Hans Peter Kuhn

Artist and composer, was born in Kiel (DE), lives and works in Berlin (DE) and Amino/Kyoto (JP). He started his artistic career as early as the age of 6 when he performed in the theatre class of his school. Being 14 years old he initiated his first Rock’n’ Roll band and in 1975 he started his professional career at the Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer in Berlin (now Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz).

There he worked as a sound designer on the productions of Peter Stein, Klaus-Michael Grueber, Luc Bondy and others (e.g. “Shakespeare’s Memory”, “As You Like It”, “Winterreise”, “Die Wupper”).

In his last season at the Schaubühne he got together with Robert Wilson and they created “Death, Destruction & Detroit” as their first collaboration which was to be followed by more then 30 other productions in the next years. These coproductions include not only theatre pieces but also videos and installations

After Kuhn left the Schaubühne in 1979 he concentrated more and more on his own artistic work and created since then a huge body of work. He mainly created sound- and light installations, radioplays, composed film music, and music and environments for theatre and – since 1989 – also for dance.

In 1985 he founded – in collaboration with others – Berlin’s first private radio station which later became RADIO 100 where he had a weekly show on new music called “Die Audionauten” (The Audionauts) which was run in the final years by Niko Tenten. This program became popular not only in the former West-Berlin but also in the east part of the city where people enjoyed to hear new music, which was not available in their country.

The most prestigious award was the “Golden Lion” of the Venice Biennale 1993 that was given to Robert Wilson and Kuhn for the installation “Memory/Loss”. Since 2012 he is a guest professor at the the master class Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at the Universität der Künste (University of the Arts) in Berlin (DE).

website is still in progress but will be completed successively