The song "Kanye in Bayreuth" from the album "Gute Laune ungerecht verteilt" (Good Mood Unfairly Distributed), released in April 2024, addresses the moral dilemma of separating the work from the author.
The video was created under the direction of Professor Georgij Pestov in the cinematography course. Benjamin Reder, a student at TH OWL, directed the video and emphasizes how much the project means to him: "This music video was a special project from the very beginning. A big music video for a big band! I am a musician myself, so it is important to me to express this powerful song 'Kanye in Bayreuth' with a powerful music video. Our crew faced many creative challenges right up to the end, and we are now very proud of what we have created."
For Reder and his team, working with Kettcar was both a professional challenge and a unique opportunity: "I think we all learned a lot from this project. It's also really special to shoot with well-known German artists. That doesn't happen every day."
The song, explains Marcus Wiebusch, the band's singer and lyricist, highlights moral conflicts that arise from the separation of the work and the author: "What do we do with great art by morally problematic people? Why, for example, do we treat the work of a right-wing extremist artist more gently and condemn that of a pedophile whose songs we don't like anyway? [...] Morality is not objective in this context. The two worlds clash with each other. And then what? The song 'Kanye in Bayreuth' has no answer to this question. It only attempts to capture the ambiguity that surrounds this topic."
The resulting video visualizes this ambivalence in surreal scenes and through a haunting performance.
The repeated collaboration between TH OWL and Grand Hotel van Cleef Musik GmbH, which also represents Kettcar, was a win-win for both sides. Georgij Pestov is enthusiastic: "As a doctoral/academic supervisor in the Faculty of Media Production, it's a great feeling to give my students the opportunity to create successful music video productions with such great artists as the band Kettcar."
The finished music video for "Kanye in Bayreuth" has recently been made available on YouTube and visually impressively stages the song. Students, lecturers, and the band Kettcar can be proud of the result.
