auf die Straße gehen, auf die Straße tragen…

Both in the past and the present, people came and come to the streets. They come to the streets because they are for or (mostly) against something. But what does protest actually sound like? This work started from the abstract concept of protest itself: the manifestation of a collective action to interrupt, change, challenge an existing situation. It explores different phenomena of protest from both past and present and attempts to make them reverberate through time. The musical material was drawn from typical sounds heard on the streets during demonstrations all over the world and numerous possible associations and transformations that emerged from this. A shouting crowd, a silent march, car horns, fireworks, clapping hands, pots and pans or megaphones are just a few examples of sound sources that often shape the soundscape of a protest. Moreover, not only literal sounds, but also sounds of protest that were shaped by other composers or songwriters reappear as echoes in the work. All of these sounds are in some sense connected to the power or powerlessness of a collective or individual. It is also this contradiction (“powering” vs. “depowering”) that this work attempts to explore by examining the role of the collective and its possible behavior.