Lecture & FAQ with Michael Simon
Thursday 13 July 2023 // 17:00-18:30 // M&G afterwards // Room 112 // HfG Karlsruhe

In the lecture Michael Simon will be dealing with contingency and randomly accumulated material as resources for artistic and scenographic work. Michael focuses on questions of spatialisation of material in common reception experiences, emergent processes as resources of space-related and installational settings, as well as scenographic formats for locally distant settings. Students are invited and most welcome to share their approaches!

Michael Simon studied stage design at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart with Jürgen Rose. Since 1981 he has worked as a set and lighting designer for opera, dance and drama, for William Forsythe, Jiri Kylian, Pierre Audi, Peter Greenaway, Christof Nel, Stefan Bachmann, Stefan Pucher and Li Liuyi in Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Los Angeles, Paris, Vienna, New York, Tokyo and Beijing.

Since 1990 he has also worked as a director on his own projects, in drama, music theatre and dance. First in Frankfurt with Heiner Goebbels, then at theatres in Basel, Berlin, Bonn, Bremen, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Dresden, Freiburg, Graz, Hannover, Karlsruhe, Munich, Paris and Vienna. 1995 Invitation to the Berlin Theatertreffen with his Dortmund production of THE BLACK RIDER.

Political themes move to the centre of his work from 2014. His production of Elfriede Jelinek's DIE SCHUTZBEFOHLENEN in Freiburg focused on boat refugees drowning in the Mediterranean. A year later, Jelinek's DAS SCHWEIGENDE MÄDCHEN reflected the murders of the right-wing terrorist group NSU. KUDLICH by Thomas Köck dealt with the right-wing populist movement in Austria in 2018. Since 2019, Simon has been working on the project NEW GREEN LAND, which addresses the upheavels of global climate change.

Michael Simon taught from 1998 to 2004 stage and lighting design as professor of scenography at the HfG Karlsruhe. From 2008 to 2021 he directed the stage design course at the ZHdK Zurich. He has given guest lectures and workshops in Hamburg, Munich, Kolkata, Singapore, Beijing, Växjö, Sweden and Taipei.

Simon, Michael. (2022). FERTIG gibt’s nicht – Bühnenbild Prozesse. Hrsg. Tilman Neuffer und Stephan Wetzel. Berlin: THEATER DER ZEIT. 264 Seiten. ISBN 978-3-95749-365-1 (inklusive Augmented-Reality-App, die 36 Bilder dieses Buches lebendig werden lässt).