Cats and Dogs and Pop-Kultur

Berlin’s Pop-Kultur takes place this week – featuring the kind of considered line-up and unique events list that the international festival has become renowned for since its inception three years ago.

With ABRA, Arab Strap, La Femme and Young Fathers all given top billing, there’s also a full programme of exhibitions, lectures and talks exploring – you guessed it – pop-culture going on throughout.

Tom Krell (better known as How To Dress Well) will take part in a unique lecture and performance alongside critic Jens Balzer, looking at the evolution of pop-music in the last decade, while Lady Leshurr opens up about mental health in the music industry. Exhibition Hypesticker delves into the aesthetic styling of the stickers that adorned the CD cases and vinyl sleeves before music was digitalised.

If you’ve been in the city in the last few weeks, you’re probably aware of the festival already – its campaign has been pretty hard to miss. The brainchild of British artist Scott King – formerly of Sleazenation and i-D – the posters comprise a series of heart-eye inducing puppies and kittens announcing the events headliners that have been plastered high and low across Berlin.

Before the festival begins on Wednesday, we caught up with Scott to discuss the campaign, his creative process and who he’ll be seeing at this year’s Pop-Kultur.

BEST FIT: Hi Scott. So, tell me: why puppies and kittens?
Scott King: I was looking for a series of something that worked as great poster images and on social media. Initially, I tried to think of some kind of illustration, but one night it occurred to me that we didn't need an illustration, we needed a mirror. We just needed to re-present what was already there, what was already popular – images that have a mass appeal. Norman Palm and Malte Rettberg – who I worked on this with – saw the puppies and kittens as a great illustration of 'pop culture today', which is the same as seeing them as a mirror, I guess.

What was your thought process when creating the images?
Well, in this instance, it was just a case of looking for the cutest kittens and puppies – my brief to myself was 'if it's cute, it's in'. This isn't as easy as it sounds though – there are literally millions of kitten and puppy images to choose from, so it was a long process, we had to fine-tune it.

Was it a case of assigning each kitten to an artist at random or did you look at a particular kitten and think (for example) 'that one brings to mind Scottish post-folk indie music so that one’s going with Arab Strap!'?
That's a good question! Martin Hossbach from Pop-Kultur was brilliant here; he said "the images should absolutely not be illustrations of the artists" – and he was right. When you're looking at thousands of similar cute images, it's very difficult not to think "this cat looks a bit like Aidan Moffat", but of course you have to fight that.

The first incarnation of this idea had images of Leonardo DiCaprio, hard gym bodies, sunsets and 'food-porn' so the idea was to mirror the broader culture we see on Instagram. it worked, because there was strange poetry in putting the words ‘Romano’, ‘Young Fathers’ or ‘Balbina’ underneath this disconnected image – it was very exciting, I thought. But in the end, we narrowed the images down to puppies and kittens, because they were so universally loved, unlike the food-porn or aeroplane wing photographs.

Are you going to Pop-Kultur this year and if so, who's on your must-see list?
Yes, I’ll definitely be there. I'll see Arab Strap, Balbina, Romano, Fishbach, ABRA, Andreas Dorau and Lady Leshurr to name just a few. it's a brilliant line-up this year, I want to see as much as possible.

Of the talks and installations, which would you most recommend we see this year?
How to Dress Well and Jens Balzer in conversation. I'm a great fan of Jens, he's a very funny man.

What are you working on before planning next year’s Pop-Kultur campaign comes around again?
I have a new solo show at Studio Voltaire in London at the end of November and a new commissioned work for No! Music festival at HKW in Berlin around the same time.

Pop-Kultur runs to 25 August. Find out more at pop-kultur.berlin