“There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown.” are the opening words of Crowds and Power (1962) by Elias Canetti. In this book, the Nobel Prize winner records his experiences with the mass movements of the early twentieth century and provides striking sociological and anthropological insights. The book is not only a reflection on the past but also a guide for the present. Today too, the masses are mobilising, uniting against injustice or for a better climate. They gather on social media, occupy the Capitol building, set fire to a city, or flee. They revolt, swell, seek an outlet and then collapse again.

Director Wouter Van Looy and video artist Wim Catrysse have created a concept around these themes: In THE MASS MAN, Catrysse turns his camera on a place of conflict, where violence and resistance can be traced back thousands of years. A seemingly irresolvable ideological and territorial conflict is raging, leaving a grotesque trail of death and destruction, and further disrupting the fabric of society. “The fear of an unexpected touch in the dark” is not used as a metaphor here; it is in bitter earnest and palpably real. In the film, his images testify to an institutionalised us-against-them mentality.

The renowned Belgian author Peter Verhelst wrote a new text for THE MASS MAN using Canetti’s magisterial book as a sounding board but with today’s world as its focus.

Solo singers/performers, musicians playing the lute, cornetto/trumpet and drums, a sound-installation artist and electronic soundscapes give a new form and expression to a wide range of subgenres of the mediaeval crusader song. Propagandistic recruitment songs, such as the famous Palästinalied by Walther von der Vogelweide, can be heard alongside Occitan pilgrim songs, lamentations, love songs, and a polyphonic Ars Nova motet from the society critical Roman de Fauvel by the composer Philippe de Vitry. They reflect both the outside world and the inner life and deliver a nuanced picture of a complex time and turning point in history marked by changing identities and world views.