VALIS. Dick writes about the idea of the Black Iron Prison in a way that resonated with me as a reader. The feeling of being caged in is a powerful and pervasive one – the superimposition of multiple forms of incarceration of the mind and the soul – and music seems to be the only force that can liberate one from this feeling. Dick states: "Once, in a cheap science fiction novel, [Horselover...

The Navidson Record von M. Kammerbauer When I discovered Mark Z. Danielewski's "House of Leaves" in a bookstore during my early zeros US "interlude" I was completely fascinated by his idea of a house that was bigger on the inside than on the outside – and the way the book was structured and designed. My copy eventually fell apart, drenched by water and warped by reading it on the train. Back then, it inspired me to design a set of recordings that eventually became "Schismotecture" or "The Navidson Record". The featured track is from those recordings and the title, "The Five An A Half Minute Hallway", is another reference to Danielewski's book. This one and the other tracks of the album proper (the Bandcamp version features a further architectural audio experiment from a different project, "Game Piece for Architecture") feature an ambient and noisy blend of industrial with a mysterious character evoking the emotions tri...