Deep inside the earth lies its memory. The composer Georges Aperghis and the writer Jean-Christophe Bailly go in search of this, setting off on an imaginary journey down through the layers of time. They are continually accompanied by is darkness as black as the night: a darkness that gives birth to fear and insomnia as well as the oldest of games and the most outlandish fantasies. Through interplay with transient and shifting animated drawings, five musicians conjure up the scene with sounds, words and bodies: together they dig through various materials into the darkness, feel their way through cavities, encounter childlike imaginary fears that creep up while we lie awake at night. The mine becomes a poetic location whose wealth of associations are unearthed by Aperghis and Bailly. The deeper we go, the closer we get to the heavens. 300 million years down, we hit coal. Bailly, who uses the poetry of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff and his own writings to lend Die Erdfabrik a language, calls this the »child of light«. After all, this black matterfrom the depths of primeval time was once living vegetation that fed on sunlight. He can sense this heavenly light once again in the unique and cool glow of coal. Darkness and light, seriousness and play, courage and fear, vast expanses and tiny details – the combination of extreme opposites, the interaction of internal contradictions and universal oppositions are also the drivers of Aperghis’s »théâtre musical«, his own poetic and abstract form of music theatre in which characters do not tell stories, but the audience themselves become the story, along with the products of their own imagination. With his Erdfabrik, the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize winner Georges Aperghis, a magician of minimalist means, has created for the Ruhrtriennale a universal and intimate chamber opera of the senses, primal emotions and ideas, an homage to the power of human imagination that is both humorous and profound.

Produced by Ruhrtriennale. In cooperation with La Muse en Circuit.