Wonge Bergmann

Composer and director Heiner Goebbels.

Renowned composer and theater director Heiner Goebbels will visit Cornell March 7-17 as an artist-in-residence with Cornell's Institute for German Cultural Studies. Goebbels will interact with students and faculty across campus who are involved with theater, film, music and literature.

Goebbels will give a public lecture, "Aesthetics of Absence: Questioning Basic Assumptions in Performing Arts," March 9 at 4:30 p.m. in the Schwartz Center's Film Forum, followed by a reception in the Schwartz Center lobby.

"Heiner Goebbels is especially good at thinking outside the box and encouraging his audiences to do the same," said Leslie Adelson, director of the Institute for German Cultural Studies. "If you think you know what musical composition, theatrical performances and literary writing mean, his works and reflections will make you think again and be very glad you did."

He will lead a seminar, March 11, 6:30-9:30 p.m., on changing concepts of theater, "Anything Which Is Not a Story Could Be a Play (G. Stein)." The seminar will deal with works by Gertrude Stein, Heiner Müller and Goebbels himself. It is intended for graduate students in German studies, music, comparative literature and theatre, film and dance. Registration is required; contact Olga Petrova at ogp2@cornell.edu.

Goebbels will conduct a free and open Composers' Forum, March 12, 1:25-3 p.m. in Lincoln Hall's Kahn Seminar Room.

Goebbels' residency will also include a visit to a German language and culture class taught by Grit Matthias, to discuss the relationships between his work and digital arts; a class on opera taught by Rebecca Harris-Warrick; and a conversation with undergraduates in theatre, film and dance, coordinated by lecturer Byron Suber.

Goebbels has been president of the Theatre Academy of Hesse since 2006, and is a professor and director of the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies at the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, Germany.

His compositions are known for their creative mix of the avant-garde and musical tradition and have been performed worldwide by contemporary music ensembles and orchestras.

Since the early 1990s, Goebbels has composed and directed several unconventional musical theater pieces, including "Black on White" (1996), "Max Black" (1998), "Hashirigaki" (2000), "Stifters Dinge" (2007) and "I Went to the House But Did Not Enter" (2008).

"Stifters Dinge," his art installation/theatrical meditation on forces of nature, was staged in 2009 at Lincoln Center's Park Avenue Armory, with five computerized player pianos, sound effects and recorded texts by artist and poet Adalbert Stifter, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Malcolm X and William S. Burroughs.

Goebbels has received several international awards and has released numerous recordings; he has been nominated twice for a Grammy Award.

Goebbels' Cornell visit is sponsored by the Institute for German Cultural Studies along with the Departments of Music, German Studies, and Theatre, Film and Dance. For more information, visit http://www.heinergoebbels.com or http://www.arts.cornell.edu/igcs.