2022 | With Freundeskreis at the StadtPalais

“Leg Dein Ohr auf die Schiene der Geschichte”: a city-historical exhibition with usomo on the hip hop band Freundeskreis from Stuttgart and the local protest culture.

Together with the members of Freundeskreis, Max Herre, Sékou “The Ambassador“, DJ Friction, and Don Philippe, the StadtPalais Stuttgart celebrates the 25th anniversary of their debut album “Quadratur des Kreises“ (in English: squaring the circle). The museum dedicates an entire exhibition by the same title to the song “Leg Dein Ohr auf die Schiene der Geschichte“ (in English: put your ear to the rail of history).

While the visitors wander through the exhibition set up in a circle, they hear the lines of the song played on an innovative spatial sound system. In each respective spot in the exhibition, a variety of documents and objects related to the mentioned historical events and dates reflect the issues appearing in the song, such as the Chilean coup d’état, the Cold War, or Chernobyl. A focus lays on showing how the people of Stuttgart perceived the events and how they reacted to them – even with collective protests, as documented by historical newspaper articles, photographs, and films. In a one-of-a-kind audiovisual experience, Max Herre and his Freundeskreis colleagues tell us about the creation of the song, their motivations, and their socio-critical stance which they communicate through this song as well as through many other ones.

Text: StadtPalais Stuttgart; translation: FRAMED immersive projects