In 1995, Alex Murray-Leslie and Melissa E. Logan, students at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, entered a painting competition. One painted, the other wrote slogans and created collages. Together, they named themselves and founded a performance art collective: Chicks on Speed.

By the turn of the millennium, the collective had developed its own artistic practice, drawing influences from radical 20th-century art movements such as Dada, Fluxus, Situationism, and Queer Feminism, and extending far beyond the disciplinary boundaries common at the time. Their first project, the legendary "Seppi Bar"—inspired by the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich—led them to the development of their first sound collages in collaboration with the techno club Ultraschall, as well as with DJs and producers from the electronic music scene in Munich and Vienna.

The exhibition explores nearly 30 years of Chicks on Speed's work. The curators and core members of the collective for this exhibition are Kathi Glas, Tina Frank, Leslie Johnson, and Alex Murray-Leslie. Other contributors include Anat Ben-David—a long-time member and influential artist in Chicks on Speed's films, performances, and music—Sophia Efstathiou, Christopher Just, Jeremiah Day, Alina Belyagina, Serge von Arx, Kangela Tromokratisch, Unnur Andrea Einarsdóttir, Wolf-Dieter Grabner, Gerhard Potuznik, Ramon Bauer, AL Steiner, Douglas Gordon, Kai Knappe, UKRAiNTV, Roman Dziadkiewicz, and Alex Posada.

"Utopia" presents a piece of contemporary history – parallel to the release of the new album HEAR&NOWTopia and the box set HEARtopia (Gronland Records, October 17). Since their founding, Chicks on Speed have initiated technological art projects such as their archive OBJEKTINSTRUMENTS, their own record label, and other curatorial ventures. In addition, they have created music, paintings, sculptures, collages, films, textile designs, critical costumes, body art, performances, artistic research, and educational workshops.

The opening will feature a performance in collaboration with the chamber choir of the South Bavarian Workshops for the Blind and Visually Impaired (SWW).

“This box set is a celebration of the collaborators Melissa and I worked with with us as catalysts - it reflects on the power of collective action and radical experimentation as a form of artistic intelligence with transformative potential. It’s a commitment to this world: imagining it and changing it through art and social action as a mode of resistance and renewal against the planetary urgencies of our time” says Alex Murray-Leslie, who started Chicks on Speed at Munich Art Academy in 1997 with fellow art student Melissa E. Logan and fashion stylist Kiki Moorse. 

Their hyper-aesthetic, culturally critiquing new album – their sixth – is titled ‘HEARandNOWtopia’ and is part of the box set. Produced by Christopher Just, Gerhard Potuznik, Ramon Bauer, Melissa E. Logan, Unnur Andrea Einarsdóttir and Armageddon Turk, its ten tracks appear across the box set and include the effervescent hi-NRG of new single ‘MEAT&Drag’ on which Chicks on Speed contextualise meat-replacement as drag. This single, and the future ones, have music videos directed by Liz Dom that they use as vehicles for cultural critique, activism and artistic research, addressing societal issues of justice, the climate and nature crises - and speaking up against the genocide in Palestine.

Chicks on Speed unveil their latest line-up: Alex Murray-Leslie joins long-time COS members of 25 years Kathi Glas, Tina Frank, and Anat Ben-David, alongside Sophia Efstathiou, Unnur Andrea Einarsdóttir, Kangela Tromokratisch, Alina Belyagina, Leslie Johnson, Tor-Ada Solberg, Mimmi Feuer, Roman Dziadkiewicz, and UKRAiNATV the Krakow stream-art collective body; human x non-human mediators, transistors, and connectors between times and spaces, blending worlds, channels, streams, and dimensions with performers and pixels.

With this new line-up, Chicks on Speed become generative, post-genre, post-gender, post-patriarchal movement-part band, part art collective, part cultural virus. Think executive realness feminism colliding with anarcho-pop drag, where sonic experiments meet wearable tech, and every performance becomes a riot of radical possibility. From gallery to stage to screen, the new COS doesn’t just blur boundaries — they shred them, remix them, and hurl them back as high-voltage critiques wrapped in glam, wit, and noise. This is not a girl group. This is an intergalactic think tank in heels.

Melissa Logan, who started the whole thing with Alex in Munich, is no longer an active member of Chicks On Speed. She has this to say about the group: “To unpack the essence of Chicks on Speed is to imagine a box with endless compartments – each representing a distinct phase of the group‘s evolution and the limitless possibilities inherent in our collaborative practice. Rather than adhering to fixed roles within a singular industry or subculture, we operated as transitory agents, visitors moving fluidly across artistic, musical, and cultural domains. Our methodology is rooted in activation and provocation.” 

Booking Agent:
Chloe Tolmer
chloe@getyouractstogether.net

Press Contact:
William Burgess
will@practisemusic.co.uk

PRINT DROP ALERT!

Chicks on Speed & Collaborators are releasing limited edition art prints straight from the UTOPIA exhibition at Museum Villa Stuck — dropping 17 October alongside exhibition opening and the brand new album and box set.

Own a piece of the show, take UTOPIA home, and support radical art in motion!

Analogue/Digital Mash-Up! Course

Shared Campus
& 
Real-Time Telematic Audio-visual Improvisation

View all pedagogical work here

ASVOFF17’s Fashion Intelligence category spotlights bold films at the crossroads of art, activism, and fashion. This new category celebrates fashion as a force for critical inquiry and collaboration, exploring identity, human rights, and sustainability. Through experimental storytelling, these works invite reflection on fashion’s power to inspire, challenge norms, and spark transformative social and cultural dialogue.

Fashion Activism Jury, pictured above from right to left:
Alex Murray-Leslie @alexmurrayleslie @chicksonspeed
Kangela Tromokratisch @kangelatromokratisch
Xabier Arakistain @arakisbang
Hanna Linnéa Ryd @_hlryd_
Liz Dom @liz.dom