Ruhrtriennale – International Festival of the Arts – opens on August 23, 2013

A few days before the opening of the Ruhrtriennale on August 23, artistic director
Heiner Goebbels and his team present final preparations at Dampfgebläsehaus, Jahrhunderthalle, Bochum.

Heiner Goebbels is pleased to welcome his guests: Tim Etchells from Forced Entertainment and Lebanese sound artist Tarek Atoui, who begin rehearsals this week for the The Last Adventures at Gladbeck's Maschinenhalle Zweckel, and Dan Perjovschi. The Romanian artist will transform the foyer of Jahrhunderthalle with his large-scale wall drawings into a temporary museum, inviting the audience to complete his installation, wall window workshop 2013, with their own drawings and texts. Heiner Goebbels himself has been rehearsing daily at Jahrhunderthalle with his team and the ensemble musikFabrik for the opening and European premiere of Delusion of the Fury, an opera by American composer Harry Partch.

Although many performances are already completely sold out, there are still tickets available for most of this year's productions, including the additional performance of Massive Attack V Adam Curtis on September 1. The following productions are completely sold out: CRACKz by Bruno Beltrão, Partita 2, with Boris Charmatz and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and Ikon of Light with ChorWerk Ruhr at Zeche Zollern. Each day, new performances of Rimini Protokoll's Situation Rooms will open, an unusual theater format for 20 participants. This year's advance sales were similarly successful to those of last year. In addition, this year there are numerous installations accessible to all free of admission: Douglas Gordon's new video work Silence, Exile, Deceit and Tower by rAndom International at Zollverein, Ryoji Ikeda's 100 meter long test pattern and later the Unguided Tour of Stifters Dinge in Duisburg or Mischa Kuball's Agora/Arena transform the former industrial sites into vibrant sites of public gathering and communication.

In the words of Lukas Crepaz, the managing director of Kultur Ruhr GmbH, "In recent years, Ruhrtriennale has developed to become one of the most important producing festivals in Europe, setting strong impulses in both the Ruhr Region and internationally. This season we are working with around 400 artists from NRW. At the same time, we tour with international productions around the world, in cities such as Amsterdam, Geneva, Oslo, Paris, or New York, where we will present Harry Partch's Delusion of the Fury in 2014."

As Marietta Piekenbrock, Ruhrtriennale's head dramaturge responsible for planning the No Education program, sums up: "No Education is based on the observation that children, teenagers, and adults are equally open to artistic experience. We tend to underestimate what people, children included, can contribute in terms of their own capacities and intuitions. This includes the language of art. 'No Education' doesn't mean 'no cultural knowledge,' but rather placing our felt knowledge and intuition on the same level as our analytic thinking. This year once again, the children of Children's Choice Awards will travel as a small independent festival jury from performance to performance. Last year's jury, in the workshop Small Talk in Daft Hell with Darren O'Donnell, put rules and roles to the test. The Stockholm percussion trio Hidden Mother developed a new kind of graffiti."

Visitors at Ruhrtriennale can experience the artists on stage and in numerous conversations and discussion, for example Tumbletalks, a series of conversations at Museum Folkwang, or freitagsküche, where the audience, various "experts" from the Ruhrtriennale team, and the artists come together after the performances for a good meal and conversation.

The First Ten Days
Ruhrtriennale opens on Friday, August 23 with Harry Partch's opera Delusion of the Fury at Jahrhunderthalle Bochum. In addition, the premiere audience can encounter Mischa Kuball's light installation Agora/Arena in Westpark and in front of Jahrhunderhalle and Dan Perjovschi's drawings www 2013 in the foyer. At 1 pm on the same day, the first round of Situation Rooms begins, the eagerly awaited new work by the theater collective Rimini Protokoll for twenty participants per performance (tickets are still available for many performances, new paths are being opened constantly). At the World Heritage Site Zollverein in Essen, Douglas Gordon's new video work Silence, Exile, Deceit - An Industrial Pantomime will be opened at 3 pm at the Mischanlage and at 4:30 pm Tower, a monumental water sculpture by Random International produced by Urbane Künste Ruhr for Ruhrtriennale will be opened by NRW's Minister of Culture Ute Schäfer. At Duisburg Kraftzentrale, Ryoji Ikeda's sound installation test pattern is on view on Friday from 1 - 9 pm (opening on Thurs., August 22, 7 pm), free admission.
On Saturday, August 24, the exhibition Nowhere and Everywhere by William Forsythe begins in the main hall of Essen's Museum Folkwang in Essen. Forsythe will also open the series of Tumbletalks with Boris Charmatz at 2 pm. Later that afternoon, at 5 pm, the first dance production of the season will premiere, CRACKz by Bruno Beltrão from PACT Zollverein, and at 8 pm Boris Charmatz will perform Levée des conflits at the breathtaking arena of Halde Haniel. The evening ends with another open-air event at Duisburg's Gießhalle, a ciné-concert by Actuel Remix: the silent film classic Metropolis with an entirely new soundtrack. Sunday, August 25, is shaped by the tumbletalk marathon from 12 to 4 pm at Museum Folkwang with Ryoji Ikeda, Rimini Protokoll, Dan Perjovschi, and Mischa Kuball.
On Monday, August 26, the concert series at Maschinenhaus, Zeche Carl kicks off with improvisation by Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori. Kraftzentrale at Duisburg's Landschaftspark will then be in preparation for the four spectacular concerts given by Massive Attack V Adam Curtis, beginning August 29 at 8 pm. Tickets are now only available for the additional date, September 1.
On the weekend from August 30 to September 1, the successful production 300 el x 50 el x 30 el by the young theater makers FC Bergman celebrates its premiere at Salzlager, Zollverein. In a tumbletalk on Sunday, documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis will speak with Claus Leggewie, later to be joined by Robert Wilson. For the first time, freitagsküche invites all to a collective culinary event at 6:30 pm, where the artists of the evening inspired the meal.
In its second year under the artistic directorship of composer and director Heiner Goebbels, Ruhrtriennale brings together more than 800 international artists to the Ruhr metropolitan region from August 23 to October 6, 2013. With over 43 productions, including 20 premieres, new productions, European premieres and German premieres, as well as concerts and artist conversations transform the outstanding industrial monuments of the region into spectacular performance sites for music, art, theater, film, dance, and performance.

Ticket-Hotline - +49(0)221/280 210, www.ruhrtriennale.de or directly at Triennale Centers in Bochum, Essen and Duisburg, at the partner's of Ruhrtriennale in Oberhausen and Zollverein, and other box offices.

Press contact: Hendrik von Boxberg, press officer, +49 (0)209. 60507 137; Sarah Kaes, assistant, +49 (0)209. 60507 210
presse@ruhrtriennale.de, www.ruhrtriennale.de

Ruhrtriennale is sponsored by the Ministry for Family, Children, Youth, Culture and Sport of North Rhine Westphalia as well as the European Union: European Fund for Regional Development.
Associates and public sector funders: Land Nordrhein-Westfalen and Regionalverband Ruhr.