Boulevard

As we know from various types of pop star TV shows, being a superstar has recently become a career, which demands first and foremost, diligence: 24/7 and everywhere. The performance group Martin & The evil eyes of Nur carries this fetish to ironic extremes in its videos. In Boulevard, the two fictional characters Herr Leitung and Pussy Hass, anchored musically somewhere between Sin with Sebastian and Jens Friebe, pose with huge gestures and broken pathos at the most unglamorous sites in Vienna — in a subway station, on an utterly unglamorous tribune with water spots on the ceiling, at a streetcar stop, and in front of a container terminal. The sites they bring to life with their queer camp glamour are impersonal, urban, through stations.
The two do indeed sing of a “boulevard” that they step out onto, “always handsome, always fit,” of “botox-faces everywhere,” but, of course, they toil away on their boulevard of broken pop star dreams without any audience whatsoever. Everything is a stage and no one is watching.
The trio Martin & The evil eyes of Nur, founded in Istanbul in 2009, made up of Herr Leitung and Pussy Hass (performers), and Kaiser Kurzweil, who is responsible for theory and concept, ultimately hold up a distorted mirror before the worlds of pop music, fashion, and art.
“Being natural, being real,” everything is natural, everything is fake, “made of plastic, made of steel,” the borders have long been blurred. They wear their meanwhile trademark stockings and red pumps; the band once again satirizing the classical male image. In their first video the two performers already staged themselves as "One Hit Wanters." Here, they play with American football shoulder pads in partner look, with a visual style based on artist couples such as Gilbert & George.

(Karin Cerny)


The second video by the performance group Martin & the evil eyes of Nur: Unsightly urban spaces serve as locations for portrayals of two self-anointed superstars. The lyrics, which describe the self-destructive world of out-of-touch popstars, are accompanied by trashy electro music.
Visually the two characters, Herr Leitung and Pussy Hass, do their popstar thing; they freewheel their way into the void in absurd images.

(Production Note)


Boulevard describes the self-destructive world of out-of-touch popstars, accompanied by trashy electro music. Visually the two characters, Herr Leitung and Pussy Hass, do their popstar thing; they freewheel their way into the void in absurd images.

(Diagonale Film Festival, Catalog, 2011)


Two self-declared superstars, who are actually three. Herr Leitung and Pussy Hass from the queer performance trio Martin & The evil eyes of Nur have gotten dolled up. Dressed in a futuristic glamour/fetish look, they transform urban un-sites into individual runways with poses, singing, and self-staging. The container terminal serves as a stage – “walking down the boulevard, screaming fans and cameras.” High-quality fireworks of trash, subversion in electro garb.

(Diagonale Film Festival, Catalog, 2011)