Museum in motion
German composer Heiner Goebbels' latest exhibition uses technology to critique itself, and its role in shaping historyInside the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, where archival material informs Mumbai's history, a section is closed off behind thick black curtains. Once you step inside, the first thing you hear, before your eyes adjust to the dark, is the sound of objects being dragged across a floor. The room is cool, large, and swallows you whole.
On the screen ahead, four performers move through an industrial space, moving relics, which represent the accumulated dead weight of four centuries of European history. Their choreography looks improvised and seems to run on an internal logic that escapes the viewer's interpretation. It's paired with music by the legendary German composer Heiner Goebbels. This is 'Seven Columns and The Last Painting', recorded in New York, and it is your first introduction to Goebbels' Landscape Plays, showing for the time first time in India.
Goebbels, 72, has spent five decades as a composer and theatre-maker. His compositions are performed worldwide, and his installations have been shown at Paris's Centre Pompidou and Madrid's Museo Reina Sofia. Twice, he was nominated for a Grammy, and in 2012, he received the International Ibsen Award.
Making meaning
The exhibition is inspired by writers who consistently challenged prevailing styles and resisted linear interpretation. Goebbels comes with the same aim. "I don't offer complete impressions in my work," he says.
"I'm offering views and aspects, options to read them, to make sense of what you see and hear in a personal, individual way," he adds. He wants the viewers to construct their own meanings. It is a fitting philosophy for an exhibition that uses technology to critique itself, and how it shapes history.
Techno transformations
'Landscape 3' makes this critique most apparent. A remote-controlled zeppelin circles overhead while a flock of sheep re-organises itself below in the object's cold light. The zeppelin, a symbol of Nazi technological propaganda, hovers over animals entirely indifferent to what it represents. Technology, here, seems to loom, almost threateningly.
The newest work, 'Eagles', is Goebbels' own favourite, and the most intimate. He shot it from a height above Mumbai during earlier visits to the city. "While watching them, I experienced the playful repetition of their joyful circles as an inspiring contradiction to the busy activities on the ground level of this megacity," he says. He pairs the footage with his own earlier compositions built around circular musical structures, alongside texts by Paul Auster, Elias Canetti, Edgar Allan Poe, and Gertrude Stein, each with their distinct style: metafictional, philosophical, moody, and experimental.
The aim of the installation becomes clearer when Goebbels says, "It communicates with the other objects and images in the old Bombay room." The piece sits in a room with photographs of old Mumbai on the walls. High-rises and busy roads sit in contrast to the archival stills of a simpler city, revealing the scale of Mumbai's transformation. Time keeps moving — as do the eagles — but the city transforms rapidly underneath.
The curtains close behind you when you leave. Outside, the museum's permanent collection resumes — the ordinary record of a city. What the museum preserves, Goebbels destabilises. In the dark room, history doesn't feel static, but alive and unresolved.
The exhibition is on display at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Byculla (E), till May 31
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