Tickets went on sale Wednesday morning for the iconic electro pop band Kraftwerk, at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, bringing down the website and leaving the self managed ticket sales to an in-house system, unable to cope with the traffic. The band who are to perform eight seminal albums with highly advanced 3D audiovisual shows sold out on the phone but took hours for the limited staff to take all of the calls personally. On the day the tickets went on sale, the telephone lines and the archaic website, designed at best to sell a few Damien Hirst tickets and mugs was sticking. A message was later uploaded explaining that the website was not functioning and to use the phone lines. Fans who were willing to pay the exorbitant £60 price for tickets to one of the concerts were left empty handed. It is quite likely that the inexperienced Gallery have sold the bulk of the concert tickets to the touts, who should be banned from such profiteering. The Tate press office declined to comment and refused to give press tickets away, saying that “the concert would be oversubscribed”. Twitter was a buzz with less than complementary views of the Tate’s handling of this event.
The German electronic music pioneers will play eight live performances in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall from 6 – 14 February 2013, their first London dates since 2004. KRAFTWERK – THE CATALOGUE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 will be a chronological exploration of the group’s sonic and visual experiments and will present eight classic masterworks from across their celebrated repertoire with 3D visualisations and effects. Combining sound and images, the performances will showcase nearly 40 years of musical and technical innovation, including new improvisations, 3D projections and animation. Commencing with Autobahn, each night will cover one of Kraftwerk’s groundbreaking studio albums in full and appear in order of their release — Autobahn (1974), Radio-Activity (1975), Trans Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978),Computer World (1981), Techno Pop (1986), The Mix (1991) and Tour de France (2003) — alongside additional compositions from their back-catalogue.
Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider began the Kraftwerk project in 1970 at their electronic Kling Klang Studio in Düsseldorf, Germany. Within a few years they had achieved international recognition for their revolutionary electro “sound paintings” and musical experimentation with tapes and synthesizers. With their visions of the future they created the soundtrack for the digital age. Their compositions, using innovative looping techniques and computerised rhythms, have had a major international influence across a range of music genres. Their use of robotics and other technical innovations in live performance illustrates Kraftwerk’s belief in the respective contributions of both man and machine in creating art.
Last April, Kraftwerk played MoMA in New York presenting a chronological exploration of the sonic and visual experiments of Kraftwerk with a live presentation of their complete repertoire in the Museum’s Marron Atrium. In recent years, starting with their performance at the Venice Biennale in 2005, Kraftwerk has been invited into the visual arts context, festivals, and museums, most recently performing at Lenbachhaus Kunstbau in Munich. In contrast to all former presentations, where Kraftwerk videos, visuals, or the “robots” were presented in a museum context but performances were staged as concerts, MoMA is realizing a groundbreaking new display: the first synthetic retrospective to present, simultaneously and in one location, Kraftwerk’s complex layers of music, sound, videos, sets, and performance as a total work of art. The tickets were outsourced and sold in a smooth orderly fashion.
Tate’s Response…
Tickets for Kraftwerk at Tate Modern
Kraftwerk at Tate Modern has just gone on sale and we are experiencing a phenomenal demand for tickets which is affecting our web server.
Please call 020 7887 4919, there is a queue capacity please keep trying.
We have extra staff on hand today but demand is extremely high.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you, and hope you are successful in getting your tickets.
– Tate