Public Talk with Heiner Goebbels

On the occasion of Cartel 2018, an international conference for presenters and artistic directors specialized in new music, German composer Heiner Goebbels will participate in a public talk moderated by Réjean Beaucage. He will also deliver a keynote address at Forum 2018, a conference organized by the Canadian New Music Network which will take place from May 17 to 20 in Victoriaville and Montreal.

Heiner Goebbels

Recently appointed Georg Büchner Chair at the Center for Media and Interactivity at Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Heiner Goebbels practices the hybridity of genres with astonishing virtuosity. On the border between sociology and art, between music and theater, using the codes of both popular art and high culture, this polymorphous artist is obsessed with the form of things. In music, theater or installation, he tickles our perception by offering reflections of reality, leaving it for us to interpret.
 
Through all the writers whose work he has directed, from Heiner Mueller to Gertrude Stein, all the artists whose work he has presented in his role as artistic director, from Robert Wilson to Robert Lepage, and all the composers he has helped to present their works, from John Cage to Harry Partch - what is, ultimately, the message of Heiner Goebbels? In this hyperactive production that comes in so many different forms, what is the thread? Finally, how can an outlook so frequently pessimistic about human destiny (Mueller, Beckett ...) offer the art lover such good reasons to be optimistic, resulting in the development of a catalog of works of such richness, of such a web of senses?

Réjean Beaucage
After passing through the litterature program at Université du Québec à Montréal, Réjean Beaucage began playing in rock bands as a self-tought drummer and bacame involved in radio (mostly at CIBL-FM, where he worked as researcher, technician, producer and host from 1985 to 2002) — he received the firt Opus Prize for the 1996-1997 Media production of the Year for the show AnemixinemA/Zone sonore. After that he was attracted by written journalism ans since 2001 he writes regularly in Montréal’s weekly cultural journal Voir. Since 2000, his texts can be read in Circuit, a musicological journal devoted to contemporary music (he was a member of the editorial board between 2003 and 2010). His name can also be found in Improjazz (France). He is the author of Histoire de la Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (2011, Septentrion) and he currently works as executive director for the concert society Réseaux des arts médiatiques.