Punk in the National Capital Region

Thomas Venker lives and works in Cologne, Germany.

He is co-publisher and co-editor-in-chief of Kaput – Magazine for Bankruptcy & Pop, and co-curator of the concert series “Köln ist kaput” and “Talking Kaput.” In recent years, Kaput has received numerous accolades, including the Rocco Clein Award for Best Music Magazine (2015), the VUT Award for Best Experiment (2016), and three Anchor Awards, the music journalism prize presented by Hamburg’s Reeperbahn Festival, for articles by its contributors in 2018, 2019, and 2020.

Before founding Kaput in 2014, Venker served for 14 years as editor-in-chief of Intro Magazine, at the time Germany’s highest-circulation music magazine, with a print run of 150,000 copies. In 2008, Intro received the Grimme Online Award for its groundbreaking digital presence.
Venker regularly contributes to a wide range of magazines and daily newspapers, moderates panels and symposia for cultural institutions, runs the art vinyl label Edition Fieber, and is part of the curatorial team of the Monheim Triennale.

In addition to his journalistic work, he teaches music journalism and artist marketing at several German universities, including the Institute for Popular Music at the Folkwang University of the Arts, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Paderborn University, and the University of Cologne.

He also advises musicians on career development and has worked with artists and projects such as Sid LeRock, Phillip Sollmann (Efdemin), the audiovisual performance project Phantom Kino Ballett (Sarah Szczesny & Lena Willikens), and the performance collective LABOUR.

Most recently, his book Talking to Americans was published by Ventil Verlag in Mainz.

https://kaput-mag.com/en/