Intuition Festival: Night 2

Through live music and short films, Intuition Festival touches on themes in The Broad’s collection exhibition, Joseph Beuys: In Defense of Nature. On the outdoor stage, German guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Michael Rother and his band perform from his repertoire of works by Harmonia and NEU!, both of which he co-founded in the early 1970s. Shabazz Palaces simultaneously melds and abstracts jazz, hip hop, and African percussion influences while paying tribute to artists such as Can, Kraftwerk, and Tangerine Dream with a solo DJ set. Both Rother and Shabazz Palaces integrate custom-projected visuals into their sets. Alejandro (Ale) Cohen, Music Director at KCRW, will be playing vinyl from his personal collection to open the event, representing the genre known as “Krautrock” and related contemporary music. His DJ set will trace the lineage sparked by artists such as Michael Rother and Kraftwerk and contextualize their work with those they have influenced over the decades.

On the indoor stage, local punk band Sage Against the Machine deliver a raucous set of songs paying homage to California’s native plant species. Composer, musician, and builder Money Mark demonstrates his innovation and experimentation on keyboard and self-made instruments, and queer musician Saturn Risin9 shares their journey of perseverance with a short film centering self-discovery, healing, and creative expansion through documentary, dance, visual narrative, and performance.

Over the course of two nights, the combined artist lineups of Intuition Festival delve into the impact of our collective experiences and the healing of body and mind, environmental consciousness, political activism, and social change. Connecting it all is an acknowledgment of the lasting influence of the highly experimental Krautrock movement, which emerged in post-World War II Germany when Beuys was active as both an artist and a professor at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Intuition Festival takes its name from Beuys’s most widely distributed multiple, Intuition (1968). Empty wooden boxes with the word “Intuition” penciled inside were sold inexpensively to thousands of people, illustrating both a democratization of art and the potential for viewers to imbue such artworks with their own personal meanings.