All Hail The Techno Viking

How a filmmaker created a meme and then the meme fought back.

It was 2000 and FuckParade was in its third year. FuckParade began as the Berlin underground scene’s answer to LoveParade, a commercialised techno festival which FuckParade has now outlived. That year, German video artist Matthias Fritsch took his camera to capture the ravers cutting through Berlin’s Rosenthaler Straße.

Fritsch uploaded a section of footage to his website as part of an experimental series, calling it ‘KNEECAM NO.1’. The 4-minute clip begins with a group of people dancing to techno in the middle of the road. A man in a black vest stumbles into shot and clatters into a woman with blue hair. He is clearly inebriated. Another man, shirtless, muscled and wearing a Thor’s hammer pendant, grabs him by the arm before sending him back to where he came, pointing his finger at him to make sure he behaves. As the techno music swells, he starts to dance along the street followed by the rest of the parade.