MMCA - Modern Museum of Contemporary Arts, Seoul (Korea)
Genko An 03062 Seoul
multimedia installation
The Genko-An series was conceived after Heiner Goebbels visited the Buddhist temple Genko-An in Kyoto in 1992. Inspired by the impression of viewing the same garden through two different windows—one round and one square—the artist created a series of site-specific installations. Genko-An 03062, titled after the ZIP code of the MMCA, transforms the garden
seen through the windows into a “garden of sounds and voices.”

The work is rooted in writings by philosopher Henry David Thoreau and in Empty Words (1974), a sound piece by John Cage, that artistically deconstructed Thoreau’s journals.

Genko-An 03062 includes excerpts from the artist's composition Walden (1998) — an orchestral work based on Thoreau’s WALDEN or Life in the woods (1854) — and it features the painter, sculptor, musician and instrument maker Robert Rutman. Walden is recognized as Thoreau’s exploration
of the value of a simple life in nature and of his unhierarchical listening habits. The installation further incorporates ethnographic voice recordings from Armenia, Siberia, Greece, Colombia, Korea among others along with the voices of various writers, artists and musicians
like John Cage, Robert Rutman, Heiner Müller, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Gertrude Stein, Hannah Arendt and others

Walden (Ensemble Version)

AMARE, Den Haag (Netherlands)
performed by Ensemble Klang and Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop



In Walden by composer Heiner Goebbels, everything revolves around the texts of the 19th-century essayist and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, a forerunner in the field of both modern environmental activism and civil disobedience. In his work Walden (1854), he describes his attempt to live simply in harmony with nature for two years, secluded in a cottage at Walden Pond, located near Concord in Massachusetts. During this concert, music, text and a special lighting design bring Walden to life.

Heiner Goebbels, one of Europe's leading composers and directors of the past fifty years, conceived Walden as a counterpoint to the metropolitan images in his earlier work Surrogate Cities .

Eighteen years after he wrote the first ensemble version of Walden for Ensemble Klang, Goebbels now creates a new version. This time, the regular line-up of Ensemble Klang - saxophones, trombone, guitar and percussion - is supplemented by Germany's finest string ensemble, Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop, and the voice and saxophone of Keir Neuringer (Irreversible Entanglements).

A number of specially built instruments, including the 'steel cello' and the 'bow chimes' designed by the American painter, sculptor and musician Bob Rutman, to whom the work is dedicated, enrich the extraordinary and vibrant soundscape.