Von der Ordnung aller Dinge
('On the order of all things')
Texts from Stanisław Lem's cosmos
'Any absurdity is conceivable' – Stanisław Lem
The cosmos of the Polish philosopher of the future, author of novels and visionary Stanisław Lem spanned a wide arc: from adventures in space to pessimist cultural philosophy, from poetic essays about civilisation to analytical scientific descriptions. With the reading Von der Ordnung aller Dinge, Martin Wuttke, who staged Stanisław Lem's Solaris on the Neuhardenberg airfield in 2004, examines Lem's catastrophe principle theory and takes a closer look at the ludicrous philosophical background of identifying humankind's place in the world.
In the history of the world, processes of geological dimensions such as the making of mountains or the emergence and disappearance of oceans took place in the form of relatively rapid transformations. Such catastrophes of cosmic dimensions are an essential precondition for the evolution of the stars and life. The spiral nebula of the galaxies twist like a meat grinder that sometimes brings forth life and sometimes crushes it. At the beginning of the third millennium, many areas of human activity appear to be at a crossroads and humankind is becoming increasingly and painfully aware of its transience. Especially the technologies developed by humankind in the course of the civilisation process are making a progressively more powerful, by now even dangerous, impact on the planet's climate.
Martin Wuttke celebrated his first successes at the Schauspiel Frankfurt and with the Berliner Ensemble in the 1990s before the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin became his artistic home from 1999 onwards. His epochal performances of the title roles in Heiner Müller's production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, in Frank Castorf's Faust or in his many collaborations with René Pollesch make him one of the most era-defining actors of our times. He has also made a name for himself as a director, staging Stanislaw Lem's Solaris in Neuhardenberg, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and, together with Jonathan Meese, a Nietzsche project, for example. He also regularly appears in films and on TV, where his roles have included playing the inspector in the Leipzig-based episodes of the long-running TV crime series Tatort from 2003 to 2014.
Dramatic rights: © Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin
