Podcast Summary: Mattin, "Social Dissonance" (MIT Press, 2022)

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Pierre Volz (B)
Guest: Mattin (C, F)
Release Date: November 7, 2025

Overview of the Episode

This episode features a wide-ranging conversation between host Pierre Volz and artist, musician, and theorist Mattin about his book Social Dissonance (MIT Press, 2022). Inspired by a series of participatory performances at Documenta 14 (2017), Mattin’s work explores the tensions between individualism, capitalism, and collective agency through performance, theory, and the concept of "social dissonance." The discussion covers the roots of alienation in Marxist theory, the limits of individual freedom, and how art and performance can make visible—and perhaps transform—endemic social contradictions.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Defining Social Dissonance and Mattin’s Practice

Timestamps: 04:51–10:15

• Social dissonance is the gap ("dissonance") between the ideals promoted in Western democracies (freedom, equality, democracy) and the realities of social life under capitalism (inequality, exploitation, alienation).
• Mattin’s performances, notably at Documenta 14, push audiences into destabilizing situations to make this dissonance collectively felt and "play with it" rather than deny or ignore it.
• The practice emerges from improvisation and noise music, but shifts focus from sound to inter-human relations, treating the audience as the instrument.
• Mattin:

  “So these are the values… most of us in Western liberal societies promote. But in our everyday life, we reproduce a system based on inequality, oppression and exploitation. So this inevitably generates massive cognitive dissonance between what we think and what we do. ... The idea was to make this social dissonance resonate, to collectivize it, to do something with it, to put it out there in order to play with it.” (06:51)

2. From Noise Music to Social Experimentation

Timestamps: 13:16–18:52

• Noise performance once stood for transgression but became aestheticized and predictable; Mattin shifted from sonic to psychological and social "noise".
• Social dissonance is "mental noise" generated by the contradiction between social ideals and actual experience, which Mattin investigates through group performance.

• “You don't need to go to music to go to that, you know, to find those disturbances. You can find them in our own everyday life, you know. ... This generates a form of mental noise, which I think…became my material.” (14:59)

3. Performance Structure and Audience as Instrument

Timestamps: 19:02–25:44

• The Documenta 14 performances were repeated over 180 days, changing daily as each audience brought new dynamics.
• Through repeated "concerts", the group refined methods for unsettling social relations—sometimes subtly, sometimes absurdly (e.g., "pretend to be a squirrel").

• “When the interpreters started, you know, to play, the audience as an instrument was definitely new to them. ... With time, we understood that the most important thing was to just have minimal proposals or structures or instructions. So things get going…then is the audience playing themselves, then also playing the interpreters.” (22:27)

4. Aesthetics, Archiving, and Who Learns?

Timestamps: 25:06–29:32

• Mattin challenges hierarchies of "aesthetic value," aiming instead at a collective self-reflection on how we relate to one another.
• Outcomes are ambiguous: some people are frustrated, others transformed, and the performance archive awaits deeper analysis.

• “I guess what I take from noise is to look or to break the hierarchies of aesthetic value. So actually to say it doesn't matter whether this is formally interesting or not, this noise contains something rich. And I'm gonna commit to that richness. And this is kind of the social noise that I'm trying to explore.” (25:44)

5. Alienation: Theory and Everyday Experience

Timestamps: 34:31–46:49

• Drawing from Marx’s early theory of alienated labor and Hegelian dialectics, Mattin situates alienation as central to the capitalist subject, but also shows how "alienation" has been debated, extended, and sometimes neutralized in both left and right-wing politics.
• There is no "return" to unalienated being; instead, Mattin advocates for confronting alienation directly via collective experiments in estrangement.

• “Since alienation is a result of modernity and it definitely implies that we don't know what we are. ... There is no essence, there is no way back to some, you know, harmonious relation to nature. ... It is totally up to us to define what we are. And inevitably this is a full encounter with alienation.” (34:31)

6. Estrangement, Playfulness, and Collective Potential

Timestamps: 42:25–47:20

• Art and aesthetics create experimental conditions to "estrange" participants from their everyday identities, providing a space for collective reflection and the dismantling of the "super I"—the performing, self-assured liberal subject.
• Personal alienation is not just a private failing but a structural issue—when collectivized, it could lead to transformative critique or action.

• “What I propose is playful forms of estrangement in order to deal with this structural alienation… Maybe if we collectivize this uneasiness or this not well being, then there will be maybe the possibility of saying, like, well, this is not good. We need to develop something better… if you're thinking just by yourself it feels like, what am I going to do? ... But if there are many people who think like, okay…” (42:25)

7. Psychological Dimensions: Pathologies of the Self

Timestamps: 47:20–56:08

• Mattin extends alienation analysis to contemporary mental health phenomena, referencing psychological syndromes (e.g., Cotard syndrome, imposter syndrome) that dramatize the fragility of selfhood.
• The "self-model" is an evolutionary and social illusion, easily disturbed by trauma or social contradictions, contributing to epidemic mental distress.
• The neoliberal subject (self-possessed, entrepreneurial, always-agentic) is finally breaking down under its own impossibility.

• “This is the kind of template that we have built in which the values that we think are good, democracy, equality … they are based on extremely, let's say fallacies. ... And we've seen more and more this mismatch. And it's not surprising that there is so much mental health problems rising because that kind of ideal of the individual is almost…crumbling, but it's not able to hold itself.” (50:33)

8. Visions for the Future: Collective Consciousness & Revolution

Timestamps: 57:53–59:21

• Making alienation and social dissonance visible is necessary for change. There is potential for a "revolutionary community" based on the recognition that individual distress is widely shared and rooted in structural problems.

• “After we become conscious of our social dissonance, we will begin to understand that we are not so alone in our feelings of despair, in our resentment with the world. We could build a revolutionary community… that gets hold of those people who keep things the way they are.” (57:53–59:21)

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the experience of social dissonance:

  “The idea was to make this social dissonance resonate, to collectivize it, to do something with it, to put it out there in order to play with it.” (06:51, Mattin)

• On art and everyday strangeness:

  “Everyday reality is much more strange than the woods. ... So it's almost an inverse relation in which, by using the skews of aesthetics, you have experimental framework... where you can engage with People that you might not know and ... in relationship to others.” (25:44, Mattin)

• On alienation and self:

  “There is no essence, there is no way back to some… harmonious relation to nature. ... It is totally up to us to define what we are. And inevitably this is a full encounter with alienation.” (34:31, Mattin)

• On the need for collective reflection:

  “What I propose is playful forms of estrangement in order to deal with this structural alienation. ... If we collectivize this uneasiness or this not well being... there will be maybe the possibility of saying… we need to develop something better.” (42:25, Mattin)

• On the future and revolutionary potential:

  “After we become conscious of our social dissonance, we will begin to understand that we are not so alone in our feelings of despair, in our resentment with the world. We could build a revolutionary community…” (57:53, Mattin)

Timestamps for Major Segments

• Introduction & Scope: 01:43–06:51
• Defining the Project: 06:51–10:15
• Shift from Noise Music to Social Engagement: 13:16–18:52
• Performance, Repetition, and the Role of the Audience: 19:02–25:44
• Theories of Alienation: 34:31–46:49
• Estrangement, Pathologies, and Mental Health: 47:20–56:08
• Revolutionary Community & Closing Vision: 57:53–59:21

Tone and Conversational Highlights

• The conversation is self-reflective and playful, echoing the ethos of "social dissonance" by sometimes embracing awkwardness, circularity, and uncertainty.
• Pierre, the host, frequently refers to his own discomfort and the challenges of processing both the performance and the theory—mirroring the intended effect of Mattin’s work.
• The episode intentionally eschews a streamlined, edited structure, favoring spontaneous dialogue, minor digressions, and self-conscious asides.
• Notably, the discussion is bookended with a challenge for listeners: If they choose to stop listening, they should "pause and explain to everyone out loud why it is that you want to leave." (04:51, Pierre)

Conclusion

Mattin’s Social Dissonance and its associated performances unsettle the division between audience and artist, individual and collective, theory and experiment. This episode embodies the ethos of the book: not to resolve contradiction and alienation, but to expose, collectivize, and play with them, opening a space in which new forms of social consciousness and solidarity might emerge.

For further engagement:

• Watch the video documentation of the performance (see episode show notes)
• Read Social Dissonance (MIT Press / Urbanomic, 2022)

End of Summary