Ruhrtriennale 2012 - 14: an interview with Prof. Heiner Goebbels

From 2012 to 2014, Heiner Goebbels will be the new art director of Ruhrtriennale with plans to transform it into a great place for performing arts with music, visual arts and people. In doing so, he seeks to open the minds of artists to be like the audience to create a flow of imagination. How does the free spirit think that is the force behind the excellent start programme for the post-industrial play locations in the Ruhr metropolitan region?

Centrepiece of the Goebbels´ programme philosophy  is "The Moment of the Uncomprehended". Serving as an artistic role model for the paradigm shift in art and science. Despite the heated debate of a cultural infarction, Goebbels offers solutions with his practical philosophy that transports the common fashion words "innovation" and "structural change" onto a totally different level. Most important to him seems to be a "strong artistic experience" for the audience and spectators that makes you reflect and that "has a huge potential for innovation".

 

As director, composer, producer and scientist, he is an insider and long-time conoisseur of the scene. Yet this year's winner of the prestigious International Ibsen Awards is not shy of questioning the spectacle in Germany - to open it for new and old contents and methods that hardly received any attention. He continuously re-creates theatre instead of limiting himself and stays hungry instead of losing himself in visions. And he knows what is to come: with clear analysis, he points at profits and losses the contradictory process of digital revolution is bringing in, thus massively changing the audience´s modes of perception.

 

Text: Boris Alexander Knop