“What was this, then, that was in the air? A rising temper. Acute irritability. A nameless rancour. A universal tendency to envenomed exchange of words, to outbursts of rage — yes, even to fisticuffs. They would pale and tremble, their eyes would glitter provocatively, their mouths set with passion.”
This is how Thomas Mann, in the second-to-last chapter of his book The Magic Mountain, describes characters in their twilight in a sanatorium on the eve of the First World War. The atmosphere is charged, the excitement is tangible.
A bit more than one hundred years later: in the constant flicker of social networks, we’re being armed for the coming culture war. Everything reaches us, everything forces itself under our skin. Minimal communicative stimulus causes maximum feedback. Raging about the rage of others makes us more and more angry. Difference becomes fetish, the echo chamber a biotope of meaning, outrage in the guise of morality becomes a reflex. Everyone blows their horns to begin the battle for truth and the authoritative interpretation of signs. Excitation for all until the globe is glowing from it.
This is where we stand, vulnerable, wrapped in the nerves of all of humanity. In the global here and the permanent now we’re uncomfortably close. Google’s former slogan “Don’t be evil” – the official credo of the business until 2017 at least – seems like a simple, weak, dying ember from the times of leftist net-utopias and free-cyberspace manifestos.
Because when – through cybernetic indignation and the emotions industry – the both-as-well-as of hyper culture is switched out for the binary for-or-against of the filter bubbles, we have to look for the in-between again. Through which window do we see the world? Who’s located between the images? And who exactly does the hand that incessantly scrolls through timelines belong to?
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Besetzung / Cast
Mit / With: Andreas Beck, Manolo Bertling, Susanne Bredehöft, Vanessa Loibl, Uwe Schmieder, Julia Schubert, Sylvana Seddig, Werner Strenger
Regie / Director: Kay Voges
Bühne / Stage design: Michael Sieberock-Serafimowitsch
Kostüme / Costumes: Mona Ulrich
Director of Photography: Voxi Bärenklau
Video design: Robi Voigt
Live-Videoschnitt / Live editing: Andrea Schumacher
Live-Kamera / Live camera: Jan Isaak Voges
Musik / Music: Paul Wallfisch
Dramaturgie: Ulf Frötzschner, Matthias Seier
Foto / Photo: Julian Röder