Ruhrtriennale: Hoping for what? | nd-aktuell.de

This year’s Ruhrtriennale under the direction of Ivo van Hove has the motto “Longing for Tomorrow – Longing for Tomorrow”. What exactly we should long for, however, remains undetermined. In the TV humorous crime thriller “Murder with a View” you’re a little further along when an actor says: “Hopefully it won’t be as bad as it already is.”

At the start of the Ruhrtriennale, the festival director brought a staged rock concert to the stage under the title “I Want Absolute Beauty”. The actress Sandra Hülser, “a force of nature” (van Hove), sang songs by the British indie singer Polly Jean Harvey, material from her albums of the 90s and noughties, supported by videos on a big screen and the eight-person dance company (La) Horde. The stage in the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum was a field strewn with earth on which the dancers were able to portray war scenes just as convincingly as sexually connoted moments. The setlist of this Education sentimentale was divided into four chapters: Grow, Love and Personal and Political Disappointments, Big Exit and Back Home, set in 26 songs by PJ Harvey.

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The actress Hülser proved to be a terrific singer who brilliantly used the entire range of rock music, from roaring to gentle tones. Shortly before the end of her performance, the face of the French actress Isabelle Huppert appeared on the screen in a kind of soft focus. Her attempt at a song was extremely charming in its failure.

As part of the Ruhrtriennale, Huppert was also able to shine in Racine’s “Bérénice”, staged by Romeo Castellucci, in the power center in the Duisburg-Nord landscape park, using less spectacular but meticulously applied acting means. “Bérénice” is about the Roman Emperor Titus falling in love with the titular queen, a Syrian Hasmonean, and discovering that she returns his love. But a decree of the Roman Empire forbids Titus from marrying her. The Roman writer Suetonius (around 70 to around 122) wrote: “Titus immediately released Queen Berenice, to whom he is said to have even promised marriage, from Rome against his and her wishes.” Their love is sacrificed for reasons of state. In “Education after Auschwitz” Theodor W. Adorno wrote in 1966 that such a respectable concept as raison d’état should be treated critically: “(I)n putting the law of the state above that of its members, the horror is potentially already set.” Huppert succeeded in evoking the horror that was caused by the state’s prohibition of love.

With the grandiose headline “The birth of aesthetics from the spirit of political thought,” director Krystian Lada announced his walk-in installation “Evening Magic,” which was presented on different floors of the mixing plant at the Zollverein Coking Plant in Essen. The Chorwerk Ruhr performed works by Anton Bruckner and the Icelandic singer Björk there. Thematically it was about the relationship between humans and nature. However, the author of these lines was denied access to this “immersive installation” – because of his walking stick. This was identified as a “loose object”. The reasoning was that one could slip out of your hand and injure the performers. Other loose items, such as visual aids or handbags, were not identified as a security risk. My walking companion reported that as soon as they arrived at the installation course, some visitors took their smartphones out of their handbags, which could also be described as loose objects. The choir singing was beautiful, but the production was less so, according to my companion’s description. “Nebbich” was their verdict on the idea of ​​putting a child at the end of the course who had to recite sentences from climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Julius Eastman (1940–1990) was a black and gay composer, pianist, singer and dancer. He grew up in Ithaca, New York. There he began taking piano lessons at the age of 14; In 1959 he was admitted to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music conservatory in Philadelphia to study piano and composition. At the end of the 1960s he found his place in a white-dominated scene – the avant-garde of new music in Buffalo and New York. Eastman enriched the minimalist music associated primarily with white composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich. In 1981 his New York apartment was evacuated by the police. From then on, Eastman was homeless. On May 28, 1990, at just 49 years old, he suffered a cardiac arrest. It wasn’t until months later that the first obituary for him appeared.

It was thanks to the composer Mary Jane Leach that it was rediscovered in the noughties. Eastman’s music follows an “organic principle” according to which each new section of a work should contain all the information from the previous sections. This principle can be found implemented in the works for four pianos written around 1979, in “Evil Nigger”, “Gay Guerrilla” and “Crazy Nigger”. When Eastman wanted to bring the compositions to the stage in Chicago in 1980, their titles were not allowed to be printed in the program because of the N-word. In the program of the Ruhrtriennale, “Evil Nigger” becomes “Evil N****r,” which is considered politically correct. When Eastman’s works were played at the Lenbachhaus in Munich two years ago, it was said: “The titles of the works must be spelled out in the context of the performances in order not to endanger the integrity of his work and his intentions.” Eastman had once declared, “crazy nigger” is by no means pejorative, but rather a synonym for fundamental change and resistance.

In the Turbine Hall of the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum, the brilliant chamber orchestra Wild Up from Los Angeles not only performed the meditative, expansive Eastman piece “Buddha” – not as has already happened in the USA with a duration of 14, but only four hours. The three other compositions already mentioned, of which “Crazy Nigger” is the longest, were also performed on the second day of the performance, with the musicians’ strenuous efforts. It offers a breathtaking cascade of complex harmonies, each held longer, seemingly dissolving into chaos, only to drift towards a new harmony.

The Ruhrtriennale ends on September 15th.
www.ruhrtriennale.de

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