Season 2007 The Conquest of Future in Retrospect
Having dated forward the invention of modernity into an epoch in which nobody ever would have suspected it straight away, this is something the audience of the Triennale has become accustomed with in the meantime. After Romanticism and Baroque, the programme of the season 2007 concentrates on the treshold between the epochs of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times. Authors, directors and musicians are invited to conquer the future in retrospect.
Traditional myths and legends meet modern fiction: King Arthur meets the avatars of the virtual world, superstition and misbelief meet the readiness for modern day illusions. This sounds pretentious. However, in order to believe that our Modern Times have been created during the Middle Ages it seems to be far better having to deal with smaller entities, perhaps even with a few clichés out of the cosmos of the Middle Ages.
After all, we are dealing with a period of time of about 1000 years.The Middle Ages tend towards the application of proverbs. In it, we do place numerous associations and fantasies: Darkness, asceticism, cruelness, knights, holy virgins and mysterious witches are armoured figures of future onto which we project our own need of protection. A suit of armour is a cool mask that is able to contain our anxieties. Invisible will be our fear of personal contact, of closeness. Myths are the constant try to be detered from the vicious reality in order to unravel the images one has made about oneself and about today’s time. In this season, one must be enticed to flee from the proverbial darkness of the Middle Ages. The way we use to look at the Middle Ages even might be composed of a steady misapprehension. In order to unsettle this misapprehension one has to go back to the scene of event.
Die Romantische Idee, Der Mensch des Barock, Die Eroberung der Zukunft im Rückblick: With the programme of the RuhrTriennale 2005-2007, we tried to promote the special function of historicity of the human mind and its respective environment. In doing so, two searchers of truth had been visualized in our mind’s eye: the artist and the spectator. Two who are constantly led by their own personal convictions and moral concepts. Two who are open to the diversity of human and aestetic experiences. Two who confront us with their intuitions, fantasies and lies, with their intellectual actions and reasoning powers, precisely with all their disturbing insights of their egos. Without them, without their subjectivity there would be no communication, no spectacle, no scenes, no terror of cognitive awareness. One would solely be speaking to oneselves. How dreary.
The following hint comes from the Rumanian philosopher E. M. Cioran: The one and only confident sign one has understood everything is that he will be weeping without restrain. Well then! No applause without teardrops.