Spielzeit 26.08. - 09.10.

Eric Sleichim

The saxophone quartet in which Sleichim has played since 1988 is called ‘Bl!ndman’, a somewhat peculiar way of writing ‘Blindman’. When it comes to the plastic arts, Sleichim was from an early stage fascinated by Joseph Beuys. Beuys became part of his own art works. Five Movements for Beuys was the Bl!ndman Quartet’s first public performance and was inspired by Beuys’ performance Wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erklärt’ [How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare]. Another influence was Buster Keaton. The early films for which Sleichim wrote music on several occasions in the 1990s were not blind, but mute or silent. Sleichim also wrote music to accompany the Japanese avant-garde film Kurutta Ippeiji by Teinosuke Kinugasa. The Bl!ndman CD released in 2000, of Bach music played by the saxophone quartet, was a truly and completely unexpected surprise. Figures from the art and film worlds continue to fascinate Eric Sleichim today. Over time, he has come to work increasingly in the theatre world. Initially, this work was intended primarily for the dance scene. In the past ten years, however, Sleichim has been much more involved in purely theatrical productions, working together with a list of people whose names denote quality: Josse De Pauw, Guy Cassiers, Jan Fabre and, outside Belgium, Heiner Goebbels and Helmut Oehring. In 2003, Eric Sleichim wrote the music for Jan Fabre’s video-installation The Angel of Death. In Gestimmtseit (2004) the confrontation this time is with Pier Paolo Pasolini. Starting in 2005, Sleichim will be Transparant’s resident composer and will be creating a number of music-theatre productions for them. Transparant is also supporting a number of projects in which Sleichim is involved, such as Jan Fabre’s L’histoire des larmes.

Productions