Walden (Heiner Goebbels) with Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop

Heiner Goebbels turns Walden, a foundational text of political ecology, into a theatre of soundscapes. Across nine “environments”, he rekindles Thoreau’s call to step away from the race for accumulation, to remain close to the living world, and relearn to listen.
Published in 1854, Walden recounts the two years, two months and two days Henry David Thoreau spent in a cabin by a pond in Massachusetts. This chosen withdrawal gave rise to a body of thought centered on independence, civil disobedience and another way of inhabiting the world. Heiner Goebbels takes fragments from the text and sets them in motion between speech, gestures, instruments and sound objects. From them, he creates a sequence of listening situations in which the text breaks apart, shifts and transforms. Thoreau’s cabin ceases then to be a secluded refuge and becomes an observation post, directed towards our surroundings.