Ruhrtriennale: An International Summit Meeting for the Arts. Heiner Goebbels Announces the 2013 Program at Duisburg’s Kraftzentrale.

In its second year under the artistic direction of Heiner Goebbels, the Ruhrtriennale (August 23–October 6, 2013) once again features major artists from around the world in world premieres and new productions and continues to expand its dialog with the visual arts.

Unusual constellations and combinations run throughout the program. American director Robert Wilson is staging a production of Helmut Lachenmann’s rarely performed opera Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern, featuring the actress Angela Winkler and hr-Sinfonieorchester in a uniquely sculptural sound and space design. Internationally renowned choreographers Boris Charmatz and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker are collaborating for their new production Partita No. 2, which is being created especially for the stage of Bochum’s Jahrhunderthalle. The theater collective Rimini Protokoll will present their most elaborate production to date, Situation Rooms, and Forced Entertainment’s The Last Adventures will explore various facets of a new theatrical language. Music and film are presented side by side in our series of ciné-concerts: at Duisburg’s Kraftzentrale, Massive Attack will present their only German performance in 2013, featuring the work of BBC documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis. Robert Del Naja has called the performance “a collective hallucination.”

In particular, at this year’s Ruhrtriennale several installations will place the spectators at the center of attention and allow them the autonomy to make their own decisions: the Scottish artist Douglas Gordon is filming and staging a new work especially created for the Mischanlage, Kokerei Zollverein. In Museum Folkwang’s central hall, William Forsythe will present the large-scale installation Nowhere and Everywhere, along with other works where the visitors themselves become performers and contribute to the success of the performance. Ryoji Ikeda’s test pattern [100m version] is a pulsating environment created especially for the Kraftzentrale, and London’s Studio rAndom International will build an impressive accessible water tower as a contribution to Urbane Künste Ruhr under the direction of Katja Aßmann. Mischa Kuball and Dan Perjovschi have been invited to set visible signs in public space in Westpark and in the lobby of Jahrhunderthalle.

Several of the world’s most sought after will be creating large format installations that remain in place for the entire festival. At the huge Kraftzentrale in Duisburg’s Landschaftspark, Heiner Goebbels will present the work Stifters Dinge, which has been celebrated around the world, in a new version as an “unguided tour,” an invitiation to the visitors to engage in an individual experience with no limits.

Heiner Goebbels, Artistic Director, Ruhrtriennale: “Perception and experience are very personal things, they are different for each and every one of us and, even in the theatre, at the moments when we are most powerfully moved, we are alone. Possibly for this reason we have placed more emphasis in our programme on self-selected encounters, where one may decide for oneself when one enters a space, how long one wishes to spend there, how quickly one leaves and whether one will return.”

Ute Schäfer, North Rhine Westphalia’s Minister of Culture: “Heiner Goebbels has put together an impressive program that seeks out a dialogue with the region’s unique monuments of industrial culture. In 2013, the international arts festival can once again claim its place as one of the most important in Europe. This year, the festival will also go on tour with several of its own productions, thus serving as a cultural hallmark for the region, for North Rhine Westphalia, and for all of Germany long after the festival itself.”

Over 150 events with many newly participating artists, 43 productions, including 20 premieres, new productions, European premieres and German premieres, as well as concerts and artist discussions transform the outstanding industrial monuments of the region into unique venues for music, visual art, theater, film, dance, and performance.

Among the highpoints of the festival are the opening production of Harry Partch’s Delusion of the Fury staged by Heiner Goebbels in collaboration with Ensemble musikFabrik, and the festival finale, Romeo Castellucci’s version of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, performed together with the charismatic conductor Teodor Currentzis and the Russian ensemble MusicAeterna. Additional theatrical works will be the work of Belgium-based theater collective FC Bergman and the world premiere of Part 2 of Robert Lepage’s cycle Playing Cards at Salzlager, Essen.

The series of ciné-concerts is completed with In Absentia and the world premiere of Kwartet Smyczkowy by the American filmmakers Quay Brothers, who recently had a retrospective at New York’s MoMA, and the French musicians, improvisers, and DJs Xavier Garcia and Guy Villerd, who under the title ACTUAL REMIX present a new soundtrack for Fritz Lang’s silent classic Metropolis before the impressive backdrop of the Gießhalle in Duisburg’s Landschaftspark.

Numerous events in 2013 will focus on dance. Boris Charmatz and his ensemble of twenty-four dancers will take over Bottrop’s spectacular open-air arena Halde Haniel in Levée des conflits. For the premiere of a choreographed performance of Vortex Temporum, a late work of French composer Gérard Grisey, two exceptional ensembles will join efforts in Bochum’s Jahrhunderhalle: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s company ROSAS and Ictus. Other important choreographers participating this year are La Ribot, Bruno Beltrão, Meg Stuart, and Philipp Gehmacher working with visual artist Vladimir Miller, who will be showing their work at PACT Zollverein (artistic director, Stefan Hilterhaus).

Each Monday, classical chamber concerts will take place in the intimate atmosphere of the Maschinenhaus, Zeche Carl, including the violist and Grammy-Award-winner Kim Kashkashian, the Arditti Quartet, and New York improvisationalists Zeena Parkins (Elektronic Harp) and Ikue Mori (Electronics).

Beside hr-Sinfonieorchester in Lachenmanns Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern, two other large ensembles from North Rhine-Westphalia will be featured in this year’s festival: Bochumer Symphoniker play Gavin Bryar’s masterpiece The Sinking of the Titanic and Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, and WDR Sinfonieorchester will perform Jonathan Harvey’s Glasgow Trilogy and Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, featuring the famous soloist Alina Ibragimova.

The Belgian vocal ensemble graindelavoix was last year’s audience favorite at the sunrise performance of De Keersmaeker’s Cesena, and this year will perform Missa Caput, composed by Johannes Ockeghem in the mid-15^th century.

The wonderful acoustics of Dortmund’s art nouveau Maschinenhalle, Zeche Zollern, offer the ideal setting for the sacred music of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt and British composer Sir John Taverner. ChorWerk Ruhr, under the direction of Florian Helgath and Ensemble Resonanz, will present their concert Ikon of Light in the first ever use of this wonderful example of industrial architecture for the Ruhrtriennale.

Once more this year, in the program No Education artists will work with young people to explore spaces for aesthetic and unbiased experiences. Children from various schools of the Ruhr Region will serve as experts for the independent festival jury and will once again name the winners of the Children’s Choice Awards, an initiative of the Canadian performance group Mammalian Diving Reflex. Young people can also explore the Ruhr region acoustically with the Stockholm percussion trio Hidden Mother and compose what they call “audio graffiti,” which can then be heard on the Internet. Dan Perjovschi will be holding a public workshop on the first weekend of the festival.

Bochum’s Westpark will again be the site of a festival campus this year: students from 14 European art and theater schools will visit productions of the Ruhrtriennale and take part in seminars and workshops that accompany the festival. At tumbletalks, a weekly series of conversations at Essen’s Museum Folkwang, visitors can meet the Ruhrtriennale’s artists. And in the new format freitagsküche, art and real life will enter into a culinary alliance in various locations.

A total of 800 artists from around the world—Germany, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Estonia, France, UK, Italy, Japan, Canada, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Austria, Romania, Russia, Spain and the US—will be participating in this year’s festival.

For more information on press accreditation and visual and text material, visit the press area at www.ruhrtriennale.de

Advanced ticket sales begin on April 17, 2013. The Ruhrtriennale will be held from August 23 October 6, 2013.

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

Project Partners
Delusion of the Fury:Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Kunststiftung NRW, Rudolf Augstein Stiftung, Verein der Freunde und Förderer der Ruhrtriennale e.V. / Levée de conflits: Institut français / Innovationspool – freitagsküche: NRW.BANK / The Last Adventures: Institut français / Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern: Kunststiftung NRW, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, Stiftung pro Bochum / Quay Brothers – In Absentia & Arditti Quartet London: Adam Mickiewicz Institut Warschau / Le Sacre du Printemps: Istituto Italiano di Cultura Köln / Internationaler Festivalcampus: Allianz Kulturstiftung / No Education: Kemnader Kreis / Children’s Choice Awards: Stiftung Mercator, Sparkassen in NRW / Audio Graffiti: PwC-Stiftung Jugend – Bildung – Kultur / Dan Perjovschi: www 2013: Verein der Freunde und Förderer der Ruhrtriennale e.V.

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.