Productions
#NOFEAR
JUNGE TRIENNALE
#nofear 2018: Young people have questions. Questions that don’t get answered at home. Questions no one dares ask, for example about sexual orientation or homophobia. 40 young people who live in the Ruhr region and come from Portugal, Ghana, Togo, Poland, Albania, Syria, Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Germany and Turkey examine the subject that concerns them all: sexuality.
APPEAL TO THE YOUTH OF ALL NATIONS
In his site visits for the Ruhrtriennale 2018 Olu Oguibe perceived the Ruhr region as one distinguished, among other things, by the wealth of “artworks” that have been left to us in public spaces by the age of heavy industry. Oguibe does not wish to add any further ob- jects to these fallow industrial sites. Instead he will attempt to make their existing architectonic structures visible as artistic sculptures. He will therefore develop a social intervention in the form of a text-based sculpture on the site of the Jahrhunderthalle in Bochum. Openly ac- cessible at all times, this presents a universal appeal to the youths of all nations in three languages.
AUFBRUCH
THOMAS HENGELBROCK, JENNY PEÑA CAMPO, JAN MÜLLER-WIELAND, JOHANNA WOKALEK, BALTHASAR-NEUMANN-CHOR
The Ruhrtriennale is host to an international orchestral academy. The Cuban-European Youth Academy, CuE, and its orchestra, the CuE Orchestra, is an innovative programme promoting exchange between European and Cuban musicians. It was founded in 2014 on the initiative of the conductor Thomas Hengelbrock and the Academy Balthasar Neumann. The orchestra consists of around 80 music students each taking part in the academy.
BEKANNTE GEFÜHLE, GEMISCHTE GESICHTER
CHRISTOPH MARTHALER, ANNA VIEBROCK
This evening entitled Bekannte Gefühle, gemischte Gesichter (Familiar Feelings, Mixed Faces) was created to mark Christoph Marthaler’s personal farewell to the Castorf Era at Berlin’s Volksbühne. It uses many songs and few words to produce a meditation on transience in the theatre and what happens to artists as they are used up: what do sell by dates mean? What do freezes and endless repetitions lead to? And how do organizational aspects and art impact on each other? At the same time the evening is a staged exhibition of actors and episodes from a variety of Christoph Marthaler’s Volksbühne produc-tions and a collage of vocal and other music by composers including Handel, Satie, Mahler and Schubert.
BLACK PRIVILEGE
MAMELA NYAMZA
In her new work Black Privilege, whose performance here at PACT Zollverein in Essen will be the first outside South Africa, Mamela Nyamza focuses her attention on the hypocritical structure underlying our societies in which everyone is permanently judged and pre-judged. Switching back and forth between a ritual in which she summons up various aspects of strong women and a court process in which powerful figures are held to account for their horrific deeds, Mamela Nyamza blurs the boundaries between spirituality and the law. Rejected and unrecognized heroines of the African struggle for independence are brought back to life, judged and perhaps also celebrated.
CHORBUCH
MAURICIO KAGEL, J. S. BACH, FLORIAN HELGATH, CHORWERK RUHR
The Chorbuch (Choir Book for vocal ensemble and keyboards) by the Argentinian-German composer Mauricio Kagel (1931 / Buenos Aires – 2008 / Köln) is a highly unusual work. Unusual because in it the composer assembles a collection of 53 chorales in alphabetical order but leaves the performing choir free to choose which of the chorales should be sung in which order or repeated and in combination with which works by other composers. Under no circumstances should all 53 pieces be performed, Kagel writes in his introduction.
COMPOSITION NO. 103
ANTHONY BRAXTON, MONOCHROME PROJECT
Anthony Braxton, born in Chicago in 1945, is a composer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist and one of the great innovators and avantgarde figures in jazz, whose practice as a composer has also been influenced by such exponents of new music as Edgard Varèse, Iannis Xenakis, John Cage, Frederic Rzewski, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Vinko Globokar. Composition No. 103 was written in 1983, but re- ceived its world premiere 2005. It is a fully composed piece of approx. 45 minutes duration for seven trumpets with costumes and choreographed movement. The performance will be augmented or interrupted by three further compositions from the field of his Ghost Trance Music.
DAS FLOSS DER MEDUSA
HANS WERNER HENZE, STEVEN SLOANE, KORNÉL MUNDRUCZÓ, MÁRTON ÁGH
Das Floß der Medusa now seems prophetic. The Hungarian director of film and theatre Kornél Mundruczó and his independent company, the Proton Theatre, will create a scenic and visual framework for the tensions between a European injustice that can no longer be denied, the disasters clearly visible on Europe’s external borders, the emotions that this work unleashed at the time of its world premiere and the timelessness of its central metaphor.
DIAMANTE. DIE GESCHICHTE EINER FREE PRIVATE CITY
MARIANO PENSOTTI / GRUPO MAREA
Diamante is a special place: a privately-owned town belonging to a company of the kind that only exists in Latin America. Filmmaker, theatremaker and writer Mariano Pensotti, born in Buenos Aires in 1973, always directs his own texts. For the Ruhrtriennale he will build a walk-through model of Diamante in the Kraftzentrale in Duisburg. Here we will experience together with the inhabitants – played by a cast of Argentinian and German performers – how the town is transformed over the course of a year from a flourishing social-capitalist utopia into a what appears to be a pre-apocalyptic horror scenario.
EXODOS
SASHA WALTZ & GUESTS, SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE
In Exodos Sasha Waltz investigates the collective body of those who go out in order to immerse themselves in each other and to escape from themselves; searching for ways out of material space to be able to enter spaces made up of sound and light.
THIRD SPACE
RAUMLABORBERLIN
The group of artists raumlaborberlin will design the square in front of the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum and give it the name Third Space. A plane crash landing or being rebuilt? A centre manufacturing or repairing public space? The empty, inhospitable area in front of the former gas-fired power plant that is now the Jahrhunderthalle will be redesigned for the duration of the festival in a manner everyone can see.
FILISETI MEKIDESI (IN SEARCH OF SANCTUARY)
ELLIOTT SHARP, ENSEMBLE MUSIKFABRIK, VOXNOVA ITALIA, KAMILYA JUBRAN
Filiseti Mekidesi is a meditation on the search for a safe, neutral place free from danger. Filiseti Mekidesi does not tell a linear narrative. The work uses musical and poetic means to reflect moments and situations which have taken place in the course of the story or which are currently taking place with particular urgency.
FREIHEIT DER KÜNSTE / FREEDOM OF SPEECH
The Ruhrtriennale presents a panel discussion entitled FREEDOM OF SPEECH / FREIHEIT DER KÜNSTE in which artists, curators and politicians discuss the complex relationship that intellectual and artistic freedom have with individual and social responsibility in the context of German history. They will also consider the effectiveness and legitimacy of boycott strategies within the cultural sector.
JAGUAR
MARLENE MONTEIRO FREITAS
There is no jaguar. Instead a larger than life blue polystyrene horse stands on the left edge of the stage from the start: for Jaguar Marlene Monteiro Freitas was inspired by the Blaue Reiter group of artists along with carnival in her home, the Cape Verde islands, the tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann, the work of the artist Adolf Wölfli and her friendship with the dancer and long-time companion Andreas Merk.
LIVE AMMUNITION! / CONJURED GEOGRAPHIES
HASSAN KHAN, TAREK ATOUI
In the 2013 work Live Ammunition! Music for Clapping, String Quartet and Live Electronics a string quartet and polyrhythmic patterns of clapping recorded in the studio are overlaid in multiple tracks and structured so that a densely woven sonic landscape develops over the course of four movements. In Tarek Atoui’s performance Conjured Geographies the infinite various sound material gathered from a wide range of sources is reconfigured as heterophony, as a process of never-ending figural play, taking cue from the ‘tarab’ in Arab music.
12. SEPT
NO PRESIDENT. A STORY BALLET OF ENLIGHTENMENT IN TWO IMMORAL ACTS
NATURE THEATER OF OKLAHOMA
With their unique mix of full-hearted theatre play, conceptual strength, and perplexing use of modernist art strategies the off-off- off-Broadway company Nature Theater of Oklahoma has become one of the most discussed and influential American groups of recent years.
14. - 20. SEPT
NORDSTADT PHANTASIEN / CLUB KOHLEAUSSTIEG
SCHORSCH KAMERUN / MUSIK: PC NACKT UND SCHORSCH KAMERUN
Who is eyeing up the last as yet unexhausted city districts and what do they want to do with them? Theatremaker and musician Schorsch Kamerun will collaborate with numerous professional urbanites to play out a boom time for a suddenly (and, it seems, surprisingly) fashionable area by claiming to give it a temporary upgrade.
23. AUG - 08. SEPT
KOMISCHE OPER BERLIN PRÄSENTIERT: OPERNDOLMUS / IN ZWEI HEIMATEN ZUHAUSE
In their German-Turkish shared taxi and itinerant music theatre, the opera dolmuş, two singers and three musicians from the Komische Oper Berlin travel through the Ruhr region with their crew – most of whom have some experience of migration – with love in their hearts and looking for home.
30. AUG - 01. SEPT
PLUG & PLAY ME
ENSEMBLE GARAGE, ELECTRIC INDIGO
In this hypermedia club performance with joint live sets, performances, light and video installations, club and avant-garde attain a fractal dimension where nothing seems to be impossible. In Plug & PlayMe the intermedially-located Ensemble Garage presents a night of outrageous collaborations that have never been heard before: featuring the grande dame of techno, Electric Indigo, video artists Nika Radić and Lillevan and composers such as Brigitta Muntendorf, Michael Beil and Alexander Schubert.
29. AUG
REBECCA SAUNDERS PORTRAIT
ENSEMBLE MODERN, VIMBAYI KAZIBONI, JULIET FRASER, PAUL CANNON
Rebecca Saunders occupies a pre-eminent position among the composers of her generation. This is based on her powerful and deeply moving sensibility for the finest musical gestures, for tonal colours never been heard before and on her wealth of ideas to make musical processes manifest in spatial terms. The Ensemble Modern, as the leading international chamber ensemble for new music, will dedicate a portrait concert to her with three distinctive recent works.
25. AUG
SOPHIA KENNEDY
Elegant, melancholisch, manchmal bedrohlich, mit schwelgenden Klaviermelodien, wüst wimmernden Orgeln und flott gelooptem Maultrommelgeploinke; von güldener kalifornischer Sonne befunkelt und von düster dräuendem Nebel umflort: Sophia Kennedy ist die wandlungsreichste Komponistin, die wir in der deutschen Popmusik derzeit besitzen, und die tollste Sängerin ist sie sowieso. Ihr Debütalbum „Sophia Kennedy“ zeigt sie als dramatische Romantikerin und distanzierte Diseuse, als Sprachspielartistin und Melodiemeisterin.
07. SEPT
THE LANGUAGE OF THE FUTURE
LAURIE ANDERSON
Laurie Anderson is regarded around the world as the figurehead of a poetic yet technologically advanced form of performance art combining storytelling, music and images. In the stylish atmosphere of Essen’s Lichtburg cinema she questions everyday madness while placing a firm accent on the language of the future. This intermedia performance is a collection of songs, stories, films and photos about the cultural state of the present.
18. SEPT
THE WELCOMING PARTY
THEATRE-RITES, SUE BUCKMASTER
The Welcoming Party allows young people to directly experience what it is like to be a refugee, to leave home and arrive somewhere new. This approximately 90 minute play is itself like an odyssey in which the audience are guided through a variety of places and situations by the performers. During this journey real moments and encounters with the characters accompanying the young members of the audience will arise. Without conventional seating and always on the move, the play uses intense images to tell stories of saying farewell and arriving elsewhere, of fear and of hope.
07. - 16. SEPT
TRAINING FÜR DIE ZUKUNFT. EIN PREENACTMENT
In a time of increasing global crises in politics, economy, and ecology dystopia has become the new futuristic norm. Training for the Future instead creates a training ground where audiences turn into trainees for a self determined future. This “preenactment” gives a small outlook to a much larger project to be launched at Ruhrtriennale 2019 when in an environment of various historical utopian forms and never realized architectures visitors will be trained for radical futuristic scenarios by futurologists, group psychologists, survivalists, free zone engineers, identity hackers, artists, activists, and cooperative game designers.
08. SEPT
TWENTY-TWO HOURS / THE TEMPEST SOCIETY
BOUCHRA KHALILI
In Bouchra Khalili’s video installation, two African-American women question the legacy of the African-American struggle for equal rights then and now, as well as well the position of the radical ally, as embodied by Genet. Parallel to 22 Hours Bouchra Khalili also presents The Tempest Society at the Museum Folkwang in Essen. This was her contribution to documenta 14 in 2017: three Athenians from different backgrounds form a group to examine the current state of Europe.
23. AUG - 21. OKT
UNIVERSE, INCOMPLETE
CHARLES IVES, CHRISTOPH MARTHALER, TITUS ENGEL, ANNA VIEBROCK
“In case I don’t get to finishing this, somebody might like to try to work out the idea, and the sketch that I’ve already done would make more sense to anybody looking at it with this explanation.” (Charles Ives) Inspired by these tempting words, the director Christoph Marthaler, the conductor Titus Engel and the stage designer Anna Viebrock develop their own highly individual perspective on an uncompleted project by the American composer Charles Ives (1875–1954): the Universe Symphony
17. - 25. AUG
VOM NUTZEN DER ANGST - THE POLITICS OF SELECTION
PEGGY BUTH
In her three-channel video installation Leute wie wir (“People Like Us”) the artist Peggy Buth investigates the historical circumstances and implications based on the business culture of Friedrich Krupp AG that have had a formative influence on a broad range of social relations in the Ruhr region, from private life to urban spaces. This work, which was shown for the first time in 2017 at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, is one section of her broader composition Vom Nutzen der Angst – The Politics of Selection, from which the installation at the Ruhrtriennale takes its title.
10. AUG - 23. SEPT
WORMHOLES / ‚A‘ TRIO
MAZEN KERBAJ, SHARIF SEHNAOUI, TONY ELIEH, RAED YASSIN
Wormholes is an ongoing audio-visual project by Mazen Kerbaj and Sharif Sehnaoui, two artists who are among the most influential activists in Beirut’s music and art scene. A‘ Trio is made up of the Beirut musicians and artists Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui and Raed Yassin. They are co-creators and pioneers of the experimental art scene, electronic music culture and improvised music in their highly complex, crisis-ridden, precarious and nevertheless astonishingly stable country.
22. AUG