Review:Historical fractals in landscapes and text cascading－Everything That Happened And Would Happen

Review: Historical fractals in landscapes and text cascading－Everything That Happened And Would Happen

Chen Yuan-Tang

To participate in by watching "everything that happened."

On the vast, dark and empty stage, the slowly changing landscape is composed of objects, movements, sounds, and light projections. The process and transformation of the various parts are visible, and the gap between the transitions makes the theater time stand out. The stage  change from the empty, then the objects gradually fill the space, and disappear in the fog, let the smoke shape the area, the lights and the projections are as accessible as the objects, the meanings in the picture alternate with the current reality, the music and the sound layer Stacked, or loud noise, or whispering...Which is Heiner Goebbels' latest work, Everything That Happened And Would Happen, which is a spectacle of two hours and twenty minutes. Five musicians and eleven dancers perform it. There is still room for music improvisation, along with the Euronews's channel: No Comment, both make every show different. After the premiere in Manchester in 2018, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York in early June this year. From the work of Czech writer Patrik Ourednik's book "Europeana" Goebbels unintentionally Presenting History or story but stepping out of the European territory. From the bird' s-eye view of the panorama, showing the process of construction, destruction, silence or even rebirth of History; from the collage of reading, and the composition of the picture, let the audience to watch and participate in "everything that happened."

Taiwanese audiences remember the loud sound of the scene, in Surrogate City which performed at the Beitou Depot last year,  the creative German composer and theater director - Heiner Goebbels has been brewing for a long time for this. After the four workshops in Germany, France, Vietnam, and the United Kingdom, in the huge-scale work Everything That Happened And Would Happen he credited as a concept, direction, and lighting designer. After a tour of the UK and New York, they will travel to the Ruhrtriennale in Germany in August, followed by St. Petersburg and Vienna.

I have continued the previous research on Goebbels's works and the experience of participating in the observation of Vietnam music and dance workshop last year. This year, on June first, I went to  Park Avenue Armory to interview and watch this work. During the several days of observation, the scale of his international production technology. Impressed, digital projections and stage technology innovations have created amazingly large scenes; recalled during the Vietnam workshop, the observed dancers and musicians improvised with each other and established under the conceptual leadership of Heiner Goebbels.  How people and objects are equal on the stage and how the artistic elements maintain independence and cooperation. This time, the work is more minimalistic, in my opinion, and the concept of "subtraction" continues rich visual dynamics at the same time, which is the groundbreaking feature of this work.

In the context of Goebbels's creation, he continually thinks about the floating of language and meaning and integrates it with musical descriptions. He refers to the writing of Gertrude Stein, the early 20th-century writer, by Wars I Have Seen which promote his creation of this work. First, the current authorities are not better than those in power in Stein's writing era. Second, Stein's lack of punctuation and incomprehensible meaning inspired him. He wants to start working with the dancers. Also, he wants the landscape elements which in the music theater, John Cage: Europeras 1&2, which directed in 2012, that make up the landscape reappear on the stage. Through the text Europeana  which written by Czech writer Patrik Ouředník, and "No Comment" of Euronews Channel - news with no commentary, in Goebbels's opinion, "This program makes him feel that he  never ready for what will happen and the videos  are "strong intrusion into reality."

Between the object, the action, and the sound, as if painting on the stage.

The armory site's size is like a sports field. At this venue, there are many works directed by Heiner Goebbels, such as the concert Stifters Dinge, the music theater De Materie. As the director of the Ruhrtriennale, It is good at mastering the venues with strong atypical spatial characteristics and combining them with the works. Through the light, projection, and smoke, he creates a depth illusion of space and more radically uses all elements to paint in the visual and auditory sense. The audience sees how the stage forms an "image." The spectacle, however, also quickly decomposed and disappeared in the action of the dancers, and repeating; such as Delusion of the Fury performed in Taiwan in 2016, those special instruments are full of the stage. In this performance, they also use fascinating particular instruments of different eras: medieval analog organs, saxophones, assembled electronic instruments, percussion instruments, and Ondes Martenot: the synthesizer of the early 20th century created a soundscape that was different from the general habit of listening.

At the moment, the words described, as if the continuation of the process of polyphonic and advancement. In the vast space, the structure of the upper booms emphasized, so that the dynamics of the booms are like a mechanical dance composition and even the time when the booms become the performers.  They wear black overalls like playing the stage crew, but they do not move for the meaning of the expression — moreover, the stage constructed by their action. In the scene, scroll wheel runs on the stage, penetrates, arranges and transforms the speed. Like painting, the light colored on the stage, and the smoke is dyed, which reminds me of the air feeling in the impressionist painting; the objects are significant to small. Yes, it shows Goebbels's idea: the slight change of things gradually spreads out and then runs through all the elements.

Since the audience walked in, the dancers begin to act, place objects that appear to be unrelated between shells, grasses, drapes or letter cards when the audience was not aware of them and try to maintain them. The slight balance between the objects, the sound and the melody from the low-limit style, gradually unfolded, such as the saxophone, accumulating more colors; then, the time is condensed, the slowness on the stage seems to be endless, the base of the monument is displayed, like the  temples with broken walls. Suddenly, the big stones slam down the stage, drowning the words of the readers, as if The hills of Sisyphus repeated as if snakes that bite their tails.

Dancers held scenery canvases to form a news image screen or hang that on booms, and the projection forms a partial image. The news image and the words appear to be broken between the trees, from the depth of the stage and approaching the audience. Sometimes the sceneries is unloaded, the stage is empty, the projection makes the stage full like a chessboard, or the lines are comprehensive to make sense of space and movement suspicious, the dancer's dynamics are more concealed; in another scene, The smoke stacks the image of the cave, extending the depth of the space. The wall is like a vane. The dancers and the water pipes are twisted, as the subconscious chaos is unknown or prehistoric times. Then, the dancer pushed the pulley boxes, and the boxes lighted up, each one as an independent white space. Visually with the white squares dancing, the hearing is comforted by the long notes, like Hypnosis, leading the audience into the strange and beautiful environment beyond the consciousness; However, when a large-mouthed lion replaces the scenery, The musician stands in front of the mouth and watch "No Comment "of the day. Beyond the projection, there is a black shadow movement, which is a strange vehicle composed of dancers and flats. At this moment, the layers of "broken scenery" are stacked, and the reading of various countries flowed. The dancers running, under the canvases, become a sculpture, the sound is violent until the brain filled, and the canvases are on the ground, the dancers run on the top, or the shadows are squirming, and the objects are stacked. Like a tank, in the battlefield. The "landscape" collapses everywhere, and it is the end.

Fragmentation of the media landscape, the disappearance of natural scenery, reconstruction of the view of the mind

Soft and hard scenes from the landscape elements of John Cage: Europeras 1&2, continue the concept of Goebbels's landscape. The restoration/reproduction of the "landscape", which is a "broken landscape", although the text is European History, it's not just European scenes, but more words and broken lines, which make the word projections vacant, subverting the French philosopher Guy Debord The perfect surface phenomenon of "La Société du spectacle", what is left behind the screen? Is the truth? Alternatively, is it empty?

The reading of different kinds of language crosses music like a river. The news's images have mixed with the scenes such as throwing tomatoes contest, baby crawling or hurricane disaster, providing different audiences with different image comparisons every time, but what information weaved together? ? The audience only judges it; when the "broken landscape" fragmentation dynamics present the "landscape society" on the sheer drapes, as the dancers sit in the audience before and after the shuttle, things are happening in the distance. Interlaced, perhaps war is only on the screen, History is formed in the "watch" of everyone, as Susan Sontag mentioned, we are "watching the pain of others", the news image provides "distant scenery "Is it a tragic or sinful crime, but does the observer choose to skip or stare?" Choose deep understanding, affirmative action, or forgetting? "La Société du spectacle" is like the struggle between nature and civilization. It seems that in the media age, the silent natural scenery is only for the background of the screen, not to commemorate; However, after the afterimage, there is still an opportunity to reconstruct the rest of the self.

Generate the scene, and the stage is in a smooth change, the creation and collapse process is visible. The visual space is empty, the objects seem to have no connection, and the relationship grows like a full. The fantastic sound appears to drill between the silent gaps. Moreover, then, extended the sensation to overflow, audiovisual in the reading dynamics, word segmentation fragmentation. The audience can only enjoy the meaning absent between the words appear again and then disappear. The beauty of the picture seems to touch the back of the words, where it has never reach, and also reflects the actual time in the news image of the day, which can be said to be a work of painting on the stage with elements such as music, reading, dancing, lighting, etc. Goebbels goes further more thorough in the construction and destruction of the theater and is free and poetic in all elements. Known as the pioneer, Goebbels is active and continuously moving forward, and we look forward to the next step where he will lead.