# Philipps Fanfaren

For over a year, the artists of Rimini Protokoll have explored Philipps-Universität Marburg as a social and sonic organism. Under the titles “100% Uni Marburg” and “Philipps Fanfares”, two artistic formats examine perception, diversity and the collective voice of a university of 25,000 people.

![Model featuring the resonating chambers of the Philipps fanfares](https://cms.500jahre.uni-marburg.de/assets/986e3057-f7cb-474f-9dc6-15a5fbae2439?key=webp-750)

## Philipps Fanfaren

By: **Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel**  
Programming / Technical Direction: **Joscha Eckert**  
Design / Scenography: **Dominik Steinmann**  
Instrument building: **The Berliner Tuba**  
Research support: **Tabea Gruß**  
In collaboration with the Department of Physics / Precision Mechanics Workshop, **the Studentisches Sinfonieorchester Marburg e.V.**, and composer **Jieun Jun**

Churches use bells to draw attention to themselves, the city uses sirens, and the rooster on the town hall plays out, polyrhythmically, the relationship between administration, spirituality, and humor. In the 500th year of its existence, the university will install a signal that lets the interplay of its various units resonate every day: 19 "fanfares," permanently installed on 19 buildings, will play a composition of which, at any given building, only one of the 19 acoustic tracks is ever audible.

An electronic piece whose material comes from the university and can be updated semester by semester. Once each semester it will be checked: is this still accurate? What has changed? How do we sound now? Can we even still be heard? And then an correspondingly updated version will be fed in.

So it can sound different every semester, and certainly very different in 20 years. And in 500?

With "Philipps Fanfaren," Haug/Wetzel ask members of the university, across all areas: What special sound accompanies your work at the university? And what would we hear if the university were a sound, in general? The answers by now amount to hundreds of descriptions and already many recordings, which are recombined again and again and fed into the automated composition, from the bone saw, the ultrasonic water bath, the beeping of transponders, the pill-stamping machine, the snapping of doors, the knocking on tables at the end of a lecture, the flipping of pages in a book, typing on a keyboard, the gurgling of the coffee machine, the chord formed by the Bundesstraße 3 and the railway, the elevator voice, footsteps in the hallway, a bottle rolling down the lecture hall...

Asked to describe the university as a sound, respondents think of the sound of many voices, a clear gong, free jazz, a harmonious orchestra with dissonant undertones, and much more, 25,000 people, 25,000 soundscapes. "Philipps Fanfaren" wants to keep alive the question of the harmony of the different, the way the rooster keeps alive the question of enlightenment, and every audible traffic light keeps alive the fact that some among us have questions right where the rest of us think we already know the answer.

While these 19 fanfares, distributed across the whole city, make parts of the whole audible, the "Fanfarium," an apparatus in the art museum, gathers all 19 voices into a single sound body and makes them audible together.

![Fanfares_schematic-technical illustration](https://cms.500jahre.uni-marburg.de/assets/90a74299-e1fd-469c-af22-e189210068f3?key=webp-750)

![Fanfaren - locations map with elevations](https://cms.500jahre.uni-marburg.de/assets/d2b066f5-d4b8-4d9e-be6f-9abd580e031b?key=webp-750)

![Fanfaren_mockup #1, building from the outside](https://cms.500jahre.uni-marburg.de/assets/2ec1430d-978a-43d5-9a29-dc5d3d46f6e3?key=webp-750)

![Fanfaren_mockup#3, illustration](https://cms.500jahre.uni-marburg.de/assets/d7d9fdf8-5709-4281-b608-eb22735bd9ec?key=webp-750)

![Fanfaren_In Museum](https://cms.500jahre.uni-marburg.de/assets/99fc39d3-97f5-4970-a1b2-c09c3e00cd1f?key=webp-750)

![Fanfaren_In Museum_2, horns placed in a sculpture with a female structure to the right.](https://cms.500jahre.uni-marburg.de/assets/0cc58d94-fc6d-48d5-a7df-7423b46a64bf?key=webp-750)

![Fanfaren_In Museum_2, horns placed in a sculpture with a female structure to the right, from above.](https://cms.500jahre.uni-marburg.de/assets/74f4e92d-e005-4b6c-9dc3-b8cb6dafd501?key=webp-750)

Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel studied "Applied Theatre Studies / Drama - Theatre - Media" at Justus Liebig University Giessen. Since 1995, both have worked as freelance artists in the fields of performance, radio drama, film, installation, and media. In 2002, together with Stefan Kaegi, they founded the theatre label Rimini Protokoll and have since worked under this label in various constellations.

Rimini Protokoll often develop their stage productions, interventions, scenic installations, and radio plays with experts who have tested their knowledge and skills outside of theatre. They translate spaces or social orders into theatrical formats and stand for a research-driven approach to exploring and staging new presents. Recently, they have increasingly been creating immersive and interactive works for museums. Their work with "experts" is described in numerous scholarly publications worldwide as groundbreaking for new forms of documentary theatre.

Many of their works have received awards, including invitations to the Berlin Theatertreffen, the Mülheim Dramatists' Prize, the German Theatre Prize Der Faust, and the Silver Lion of the Venice Theatre Biennale.

[Helgard Haug helgard.haug@uni-marburg.de](mailto:helgard.haug@uni-marburg.de)

[Daniel Wetzel daniel.wetzel@uni-marburg.de](mailto:daniel.wetzel@uni-marburg.de)