Heiner Goebbels: Stifter's Dinge
April 2008
P3, Marylebone Rd, London NW1
Photograph by Mario del Curto
Five grand pianos, insides out, are suspended in the clearing of a forest…
The instruments advance, playing furiously on their own as they glide over the steaming lagoon situated between us and the trees. Elsewhere in the landscape, the disembodied voices of Claude Lévi-Strauss, William S Burroughs and Malcolm X appear and disappear through the foggy darkness of history.
In an extraordinary sculptural installation that is part music box and part landscape painting, Heiner Goebbels’ chief protagonists were all objects at the mercy of elemental forces. Stifter’s Dinge was a performance with no performers: a series of chain reactions and changing climates of sound, image, text and movement.
In a composition both visual and musical, acclaimed international composer and director Heiner Goebbels took as his starting point a fragment of text by early 19th century Romantic writer Adalbert Stifter, around which he created a striking choreography of light and sound, shadowy mechanical objects and extreme weather.
Adalbert Stifter was an Austrian writer, poet and painter who lived in Vienna and Linz, earning his living from teaching and painting before becoming a writer. Stifter’s writing is characterised by his lush, vivid descriptions of landscape and the minutiae within them. His landscapes become subjects in which human interaction is simply a minor detail: objects in space.
Goebbels’ compelling work occupied an equally remarkable hidden space in central London: the cavernous interior of P3 - a former construction hall where concrete resistance was tested for the building of the M1 motorway.
Set design, lighting and video for Stifter’s Dinge was by Klaus Grünberg.
Stifter’s Dinge was a co-commission by Artangel and Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne and it was produced by Théâtre Vidy.
Co-produced with spielzeit'europa/Berliner Festpiele, Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg, schauspielfranfurt, T&M - Théâtre de Genevilliers/CDN, Pour-cent culturel Migros, Teatro Stabile di Torino. With the support of Pro Helvetia - Fondation suisse pour la culture.
Presented in partnership with P3, University of Westminster and with support from the Goethe-Institut.
Supported by Arts Council England, Artangel International Circle, Special Angels and The Company of Angels
