Chicks On Speed

Chicks on Speed is a multi-national musical and fine art ensemble, formed in Munich in 1997, when members Melissa Logan and Alex Murray-Leslie met at the Academy of Fine Arts.

Though usually known from the 2000s as part of such musical genres as electroclash, Chicks on Speed actually started as a multidisciplinary art group who applied punk-inspired DIY ethic to performance art, collage graphics and fashion (they have created their own stage costumes).

They originally got their name when they worked at Haus Der Kunst hanging paintings very fast, someone quipped that they worked like "chicks on speed".

They had an illegal bar "Seppi Bar". It was a project based on the Caberet Voltair in Zurich where the Dada artists met and performed. Chicks on Speed met Kiki Moorse and asked her to be in a video they made for an exhibition, Für die Bessere Welt at Lothringer strasse Kunstlerwerkstatt. They created an installation piece named I Wanna Be A DJ...Baby!. They stood behind DJ decks and smashed records while a sound collage tape was playing. For this project they also put together a "box set" with a T-shirt, a cassette, a paper record and a fake interview for their "band". During this time they met Upstart (a.k.a. Peter Wacha) of Disko B record label who joined their freshly started record label, Go Records, which later become Chicks on Speed Records with jeurgen Söder. Go Records was a suicide label, the release numbers started at 10 and went down to zero, the motto was, perhaps what is wrong with the world is that things are made to grow & get bigger, the 10 releases were mostly very limited as well.