Stifter's Dinge: press coverage
The Guardian, 27 March 2008
The Guardian, 27 March 2008:
"Goebbels' show, Stifter's Dinge (Stifter's Things), a collaboration with the British group Artangel, is based on the vivid landscape descriptions of the heavygoing early 19th-century Austrian Romantic writer Adalbert Stifter. The experimental show has been called many things - a sculptural installation, a performative composition, a piano piece without pianists, a play without players, a no-man show. Its attention is on the objects that would usually form the background, the props or parts of the set. Under the direction of Goebbels, one of the world's leading exponents of contemporary music and theatre, it is the mechanics of the production that become the work's focus. 'Normally, theatre mirrors that which we already know,' Goebbels says. 'But I think that's boring. For hundreds of years, the actors have been centre stage. But we forget there are other things that also have a meaning.'" (Kate Connolly - read full article)
The Daily Telegraph, 16 April 2008:
"There are more readings (Lévi-Strauss, William Burroughs, Malcolm X), projections (of Paolo Uccello's The Hunt) and music before a series of frenzied arpeggios lead up to a breathtaking finale when the roiling waters begin to bubble and steam in an evocation of some primordial landscape or volcanic eruption taking place before the beginning of time.
"I know it sounds like the stuff of Pseuds' Corner, but I fell for it, hook line and sinker. If you are looking for meaning, it isn't difficult to see the structure of the work as progressing from the dawn of creation to the rise of civilisation and a return to the ooze.
"But I think that may be the wrong way to look at it. That there are no live performers is important to the effect Goebbels is seeking.
"You have to approach Stifter's Dinge not as theatre, but as an art work - an installation brought to life by sound and light and special effects borrowed from the theatre and opera." (Richard Dorment - read full article)
Evening Standard, 16 April 2008:
"I read it as the engulfing of the human spirit by technology. Quotations from Claude Lévi-Strauss intimate a disenchanted view of man’s potential, while inanimate objects threaten to emulate and supersede human beings. But the glory of this richly comprehensive work is that you can understand it in many ways: an ecological interpretation would be equally convincing.
"The sheer scope of the conception — from the primeval to the futuristic, taking in the pastoral and the industrial — invites a multiplicity of readings. The prodigality of the visual concept (Klaus Grünberg) and the stupefying technological wizardry help make this show something that resonates long after in the mind." (Barry Millington - read full article)
Metro, 17 April 2008:
"The piece is named after 19th-century German Romantic writer Adalbert Stifter, and an extract from his novel, My Great Grandfather's Portfolio, read by actor Bill Patterson, forms its core. Thanks to Patterson's gentle and hypnotic Scottish voice and beautiful narration, this remains the show's highlight." (Fisun Guner)