The Dorf, Achim Zepezauer – Das Ende Der Kohle

"Das Ende der Kohle", an animated film, realized from the ranks of the improvisers' orchestra The Dorf, joined with a composition featuring improvised elements.
The artist Achim Zepezauer, himself a long-time member of The Dorf on electronics and percussion, works with a mixed technique combining animation and video segments shot in the Ruhrgebiet, Germany's rustbelt. Jan Klare, composer/director of the orchestra, developed a piece of music that refers directly to this film. "Das Ende der Kohle" (which can be alternately translated/interpreted as "the end of coal" or "the end of cash") is an approximately 30-minute-long total artwork, which deals in the wider sense with the conditions for artistic production as well as with those for work in general - while exhibiting strong points of reference to the Ruhr region. The film treats the question of the relationship between the "raw material/mone" and "wealth/artistic flowering", drawing analogues in the process to the idea of alchemy, which deals with the transubstantiation of "worthless" materials into gold. Thus, one can read the film as the documentation of an alchemical experiment, performed by a character who possesses special powers when it comes to forward motion.