Thuringia

History
The Queps Visual Art Group was founded in Ilmenau in 1998 as one of the first VJ crews in Thuringia. Initially, the crew focused on creating visuals for techno music on the EastSidass Nerven Tour 2001, which took them all over Germany and Austria. Later, the genres of soul and drum and bass were added. Among other things, Queps broadcast a VJ programme on the regional channels in Weimar and Mühlhausen long before YouTube existed.

This was followed by forays into dub and reggae, with performances in Leipzig and, for many years, in Freiburg im Breisgau. Queps performed with various bands across a wide range of musical genres, including Gimpel Akwa, Radikal Dub Kollektive, Mr. Sushi in front of 5,000 people, Marc Foggo, Folfonic, Raga Twins and TokTok. Queps made appearances across Europe. Queps was also active in the field of new music, collaborating with Steffen Koch and Lothar Voigtländer on the world premiere of *dialogue on cause*, and with Kurt Komell on Peter Helmut Lang’s piece *Vanitas*. In recent years, the *Performanie* project emerged, featuring interactive, immersive installations that have been exhibited in Greece, Münster, Jena and at other events. Kurt Komell’s project *Zyklus des Lebens* (*Cycle of Life*), a spiritual journey presented as a VJ film in nine acts, was created in 2021. Steffen Koch programmed the *Videsizer*, a feedback-based video synthesiser.