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DJ NUL grew up in Munich, living between 2000 and 2007 in a variety of illegal squats: "Anywhere that would hold the decks and our electronics." He came to be generally recognised as the driving force behind Crew Radix, a part of the so-called "Scene Unconscious" or "Szene Unbewubt" movement which had its birth in that city, and home to a number of other seminal figures, including Dieter Hoeness and Karmina Maslansky. Due to the group's Anti-Ad stance, rooted in a certain disgust for the culture around them (what they saw as "the attitude" or "Die Haltung") performances were so underground that often their whereabouts would be concealed even from close friends of the group. On several occasions, members of the Crew itself were deliberately not informed of the location of a performance, with the result that the events had to be cancelled. |
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Performances were often radical, with the general feeling being that "there was a need to do more, to contradict, to step outside what we were actually doing at every turn." This stepping-outside (or so-called "Tretenaubenseite") came to include some highly unusual means of playing their instruments, a number of (generally illegal) techniques for "audience manipulation", and their controversial use of fluids, later to be seized on by an increasingly hostile press. (See also their contribution to the ground-breaking NEU exhibition).
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The lifestyle of the group was also non-standard: in 2006 NUL had gone through a period of obsession with psychological change, and got everyone heavily into the use of what was archly referred to as "Switzerland". Under its influence, the members of the group would "become each other" in a randomly-generated rota which switched once a week, taking each other's role in the group, playing their instruments, acting "like" them. Towards the end, this practice was said to include the "fruits" of the group members, and this among other factors seems to have led to the eventual breakup of the collective.
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