Dispute arena screens and sounds | Franckesche Stiftungen Ausstellungen

Dissent or dissonance? Today's dispute in sound and vision

In the virtual space, the arena of dispute is expanding almost infinitely. As was once the case with letters, film, television and social media are now replacing face-to-face communication with technical means and not only enlarging the space of the disputants, but above all that of the participants, the audience. The different formats of the cinema screen, the television or the smartphone screen each create their own specific arenas of debate.

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The battle of the century

No genre depicts the interplay between the practices of argument and amusement more pointedly than slapstick. The name is to be understood literally here: Disputes are resolved physically and playfully by the actors hitting each other with batons. The genre is part of a long comedic theatre tradition of clowning, circus acts and fairground performances. With the cinema film, the quarrellers became larger than life, while the audience moved into the darkened cinema auditorium. Immersive yet distanced, Laurel and Hardy's "Battle of the Century" shows an escalation from minute 10:55 that can be enjoyed voyeuristically.

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"I think you're shit" - The escalating press conference on TV as a failed reconciliation

Founded in 1995, Tic Tac Toe was one of the best-known and most popular German teen bands. They made German pop more diverse, broke taboos in their lyrics, openly addressed topics such as sex, violence or even toxic masculinity and embodied being loud and cheeky, which put them in stark contrast to other so-called "girl groups" of their time. At the height of their career, the tabloid press published details of their earlier phases of life and put the band under pressure.

A press conference was organised to publicly show that the band had emerged from the situation stronger than before. This makes the now legendary TV interview in which the band publicly parted ways after a loudly escalated argument all the more puzzling. Many fans were disappointed and suspected a staged and strategically emotionalised conflict situation. In the aftermath, Tic Tac Toe were once again sexistically discriminated against in the media and denigrated as over-emotionalised, quarrelling women.

Look closely! - What (theatrical) gestures of indignation can be observed in TicTacToe?

An informal conversation situation is staged on bar stools, creating the impression of closeness to the protagonists - although they are actually sitting on a stage and communicating publicly with the microphone to the front of the audience.

Their mouths and eyes are opened as an expression of indignation. As a threatening gesture and well-known belittling, authoritarian gesture, the finger is raised several times and pointed at the opponent - almost like a symbolic stabbing (here with accusations).

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[Translate to English:] Text & Performance: FAKKT
Beat: flo

Directors: Leef Hansen & Anna Schürmer
DoP: Lars Drawert
Electrician: Pascal Kolbe
Editor: Vahid Zarei
Producer: Claus Veltmann & Leef Hansen
Make-up-Artist: Maria Harder
Set-Photography: Carolin Scheidt

FAKKT — »Gift«

Rap can be considered an artistic culture of controversy par excellence, encompassing both scenic-visual and linguistic-acoustic dimensions. It finds its performative expression in 'battles', in which 'dissent' with words, gestures and poses is elevated to a stylistic device. These cultural practices of arguing often go hand in hand with a formalised representation of mockery and embarrassment. The genre is therefore attractive for artistic taboo-breaking, with which the boundaries of what can be said are repeatedly renegotiated and staged.

In his contribution to the exhibition, the Halle rapper FAKKT slips into a role: the artist enters into a state of confrontation with internal and external perspectives of 'dissent' lyrically, acoustically and visually, which is reflected in stylised gestures, poses and speech acts in the music video. The exhibit deliberately plays with invisible and visible masquerades. What is said and shown is understood as an interpretation of contemporary digital hate comments, which are edited as fragments and (self-)critically processed in the rap.

Text & Performance: FAKKT
Beat: flo

Directors: Leef Hansen & Anna Schürmer
DoP: Lars Drawert
Electrician: Pascal Kolbe
Editor: Vahid Zarei
Producer: Claus Veltmann & Leef Hansen
Make-up Artist: Maria Harder
Set-Photography: Carolin Scheidt

Listen carefully!

Where are the limits of what can be said?

Check-Out: What is being ripped off here?

The art of biting criticism is as timeless as arguing itself. Which musician is being slated here? Have a guess!

1. "...A cat would have died and even rocks would have turned into egg dishes from fear of these horrible discords...The beginning of the third movement is a noise to tear your ears apart... You can express the whole shit in 100 bars, because it's always the same and always boring."

2 "X is tireless in his search for ear-splitting dissonances, agonising transitions, cutting modulations, disgusting contortions of melody and rhythm... If X had presented this composition to a master, he would hopefully have thrown it torn to pieces at his feet, which is what we want to do here symbolically."

3) "Here she comes closer than usual to portraying human emotions, but she still sounds like a robot [...]. The main characteristic of X's voice is a kind of razor-sharp emptiness, a mechanistic precision that rarely leaves room for real feelings to make their way through. And this emptiness, coupled with X's glaring lack of technical vocal talent, makes her a truly unlikely pop star."

4. "X [...] has a voice that takes some getting used to. At first she doesn't sound like much at all. Then you notice her only distinguishing feature, a girlish hiccup that the singer uses over and over until it's annoying as hell."

1. Richard Wagner's "Siegfried" criticised by Richard Strauss in a letter to Ludwig Thuille, 1879

2. Frédéric Chopin's "Mazurka op.7" criticised by Ludwig Rellstab in Iris, 1833

3. Rihanna's "Good Girl Gone Bad" criticised by Tom Breihan in Pitchfork, 2007

4. Madonna's "Everybody" slated by Don Shewey in Rolling Stone, 1983

Criticisms from: "Lexicon of Musical Invective. Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time" by Nicolas Slonimsky (1953 / 2000)

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Check-In

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Dispute arena screens and sounds