Douglas Gordon / Philip Venables / Ruth Rosenfeld / Ensemble Adapter: Bound to Hurt

The Berlin-based Scottish artist Douglas Gordon stages a dark musical journey into a world of an emotional state of emergency. Using a compilation of popular cover songs as a basis, one of the world’s most influential video and installation artists has developed a stage work about domestic violence in collaboration with British composer Philip Venables. In Bound to Hurt, songs by artists as diverse as Donna Summer, Jacques Brel, Madonna, and Throbbing Gristle are reimagined as surreal fantasies of violence. The performance is written for the extremely versatile singer and performer Ruth Rosenfeld, best known for her collaborations with theatre directors Frank Castorf and Herbert Fritsch. She is accompanied by members of the German-Icelandic Ensemble Adapter, one of the most experimental genre-crossers in new music.

Douglas Gordon was born in Glasgow in 1966. After receiving a BA at the Glasgow School of Art from 1984 to 1988, Gordon undertook a post-graduate program at the Slade School of Art in London from 1988 to 1990. Gordon’s practice encompasses video and film, installation, sculpture, photography, and text. Through his work, Gordon investigates human conditions like memory and the passage of time, as well as universal dualities such as life and death, good and evil, right and wrong. Gordon’s oeuvre has been exhibited globally and his film works have been presented at many competitions, including the Festival de Cannes, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the International Venice Film Festival. He was the recipient of the 1996 Turner Prize, the 1997 Venice Biennial’s Premio 2000 award, the 1998 Hugo Boss Prize awarded by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the 2008 Roswitha Haftmann Prize, and the 2012 Käthe Kollwitz Prize.

Gordon is represented internationally by Gagosian Gallery, as well as Until then in Paris, Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zürich, and Dvir Gallery in Tel Aviv.

British composer Philip Venables’ music addresses violence and sexuality, in both a concert and interdisciplinary context. He has a special interest for spoken word in a musical setting.

Born into a musical family in Los Angeles, Ruth Rosenfeld grew up in New York and Tel Aviv where she embarked on her musical journey as a bass player in several bands and performance art groups.

Ensemble Adapter is a German-Icelandic ensemble for contemporary music based in Berlin. The core of the group consists of a quartet with flute, clarinet, harp and percussion. Together with steady guest instrumentalists this core grows into chamber music settings with up to 10 players.