Heiner Goebbels' 'Stifter's Dinge' Installation

AAnyone interested in installations should see this. While it sounds like an unspeakable appendage to an episode from American Pie, it is a fantastic multisensory experience.

Stifter’s Dinge (Stifter's Things) 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 and brooding, living, breathing landscape complete with its own weather system. 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 sell-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. 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.

Conception, music and direction: Heiner Goebbels

Set design, light and video: Klaus Grünberg

Musical collaboration/programming: Hubert Machnik

Sound design: Willi Bopp

Assistant and musical supervision: Matthias Mohr

Opening Hours and Ticket Information Opening Days & Times: The Unguided Tour: Sunday 4 November 12 – 8pm Tuesday 6 November 4 – 8pm Wednesday 7 November 4 – 8pm Thursday 8 November 4 – 8pm Friday 9 November 12 – 8pm Saturday 10 November 12 – 8pm Sunday 11 November 12 – 8pm Performances: Tuesday 13 November 8pm Wednesday 14 November 8pm Thursday 15 November 8pm Friday 16 November 8pm Saturday 17 November 5pm and 9pm Sunday 18 November 5pm and 9pm Admission: The Unguided Tour: Free and unticketed. Performances: £25 / £20 concessions. To book visit www.artangel.org.uk Performance audiences must arrive at least 10 minutes before the start time. Latecomers may not be admitted.

The running time of the performance is approximately 75 minutes. It's located at Ambika P3, University of Westminster, Marylebone Road, London, NW1, and runs from the 4th to 18th November 2012.