Reading Time 15 mn
Article by David Sanson

Heiner Goebbels’ latest stage work, prepared in part within IRCAM’s ManiFeste Academy, Everything That Happened and Would Happen will be presented this June at La Villette’s Grande Halle. It is a kaleidoscope of sensations that explores a century of history in order to better understand today’s Europe—and a fresh manifestation of the unique way in which the composer and director simultaneously (and collectively) arranges every theatrical element to expand our interpretive freedom.

Everything That Happened and Would Happen. In the text accompanying the short video documentary published on YouTube by Artangel—the production company behind Heiner Goebbels’ latest spectacle—the title has been rendered in three different ways: “Everything That Happened and Would Occur”; “Everything That Happened and Was Going to Happen”; “Everything That Happened and Will Happen.” Although the final option is grammatically flawed, this confusion appears to be symptomatic of the German artist’s practice. It is an art of indecision (distinct from imprecision), fundamentally open, whose primary aim is to evoke “as many questions as there are spectators”—and thus as many interpretations—as the artist himself confirmed last December. The show is a striking new demonstration of this approach.
Photo: Heiner Goebbels © TPAC Tat Keng

This will be evident in June at La Villette’s Grande Halle. Initially premiered in an old railway station in Manchester, then staged in Salzburg in a saline converted into a theater, this elusive stage object is now set to take over in former slaughterhouses. In just a few dozen minutes, it purports to recount Europe’s history from the outbreak of the First World War. Here, the verb “to purport” is to be taken in its English sense—“to pretend”—since Goebbels’ intent lies elsewhere. Rather than presenting a vast historical fresco, Everything That Happened and Would Happen is more akin to a kaleidoscope—a means of rousing our senses by questioning the very meanings of History. It is yet another illustration of the three paradigms that, after nearly forty years of career, continue to simultaneously guide his work: juxtaposition, improvisation, and collaboration.

Everything That Happened and Would Happen © Stephanie Berger, Bad Ischl Salzkammergut, 2024

Separation of Elements

It is to his longtime colleague, actor and director André Wilms (1947–2022), that Goebbels attributes—“among many other things”—his introduction to Patrik Ouředník's Europeana : “About ten years ago, André sent me a text message saying, ‘You have to read this!’ I immediately ordered the book; it impressed me greatly, but I shelved it just as quickly. I couldn’t see how to approach such a politically charged text without resorting to a ‘political theater,’ which does not interest me.”»

Subtitled “A Brief History of Europe,” this 2001 publication is, in effect, both a radically political act and a powerful artistic gesture, one that claims to narrate Europe’s history in 150 pages by overusing the linguistic ticks and clichés of our time. The result is an inventory à la Flaubert (in the Bouvard and Pécuchet style) that leaps from one subject to another until it reaches absurdity, indiscriminately colliding approximations, shortcuts, generalizations, and the so-called “certainties” about the most diverse human-interest stories…

One can understand what captivated Goebbels here—whose nearly all works, be they shows, radio plays, or installations, are built upon texts—and why he has always shown a penchant for formal experimentation: first with Heiner Müller, but also with James Joyce, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Gertrude Stein. Indeed, he even draws a parallel between Ouředník’s text and the work of the latter, “The title of the show is derived from Europeana, but the phrase could just as easily have come from Gertrude Stein. In her work—and above all in Les Guerres que j’ai vues, the book she wrote about her experience of the Second World War in France (1947, ed.)—the mantra ‘History is repeating’ recurs constantly. Our title, however, suggests that everything could just as well be completely different…”

"I am incapable of writing a single note unless I have improvised with everyone for two weeks"
Heiner Goebbels

The heterogeneity of Ouředník’s book echoes the “postdramatic” theater—as opposed to postmodern theater—as conceived by Goebbels, which is based on the arrangement of disparate materials in which every parameter of the stage is treated equally: text, light, sound, scenography, performance… In this case, aside from Europeana, he has drawn on two other sources, both beginning with “Euro,” that have long accompanied him. On the one hand, there are John Cage’s Europeras 1 & 2, a duo of anti-operas through which, although he never witnessed the original production in Frankfurt (in 1987), he has embraced from his early career the “radical conception of separating every component of the stage from one another”—an avatar, in a Fluxus version, of Bertolt Brecht’s “separation of elements.”

In 2012, opening the Ruhr Triennale, Goebbels himself finally brought the Cage diptych to the stage, reusing for the occasion the sets, leaflets, and objects that Klaus Grünberg—appointed by Cage for the scenography and lighting—had designed or “discovered” for the work’s creation. It is these very set pieces and peculiar props that, reemployed and rearranged, organize the stage space of Everything That Happened and Would Happen; 12 performers constantly reposition them on a stage most often shrouded in an eerie gloom…

On the other hand, Goebbels also utilized footage from a famous news program on the Euronews channel, No Comment, which he has followed since the 1990s, the premise of which is to broadcast reports without any commentary whatsoever. Again, in these wordless images, one perceives what has seduced this artist, who is in constant pursuit of decoupling what is heard from what is seen, deconstructing perception in order to stimulate our freedom of association… to ultimately create a “concentrate of stage action,” as one of his collaborators aptly describes in the aforementioned documentary. Goebbels stated this in 2008 to Jean-François Perrier for the Avignon Festival: the key is “that all the arts be strong on stage and that there be no hierarchy. We must open up content rather than multiply it,” and suggest rather than impose. “Staging opinions is at odds with my idea of art,” he confirms.

Collective Improvisation

In Everything That Happened and Would Happen, two other fundamental characteristics of this director-architect—and of this composer in the etymological sense—are clearly at work. First, its collective dimension. Although his signature always appears at the top of the poster, Goebbels has always shared the authorship of his musical theater pieces by including himself among a “creative team” of six men. Here, he goes further, as the 19 artists seen on stage were discreetly “cast” during four auditions organized in Germany, Vietnam, Great Britain, and at CENTQUATRE-PARIS in June 2018, in collaboration with IRCAM and the Centre national de la danse. These individuals, working with Goebbels, developed the choreographic, musical, and textual score of the show. It was the first time that Goebbels worked with dancers—a fact he made sure to remind them from the outset. Thus, through this close collaboration, an unusual “choreography” emerged: “One could say that it is the objects, even the ‘tasks’ we developed together, that choreograph the performers,” Goebbels explains.

© Théâtre national de Budapest, Nemzeti Színház

Similarly, the four instrumentalists themselves created—under his impetus—the musical framework of the show. Initially improvised, this framework soon became nearly fixed, as percussionist Camille Émaille confirms, “All the material comes from the musicians. We decided and established everything on our own: in the end, there is no longer any improvisation or true randomness.” The synergy was so successful that it led to the formation of an actual band. The Mayfield (named after the former Manchester railway station where the show premiered) brings together the original quartet of musicians—alongside Camille Émaille, we find saxophonist Gianni Gebbia, ondes Martenot player Cécile Lartigau, and Nicolas Perrin on guitar and electronics—with Heiner Goebbels (on prepared piano) and his loyal sound engineer, Willi Bopp. Sessions recorded at La Muse en Circuit provided the material for an album (released in summer 2024 on the Swiss label Intact Records) and the soundtrack for Goebbels’ latest creation: 862 – eine Orakelmaschine. This “performative installation,” conceived in 2023 for a massive machine designed to pulverize coal at the former Völklinger steelworks in Germany, also spawned an electroacoustic piece broadcast on German radio in early 2025.

It is tempting to view this collaborative spirit as a means for the established artist Goebbels to remain true to the libertarian and collective ethos that marked his early days on the European free-jazz and improvisational scene of the late 1970s. From those beginnings, he appears to have retained a youthful faith in improvisation: “I am incapable of writing a single note unless I have improvised with everyone for two weeks,” the composer confided to Franck Ernould in 1997. This improvisation primarily concerns the manner in which the various dimensions of his work are arranged in relation to one another. He recently reiterated: “Even when the music preexists, for example in Hashirigaki (based on the Beach Boys) or Eraritjaritjaka (featuring works by Bach and 20th-century string quartets), all my work attests to this openness of meaning. In my staging, improvisation concerns less the music than the relationship between the different theatrical elements. One cannot predict the effect they will produce; it must be tested through improvisation.”

Even though he distances himself from 'political theater,' Goebbels’ art is by no means devoid of idealistic aims. Does he not confess his belief in the utopian virtues of theatrical experience? As if blending media allowed him to confront the omnipotence of the media itself. With Everything That Happened and Would Happen, Ouředník’s text becomes the resonating chamber for our own European questions, at a time when 'the fictional idea of national identities' intensifies nationalist temptations all around us.

"Staging opinions is at odds with my idea of art"
Heiner Goebbels

Everything That Happened and Would Happen. Beyond the possible translations mentioned in the preamble, one might add yet another if we recall that in English the modal “would” can, when referring to the past, denote a habit or routine. Something like: “Everything That Truly Happened and What Was Usually Happening”… This version would do justice both to Patrick Ouředník’s text and to Goebbels’ remarks, which continually play on the disjunction between event and routine in order to outwit the latter.

Photo d'illustration : Heiner Goebbels © TPAC Tat Keng