A Ruhrtriennale directorship lasts three years. The audience from the Ruhr region is already very open-minded about the first edition. Open to the unknown and free in their perception, they try things out and go along with craziness. In this sense, the change to the second director in 2005 is also accompanied by curiosity. Appointed is the German director and theater maker Jürgen Flimm.

Flimm and his team go with their program over three years cultural and intellectual history backwards: Romanticism – Baroque – Middle Ages. Thus the festival gives itself and the invited artist:inside a theme.

The first season is under the sign of German Romanticism and connecting lines to the early period of industrialization in the Ruhr area become recognizable. “Nights Underground” by Andrea Breth and Christian Boltanski in the mixing plant of the Zollverein coking plant is an exploration of unknown depths, a walking on abysses and like a timeless floating without romantic transfiguration. In Gladbeck, Alvis Hermanis stages Sorokin’s “The Ice”. This is also a kind of searching station theater. Coming to Bochum for the “School of Romanticism” are: Patti Smith (who of course also gives a concert), Michel Houellebecq, Olga Neuwirth and Haroun Farocki. Sven-Eric Bechtolf and Franui have invented an exuberant and fun-filled homage to alpinism – the beginning of which coincides with Romanticism – with “Stones and Hearts” for the Kraftzentrale in Duisburg. Also of beautiful lightness and subtle humor is the music theater creation “The Trojan Boat” by the music band Mnozil Brass.

Source: RUHRTRIENNALE