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“In his three years as Artistic Director of the Ruhrtriennale, Heiner Goebbels has successfully shown how to astonish and enchant audiences of all types with new and radically different types of music theatre.” Ute Schäfer, Minister of Culture for the region of Northe Rhine-Westphalia

“What characterizes the Ruhrtriennale are the interactions between artists and spaces. These make strong artistic experiences possible for all of us and they are my highest priority: where else does one have the freedom to allow something to develop without compromise?” Heiner Goebbels in the editorial for the programme of the Ruhrtriennale 2014
 

Heiner Goebbels, Artistic Director of the Ruhrtriennale 2012/2013/2014 and Lukas Crepaz, Managing Director of Kultur Ruhr GmbH, present an initial assessment of the Ruhrtriennale 2014 today in Bochum. The Ruhrtriennale, in its third and final season under Heiner Goebbels, ends this weekend, 26^th -28^th September 2014, with, among others, further performances of Surrogate Cities Ruhr, manger, Monument 0, with the presentation of the Children’s Choice Awards in Duisburg and a concert by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum. Johan Simons will become the new Artistic Director of the Ruhrtriennale 2015-2017. The next season will run from 14 ^th August to 27^th September 2015.

To mark the ending of the Ruhrtriennale 2014, there is a special offer: on presentation of a ticket for the 2014 season, visitors will receive free entry on 3^rd and 4^th October to the installation KUNSTMUSEUM by Gregor Schneider at the Kunstmuseum Bochum...

The podium for the ZEIT Forum Kultur, which this year is devoted to the Ruhrtriennale’s No Education programme, has been confirmed. With the writer Sibylle Lewitscharoff, philosopher Gernot Böhme and journalist Mark Terkessidis, the ZEIT Forum Kultur has a distinguished line-up and a controversial discussion can be anticipated.

The Ruhrtriennale will open on Friday, 15^th August with Louis Andriessen’s music theatre work De Materie in the Kraftzentrale in the Duisburg Landschaftspark, directed by the Ruhrtriennale’s Artistic Director Heiner Goebbels and his team. Visitors to the Landschaftspark will be able to take the first steps on the open access installation Melt from 1500 hours. This 70m long moving interactive walkway of aluminium plates by cantoni crescenti, produced for the Ruhrtriennale by Urbane Künste Ruhr, will be opened by Minister of Culture Ute Schäfer in the presence of the artists. Saturday 16^th August begins at 1200 hours with the openings of two public exhibitions at the Museum Folkwang in Essen. The works shown are Harun Farockis and Antje Ehmann’s exhibition Labour in a Single Shot and the film Levée by choreographer Boris Charmatz and film maker César Vayssié which was shot in 2013 on the Halde Haniel in Bottrop. At 1400 hours italian director  Romeo Castellucci invites you to the world premiere of his staging of Le Sacre du Printemps with 40 machines which make bone dust dance. There will be a second performance at 2000 hours on the same day in the Gebläsehalle Duisburg, followed at 2100 hours by the first freitagsküche of the season (which this year always take place on Saturdays!).  In the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum that same evening, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker presents the world premiere of Transfigured Night, a pas de deux to the music of Arnold Schönberg.  The night concert For Philip Guston by Morton Feldman performed by the Ensemble Modern in the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum promises to be a particularly special experience, starting at 2300 hours and lasting four and a half hours. On Sunday 17^th August, Heiner Goebbels will meet Louis Andriessen for the first tumbletalk.  These are always held on Sundays at the Museum Folkwang. It is followed the same day by further performances of Le Sacre du Printemps, De Materie and Transfigured Night.

For more detials see the full programme.

Gregor Schneider will realise a new work for the Ruhrtriennale at the Kunstmuseum Bochum. Under the title KUNSTMUSEUM he will investigate the location and function of the art museum. Following the cancellation of his planned site specific sculpture totlast for the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg by the Lord Mayor of the city of Duisburg, realising this work in Bochum is a considerable achievement. The exhibition will open on 29^th August, two weeks after the beginning of the festival, but will remain open after the festival in October.

The artwork planned for the Ruhrtriennale 2014 by internationally renowned installation artist Gregor Schneider at the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg cannot be realised. Lord Mayor Sören Link informed the Artistic Director of the Ruhrtriennale, Heiner Goebbels, by telephone a short time ago that irrespective of further inspections by the building control office the artwork was not suited to the city at the present time. The artist, the Ruhrtriennale’s artistic team and the Museum are markedly critical of the way in which the matter has been handled.

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The Society of Friends and Supporters invites 50 students to the Ruhrtriennale. The Ruhrtriennale gives away 50 free festival passes for students up to the age of 27 years. This offer has been financed since 2012 by the Society of Friends and Supporters of the Ruhrtriennale, and allows 50 students to visit all Ruhrtriennale events free of charge.

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Since Matthew Herbert's concert performance 20 Pianos on 23. August is already sold out, there will be an additional performance on 24. August at PACT Zollverein. With 20 Pianos, Matthew Herbert tells the stories of twenty unique pianos from all over the world. From Steinways at the famous Abbey Road Studios or great concert halls to out of tune pianos that pass away their existence in privat living rooms: Herbert photographed them all, sampled their specific sound, and recorded brief stories about their origin.

Tickets are available at here.

Heiner Goebbels presents programme for Ruhrtriennale 2014. Surrogate Cities Ruhrchoreography for the Ruhrgebiet highlight of season. Opening premiere in Duisburg for first time.

The international festival of the arts with numerous highlights: music theatre, dance, concerts, film and visual arts in industrial heritage sites in Bochum, Duisburg, Essen and Gladbeck.

Advance booking for all productions opens today, 2^ndApril 2014.

Buy tickets online

The Ruhrtriennale mourns the death of its founding artistic director Gerard Mortier. Mortier directed the Ruhrtriennale's first cycle from 2002 to 2004, setting an international benchmark. With his forward-looking concept and exceptional programme, he established the festival in the "cathedrals of the industrial age" and gave the Ruhrtriennale its unmistakable face.
In these "construction halls for art" in the Ruhrgebiet, Gerard Mortier placed his focus on creations - productions, which crossed art-form boundaries in dialogue with their locations: theatre, opera and dance combined with innovative developments in the visual arts, pop and concert music. Representative examples of these included acclaimed productions such as Sentimenti, Saint Francois d'Assise, The Magic Flute, Wolf or the series Century of Song.

As a formative innovator in the European opera and concert landscape he worked in Brussels, Salzburg, Paris and finally Madrid. With his passing, the Ruhrtriennale loses one of its greatest supporters, who retained close links with it to the last.

Gerard Mortier, founding artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale, died on Saturday 8th March 2014 at the age of 70.

Reactions to the death of Gerard Mortier:

Heiner Goebbels, Artistic Director of the Ruhrtriennale:
"With the artistic impulses generated in his work as a curator and artistic director, Gerard Mortier more than anyone else made it possible to think of opera in a different way from that in which it had previously been known. He not only confronted music theatre with new constellations of artists and the visual arts, he also made productions of the opera repertoire contemporary and thereby gave them a future. I have been glad to carry forward many of the initiatives with which he established the Ruhrtriennale. I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to get to know him personally in recent years. His considerable interest in our productions and above all his spontaneous willingness to support our No Education programme as its patron was of great importance for our work. For this too, we thank him."

Minister Ute Schäfer MdL, Ministry for Family, Children, Youth, Culture and Sport of the State of North Rhine-Westfalia, chair of the board of Kultur Ruhr GmbH:
"With Gerard Mortier North Rhine-Westfalia loses a great friend and the world of the arts loses one of its truly great personalities. As the founding artistic director, he gave the Ruhrtriennale an unmistakable face in the years 2002-2004 and thus laid the artistic foundations for its enduring success. It was his credo to find new forms of theatre and music theatre for these "cathedrals of industrial culture" which could only be realised there."