032c Presents ‘Die Tödliche Doris’

Radical 1980s collective Die Tödliche Doris made the Berlin punk scene look establishment and the avant-garde look straight-laced. Anti-institution, anti-norm, and anti-hierarchy, the unsung West Berlin group is the provocation behind 032c’s new apparel collaboration.

Designed by 032c Apparel creative director Maria Koch in collaboration with the group’s co-founder Wolfgang Müller, the garments feature imagery, lyrics, and leitmotifs from the Die Tödliche Doris archive, recombined and reproduced alongside new materials for a collection in the spirit of Berlin-Schöneberg, where the 032c headquarters now sit just around the corner from Die Tödliche Doris Haus.

Stop

The information has been given.
Everything is known.
There is nothing new anymore.
There is nothing new anymore.
Human decay in front of department stores
Shopper’s queues
special offers
The information has been given.
People have to die
because everything is known.
The information is immortal.
People have to die
because everything is known.
The information is given
and becomes independent.
Everything is done.
Perfect. Perfect.
The mechanism expands itself, (device) outside
of itself.
New information proliferates.
The information has been given.
Stop Stop Stop Stop Stop the information!
Stop!
Stop! Stop! Stop!

“Stop der Information” from the album Ohne Titel (1981)

The lyrics to a 1981 Die Todliche Doris song “Stop der Information” seem to speak to the current digital age, channeling both our hyper-attachment to mobile technology – through which we consume COVID statistics and crowd-sourced protest updates on social media apps – and our collective skepticism of the data-harvesting and unreliable news facilitated by these same platforms. Die Tödliche Doris’ words convey the contradiction and exhaustion many of us are feeling today, highlighting the unsustainability of our info consumption, and channeling the feeling that follows every new item or discovery: that it has happened before, and that the cycle must, somehow, stop.

The Sex Toy drawings that feature in the 032c Apparel collection are part of a series of works by artist, actor, and clothing designer Tabea Blumenschein (1952 – 2020). A core member of Die Tödliche Doris and a force of the Berlin scene, Blumenschein was known for her performative costume designs and the anarchist elegance of her uncategorizable personal style.

Following Die Tödliche Doris, anti-brand, anti-monumental impulse, the 032c Apparel collection uses images of Berlin beyond its architectural attractions – namely, pictures of local wildlife inhabiting the city’s unmanicured parks. Foxes, ducks, and wild boar run free to the tune of “Furturistenpartei” (“Futurists Party”), performed at the Geniale Dilletanten festival in Berlin in 1981, in which the group imagines eliminating distinctions between built and green space, between human progress and nature: “The animals are stuffed / Open the national parks / In the name of the law / The destruction of archaeology / Why so revolutionary / Why so modern? / The world consists of molecules.”

Discover the full ‘Die Tödliche Doris’ collection from 032c now in-store and online.

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