[D66] Heiner Goebbels, Stifter’s Dinge

[Antid Oto]

http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/heiner-goebbels-stifters-dinge-2/

Heiner Goebbels
Stifter’s Dinge

4–18 November 2012
Ambika P3
University of Westminster
35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS
www.artangel.org.uk


This November, Artangel is reprising Stifter’s Dinge in London for the 
last time. The astonishing production by German composer and director 
Heiner Goebbels, first shown to sold out audiences in 2008, will return 
to its original home at Ambika P3, a former concrete-testing facility, 
at the University of Westminster underneath the Marylebone Road for two 
weeks only. It will be presented both in its original form and in a new 
durational version, Stifter’s Dinge: The Unguided Tour, created 
especially for the space, where audiences will be free to fully explore 
the environment, experiencing the work up close and from multiple 
viewpoints as a continuously evolving installation.

Stifter’s Dinge is a composition for five pianos with no pianists; a 
performance without performers. Inspired by the books of 19th-century 
Austrian author, poet and painter Adalbert Stifter, known for his 
evocative and meticulous descriptions of the natural world, Goebbels 
transforms a vast underground concrete box into a wild, brooding, 
living, breathing landscape complete with its own weather system.

The five pianos hang stripped and bared above pools of water. The 
atmosphere is damp and menacing as the ghostly voices of William S. 
Burroughs, Malcolm X and Claude Lévi-Strauss mix with weather and 
nature, mechanical objects, projections and music in a rich 
all-consuming experience that left audiences stunned four years ago. The 
original production will run for eight performances only, following 
Stifter’s Dinge: The Unguided Tour, which will be presented over seven 
days in a series of reprogrammed movements and random sequences 
stretched out over several hours. Areas of Ambika P3 will be made 
accessible for The Unguided Tour that won’t be viewable during the 
performance version, shifting the perspective of the work so that each 
visitor will have a unique experience.

Ambika P3 is a 14,000 square foot former construction hall built in the 
1960s. It was originally where concrete was tested for the Westway 
flyover, and is now the University of Westminster’s project space for 
contemporary art and architecture.

Stifter’s Dinge was originally commissioned by Artangel and Théâtre 
Vidy-Lausanne in 2008, with support from the Goethe-Institut and in 
partnership with P3, University of Westminster. In 2012, Stifter’s 
Dinge: The Unguided Tour is co-commissioned by Artangel, co-produced by 
Ruhrtriennale – International Festival of the Arts, executive produced 
by Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne and presented in partnership with Ambika P3, 
University of Westminster.