Denise Ritter

An official music title for a World Cup or European Championship song has no choice but to be irrelevant and meaningless. This is the result of the artist‘s acoustic research into the history of football. During Ritter’s alternative Hit „Pay! Attention!“, dealing with the gender pay gap, the contextualisations change in the course of the piece, as does the musical conformity.

The piece is played at the Schmackes, introduced by three more football hymns that conjure up nostalgic but also anachronistic feelings as they mash together. For every major football event there are aspirations to write THE ONE song of the summer, trying not to snub anyone as regards content, but at the same time being as catchy as possible. Who doesn’t remember Shakira’s „Waka Waka“ during the World Cup of 2010 in South Africa? Or Herbert Grönemeyer’s „Zeit, dass sich was dreht“ for the World Cup of 2006 in Germany.

Singing together establishes a sense of community and togetherness, it builds emotions and collective memories. Having said this, Ritter completely changes things up in her submission: recognizable melodies are missing as well as a catchy chorus to sing along with. The stereotypical sounds at the beginning morph into industrial noise, disrupted by spoken or musical quotations and audio recordings of chanting voices and honking cars. Presumedly originating from celebrating fans and motorcades, they actually are recorded at protest rallies. Ritter’s hymn therefore becomes a gesture of insurrection and challenges the concept of a community on a par.

Denise Ritter (*1971 in Rhineland-Palatine, lives and works in Dortmund) is an artist and composer. Her sound installations are based on recordings of real sounds that often refer to specific locations and spaces. They lead to electro-acoustic multi-channel compositions taking on physical form in the exhibition space. In 2008, Ritter graduated in audiovisual arts at the HBKsaar in Saarbrücken as a master scholar of professor Christina Kubisch and was awarded the German price for sound art a few years later. She is featured in exhibitions at home and abroad, realizes artworks in public spaces, and composes Industrial (aka Schachtanlage Gegenort) as well as audio pieces and electro-acoustic music.

Artist website: gegenort.com
Instagram: @denise_ritter_gegenort

Text: Linda Schröer
Translation: Matthias Fabry