Bitef

117

Stifter writes about Nature, that is to say, he transforms nature into literature. Are you doing the opposite? Trying with this evening of music to turn the instruments of its expression, the pianos, into nature? I don't confuse the stage with reality and am perfectly aware that it is an artificial space. And a space for artistic experience. If you know how to, you can lead the spectator's attention to the sound of a slowly moving stone, to discover "things" as you would on a nature trail; or indeed lead them to discover something new about themselves. What is the role of the text in this musical and spatial composition? Was it the inspiration, or did it come to the work during its development? Does it tell its own story? There is a fragment of a description from Stifter in the piece, but it isn't at the centre of the work. My intention wasn't to do a stage version of Stifter or his texts. And this space contains other quite different texts and voices. Theatre offers the audience - in a conventional understanding of intensity and presence - the possible to identify itself with the work, to see itself mirrored. My intention is rather to invite the audience to an encounter with a stranger, with something unknown. Is your choice of Stifter a selfconscious flight from today's world? And if it is, where does the need come from to occasionally evade the assault of the present on the rest of time. That's not really it. There are very contemporary references in the piece, in another sense it is from another era, a slower time that allowed for greater listening and watching, which is incidentally what Stifter allows the reader to do when he transforms him into the riding man during the description of the forest. There is in Stifter's work sometimes a sort of "real time", when he takes five pages to describe a thunderstorm, examining in detail the relationship between the lighting and the thunder or the raindrops on the window. It's not what you'd call cosy writing in the style of Biedermeier. Using recordings like "4 Fäuste für Hanns Eisler" and sound collages like for example with OTone material from the Berlin Sit-in Demos, you've politicised your music. When you began as a musician you identified yourself with the "Sogennanten Linksradikalen Blasorchester" (So Called Radical Left Wind Orchestra) on the Frankfurt "Sponti" scene as part of a political movement. Later you played with Chris Cutler in the art punk band "Cassiber". Nowadays the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra performs your pieces. Is that a development of your origins or merely the inevitable path through the institutions? I still have Issues with institutions. I look for friendly, utopian working conditions, for example with a self governing orchestra like the Berlin Philharmonic or the Ensemble Modern or in the small, flexible Vidy Theatre in Lausanne where I've been producing my work for the last ten years. I didn't then and I don't now work using politics as a sort of billboard; instead I translate this claim into production methods, material structures, questions of perception and the role of the listener / audience. I don't think that my recent work has been non political, it is not important for me to focus on my interpretation of the world, but rather to open up texts, to find images that expand the view; to form a multilayered production on which by the way, many different creative people work. I couldn't think it all up myself, I'd get bored. For the last ten years I've worked with the same team and quite often I'll only have the starting point of the next production, the questions that I want to share with that team and with the audience. I don't have the answers TIP BERLIN

The performance Eroritjaritjaka directed by Heiner Goebbels for Theatre Vidy-Lausanne from Switzerland was awarded Grand Prix Mira Trailovic and newspaper Politika Award. It was performed in Yugoslav Drama Theatre.

story, whereas the characters are often just poked into the weave and are In noway sovereign subjects of their stories. The contemporary and radical aspects of Stifter's work show through the deliberate slowing down and ritualised repetitions and are of particular significance to today's reader. Taken from the programme of the performance

MAIN PROGRAMME