Draft:Dietrich Albrecht (artist)

Dietrich Albrecht, also known as Albrecht/d (April 21, 1944 - February 12, 2013), was a German artist, experimental musician, and activist, specializing in Fluxus, mail art, performance art, and various other avant-garde artforms since the 1970s.

Early life
Albrecht was born in Nordhausen and moved to Stuttgart in 1968, where his mother lived. After leaving school, he took a job as a bank clerk, which he held until 1965. In 1966, he left his job and decided to become an artist, becoming the art teacher at a high school in Stuttgart in 1968 until he retired in 2007.

Influences
According to fellow artist Bernd Löbach, Albrecht was somewhat influenced by Raoul Hausmann, with whom Albrecht corresponded with until his death in 1971. Together, they published works by Hans Arp, Kurt Schwitters, and John Heartfield. . In 1965, Albrecht got involved with the Fluxus movement, and took part and organized some of their "happenings". His art was considered controversial in his native Stuttgart, still focused on the Informalism movement of the 1950s.

Publishing
In 1968, he founded the "flug/fluxBlattzeitung" magazine, and his own publishing company, Reflection Press. He published a wide variety of material, such as posters, pamphlets, books, and audio cassettes created by artists such as Wolf Vostell, Ben Vautier, Milan Knížák, and Throbbing Gristle, among others. The Reflection Press publishing house ended in 1988, having published 50 numbered and many unnumbered editions. He continued publishing things under the name "Kinky Beaux Arts", on a much smaller scale. Under this name, most of the publications were either his own work or collaborations.

Early 1970s: political art

 * In 1970, he took part in the 10th Tokyo Biennale.
 * In 1971, Albrecht, alongside Wolf Vostell & Günter Sarée, founded the Unabhängige Olympische Komitee ("Independent Olympic Committee"), dedicated to opening up an artistic program for the upcoming 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. They published several articles, including a manifesto & posters, and created an anthem for the Olympics made up of laughter.
 * In 1972, he became head of the "Europe-Latin America Committee", which had been founded as a union between West German & Latin American leftists.
 * In 1973, he took part in an exhibition at the Kunstverein in Hannover, called "Kunst im Politischen Kampf" (Art in Political Struggle), which included a 2 day long panel discussion where artists were able to give their opinions on the subject in detail. Each artist involved was asked 5 questions by the organizers of the exhibiton.

Albrecht was asked "Who would you like to reach in the future?", with his response being: "Broad sections of the population who are almost exclusively reached via the medium of television", when asked "What could your contribution to this exhibition trigger in visitors?", he replied with, "To start dealing with political issues ourselves and to produce collages and photomontages with political content", The answer to the question "What do you expect from this exhibition? What do you want it to achieve?" contained a statement that was also one of the main points of his art: "Not to produce exclusive works for the art public using elaborate printing techniques, but to use reproduction techniques (offset printing, photocopying, etc.) in order to appeal to more people than just a few 'insiders'."

In 1973, he started to distance himself from the Fluxus movement, believing that the people involved were only doing "art for art's sake". He also tried to reach people outside of museums and galleries, doing exhibitions at record stores, hospitals, cultural centers, and cafes.

International activities
In 1974, Albrecht took part in the "Art Into Society - Society Into Art" exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, where he did a concert with Joseph Beuys, who he had met in Stuttgart in 1968. He released the concert on LP in 1976.

Further international participations were the Biennale de Paris in 1977, the festival "Feu Rouge" in Strasbourg in 1980, "USINE PALI KAO" in Paris in 1982, "Mercato Del Sale (Ugo Carrega)" in Milan in 1985, "40 Years of Art in Germany 1945 - 1985", at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 1985/86, "Medium Photocopy" at the Goethe-Institut, New York in 1988 and the "Performance Festival" in Zurich in 1989.

Music
Albrecht had been involved in avant-garde music since the late 1960s, and up until 1971 he had hosted various Fluxus concerts in Göttingen, Cologne, Stuttgart and Kirchheim unter Teck. At first, he introduced his style as "Dilletantism", but by 1972 had started to call it "Music of Silence and Meditation", and from 1973 onwards introduced it as "Endless Music". His main inspiration was Balinese gamelan music and elements of Buddhist theology. While the names and style changed, these influences remained constant.

Albrecht built his own instruments, often times percussion but he experimented with strings and playable wire installations measuring 5 meters or longer. He also experimented with wind instruments.

Visual arts
Albrecht wished to not only appeal to people & introduce them to art, but also to political & social issues. He worked extensively with printing & copying techniques, writing a book on the subject. In Stuttgart, he offered workshops on the then newfound color copier, especially on its artistic use.

Postcards played an important role in his work, allowing him to send pictures to well-known addressees and receive other artistically designed cards in return. Envelopes, his own stamps, his own banknotes, telegrams, parcels and dispatch rolls were also among the "carriers of the messages". He often took part in mail art. In addition to posters and individual sheets, Albrecht began sticking copied and edited sheets onto cardboard at the beginning of the 1970s and binding them together with parcel string to form so-called "ensembles". This resulted in kaleidoscope-like structures and folded leaflets that related different aspects and motifs to one another. At the same time, this concept made it possible to create a three-dimensional effect by highlighting and angling parts of the ensemble.

Political & social activism
Albrecht took part in many campaigns, taking part in the 1988 "Pictures for Africa" campaign initiated by Aloys Ohlmann & supporting the initiate to display them at the Theaterhaus, Stuttgart. He also took part in the "Vote Immigrants into City Hall" campaign for the 1989 Stuttgart municipal elections, and supported a bill that would assist the Stuttgart homeless population.

In 1983, he donated several of his pieces to the "German Artists Help Polish Artists" initiative, and in 1993 took part in the "Art for Chocolate" campaign, which supported children in Tuzla during the Bosnian War.

Influence & legacy
Despite his eclectic output over several decades, Albrecht has stayed relatively obscure in his native Stuttgart outside of niche art circles. His scathing criticism of the Stuttgart art scene, his subversive art, and to a wider extent, his refusal to adapt to trends caused him to fall into obscurity. He told his friends and fellow artists that his work "was more appreciated in all of the world more than in Stuttgart". However, he refused to leave his so-called "Stuttgart exile", and even after reunification, refused to return to his birthplace of Nordhausen.

Like many other artists at the time, Albrecht had ties to the punk scene, finding the directness, subversiveness, and amateurish quality fascinating. He made many friends in the scenes, and several members staged an exhibit from 2015-2016 at the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, called "An Evening For Albrecht/d."

Albrecht was married to Japanese painter Kyoko Ima. He died on February 12, 2013 in his apartment in Stuttgart Bad Cannstatt & is buried at the Pragfriedhof cemetery in Stuttgart.

Albrecht/d. was featured on the Nurse with Wound list.

Literature

 * Catalog for the exhibition "Happening und Fluxus", Stuttgart 1970/71, collaboration Albrecht/d.
 * "Handlungen", OMNIBUS PRESS + Mixed Media Edition, edited by Peter Below, München und Kitzingen 1976.
 * Albrecht/d. + Tim Osterwold; "Politische Collage – Künstler aus Baden-Württemberg", Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart 1983.
 * "Albrecht/d. - Collage, Geklebtes, Mix 1975 - 1985", edited by Bernd Löbach-Hinweiser, Designbuch Verlag Cremlingen 1986, ISBN 3-923971-10-9.
 * "Der VFB grüßt den tapferen Vietkong, Stuttgart in den 60er Jahren", Flugasche Verlag, Stuttgart, 1989, ISBN 3-925286-93-4.
 * "Albrecht/d. GEWALT als ein perpetuum mobile … und der Weg zur Erkenntnis der Leere!“ Catalog for the exhibition at the Städtische Galerie Schloß Salder, Salzgitter 1992.
 * “Albrecht/d. – … Versuch, die Codes für das Scannen und Verarbeiten mit dem Computer zu verbessern…”, edited by Bernd Löbach-Hinweiser, Designbuch Verlag Cremlingen 1996, ISBN 3-923971-52-4.
 * “Albrecht/d.: Ein politisch engagierter Künstler”, edited by Bernd Löbach-Hinweiser, Designbuch Verlag Cremlingen 2005, ISBN 3-923971-65-6.
 * “ALBREcHt/d.: Zum Berühmtsein eigentlich keine Zeit”, edited by Peter Haury for Oberwelt e.V., EDITIONrandgruppe Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-981692-65-5