Ronald Steckel

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Ronald Steckel

Ronald Steckel (* 1945 on Sylt ) is a German author , composer , director and multimedia artist .

life and work

Steckel attended a grammar school in Hamburg and studied languages ​​at Heidelberg University . From 1966 to 1968 he lived in London . After returning from England, Steckel moved to West Berlin in the autumn of 1968 and published the handbook Mind-Expanding Drugs in 1969 in the Voltaire edition run by Bernward Vesper - a call for discussion , "at that time the first original German drug book of the psychedelic modern age".

“Another danger for many people lies in overestimating the permanence of drug experiences. It is a short-circuit to assume that mystical experiences under the influence of psychedelic drugs and the insights or knowledge gained from them automatically and permanently transport the person who has the experience to a higher level of consciousness. Drugs can be the trigger for real growth processes - that is undisputed and that is their great benefit, but they cannot make this process superfluous or replace it. The knowledge gained under the influence of drugs is the product of a chemically altered functional state of our nervous system and not of a continuous process of knowledge. The application of psychedelic experience to daily practice requires effort in working on oneself and in the social environment. "

- Ronald Steckel

Since the discussion proposed by Steckel did not take place, but the topic of psychedelics was treated in a repressive, distorting and derogatory manner by the media, he withdrew from the public discourse on psychoactive substances in the early 1970s and published the essay Heart of Reality in 1973 , in which he attributed the change in consciousness of the individual as the main impetus for the realization of a new society. There was joint work with Jonatan Briel , Bernward Vesper, Peter Michael Hamel , Ulrich Gerhardt , Walter Bachauer and Jean Gebser . 1972 marriage to the art historian and curator Hannah Weitemeier ; In 1974 and 1977 the children Sita and Jonas were born.

In 1974 Steckel began his media work with a series of short films for the SFB and has been producing experimental radio plays, radio features, theater pieces and films as a freelance writer, composer and director ever since. In 1984 he and Wolfgang Neuss realized the audio play The Wall - the largest wall newspaper in the world , in which all graffiti written on the Berlin Wall during the 28 years of the Wall was discussed. In the mid-1980s, theater work began at the Schauspielhaus Bochum under the management of his brother Frank-Patrick Steckel , first as a composer, then as an author and director of his own productions, which he realized in the 1990s, primarily at the Hebbel Theater in Berlin and the Deutsches Theater . As a theater composer he worked with Frank-Patrick Steckel, Claus Peymann , Andrea Breth , Jürgen Gosch , Urs Troller , Niels-Peter Rudolph , Gerhard Bohner , Jette Steckel and Edith Clever, among others .

Steckel media works include extreme content polarity : many of its audio productions and theater works refer to recent German history, the Holocaust and the reality of a divided Germany . On the other hand, he realized numerous audio pieces for ARD with texts from the Philosophia perennis , including by Laozi , Zhuangzi , Plotin , Huang Bo , Johannes Tauler , Meister Eckhart , Rumi , Jacob Böhme, Novalis , Kazimir Malevič , Simone Weil and Ramana Maharshi . In 1989 his radio play Der Neue Berliner Totentanz won first prize at the Ars Acustica in Stettin. In 1993, Steckel and students from the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Art in Berlin , at which he was a guest lecturer for drama from 1993 to 2003, staged texts by the Austrian poet Heimrad Bäcker in the Hebbel Theater in Berlin under the title Epitaph ; the radio play of the same name Epitaph was awarded radio play of the month in 2004. On May 10, 1998, he staged a public reading on Berlin's Bebelplatz from texts by the “ burned poets ” on May 10, 1933 , which was broadcast as a live radio play by the SFB.

In 2005 he published the audio piece Auschwitz on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp. Voices , a three-hour montage from the original sound recordings of the 1st Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (1961–1963). In January 2007 he installed Auschwitz. Voices as a sound installation at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin.

Together with the Berlin actor and filmmaker Max Hopp , Steckel founded the nootheater in 2005 as a cooperative for film, theater and audio productions. In 2008 the nootheater film production, The Beautiful Light of Utopia , was released, a cinematic essay on utopia and the present.

A central chapter in Steckel's media work relates to the Görlitz mystic and visionary Jacob Böhme . In 1993 he published two radio productions with texts by Böhmes, of which Aurora or Morgenröte im Aufgang - hommage à Jacob Böhme could be heard as a sound installation in the Görlitz parish church of St. Peter and Paul between 1994 and 2000 in cooperation with the cultural office of the city of Görlitz . In the years 2011 to 2015, in cooperation with the organization for the conversion of the cinema, the film Morgenröte im Aufgang - hommage à Jacob Böhme was created , which was awarded the German FILMGEIST Prize 2016 and the RosaMars Film Prize 2016.

Since the beginning of the 3rd millennium, Steckel has been publicly speaking in the form of lectures on questions of consciousness research, the current mutation of consciousness and the Philosophia Perennis.

Plays

  • It will have been midnight (with Urs Troller), Schauspielhaus Bochum, 1990/91 season
  • Epitaph (based on texts by Heimrad Bäcker ), Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, 1993/94 season
  • South of Panic , Schauspielhaus Bochum, 1994/95 season
  • Silent landscape - a rite , music theater, Hebbel-Theater Berlin, season 1996/97
  • Out of protest! - the Reichstag arsonist Marinus van der Lubbe , Deutsches Theater Berlin , 2000/2001 season

Radio and films

  • The beautiful light of utopia (German / English), nootheater , 2008–2020
  • Dawn in the rise - hommage à Jacob Böhme (feature film), 2015
  • Deutschlandfunk: Love and Zorn - a long night about the mystic and theosophist Jacob Böhme by Ronald Steckel, 2020

Radio plays and features (selection)

  • 1979: The Academy - an artificial headphone play (RIAS / BR)
  • 1981: The language is Delphi - Hommage à Novalis (SFB)
  • 1984: The Wall - the largest wall newspaper in the world - (with Wolfgang Neuss) (SFB)
  • 1986: The China Project / 38.1 cm per second (SFB / NDR / WDR-Studio Akustische Kunst)
  • 1986: Fusion - An audio spectral analysis of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (SFB / SDR)
  • 1988: The New Berlin Dance of Death - An Acoustic Palimpsest (SFB)
  • 1990: 1989. Mass for the masses - An acoustic homage to the European peoples (WDR)
  • 1993: Aurora or Dawn in Rise - Homage to Jacob Böhme (SFB / SWF / DRSBasel)
  • 1993: Jacob Böhme (Philosophus Teutonicus) - (SFB)
  • 1998: The Voices from the Fire / live broadcast of a staged reading on Bebelplatz , Berlin, on the 65th anniversary of the book burning on May 10, 1998 (SFB)
  • 1999: The One Spirit - Hommage à Huang Bo (SWR)
  • 1999: Vortex - an acoustic palimpsest about the XX. Century (SWR / NDR)
  • 2000: In Search of the Lost Image - A Journey to Consciousness (SFB)
  • 2000: Das Geheul ( Allen Ginsberg , German from RS) (RB / DLF)
  • 2002: Indistinct landscape - an acoustic palimpsest about 9/11 (SWR)
  • 2004; Epitaph (by Heimrad Bäcker) (RB / WDR)
  • 2004: Breakthroughs - audio piece based on reports of near-death experiences (RBB)
  • 2005: Auschwitz. Voices - a three-part montage of original sound recordings of the negotiations in the 1st Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial 1963-1965 (WDR / SWR / RB)
  • 2006: Gravity & Light - Hommage à Simone Weil (WDR / RBB)
  • 2006: I am the origin of everything - Hommage à Kazimir Malevic (DLR / HR)
  • 2007: From inner & outer people - Homage à Meister Eckhart (SWR)
  • 2009: Would I like to be a comet - an acoustic mythography (RBB)
  • 2010: From Abundance & Emptiness - Homage à Johannes Tauler (SWR / RB)
  • 2010: Ramana - Hommage à Ramana Maharshi (RBB)
  • 2012: For lovers only - Hommage à Dschelal ed-Din Rumi (RB / HR)
  • 2013: The World Hub (RBB)
  • 2013: The letter to Winston Smith (nootheater / Radio Bremen)
  • 2015: Dawn in the rise - Hommage à Jacob Böhme / OST of the film of the same name (nootheater & organization for the conversion of the cinema)
  • 2017: Hear you blind person - a Jacob Böhme monologue (nootheater & organization for the conversion of the cinema)

Fonts (selection)

Awards and nominations

  • 1983: Critics' Prize of the Prix Futura 1983 (SFB / NDR / WDR) for Das Ohrlicht
  • 1985: Honorable Mention of the Prix Futura for Das Ohrlicht
  • 1986: Promotion Prize for Media Art from the Academy of Arts in Berlin
  • 1989: 1st prize of the 1st Arte Acustica / Makrophon, Stettin, Poland for Der neue Berliner Totentanz
  • 1994: 2nd prize of the 4th Arte Acustica / Makrophon, Breslau, Poland for Aurora or Dawn in the Rise
  • 2002: Special mention from the German Academy of Performing Arts for indistinct landscapes
  • 2004: Radio play of the month for Epitaph
  • 2010: Honorable Mention from the German Academy of Performing Arts for From Abundance and Emptiness
  • 2013: Nomination for the German Radio Play Prize for Der Weltknoten
  • 2015: Nomination for the German Radio Play Prize for The Letter to Winston Smith
  • 2016: German Film Spirit Award for the film Morgenröte im Aufgang - homage to Jacob Böhme by Ronald Steckel, Max Hopp, Klaus Weingarten and Jan Korthäuer
  • 2016: Rosa Mars Film Award for the film Dawn in the Rise - homage to Jacob Böhme

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Catalog documenta 8 : Volume 1: Essays; Volume 2: Catalog page 340; Volume 3: artist book; Kassel 1987, ISBN 3-925272-13-5 .
  2. ↑ Intoxication Mind-Expanding Drugs. Accessed February 20, 2018
  3. ↑ Hanfjournal, September 23, 2018, Christof Wackernagel Back to the roots II, accessed on September 29, 2018
  4. ↑ Heart of Reality , accessed February 20, 2018.
  5. ↑ Deutschlandfunk Die Mauer or the largest wall newspaper in the world, accessed on February 20, 2018
  6. ↑ Der neue Berliner Totentanz , accessed on February 20, 2018.
  7. ↑ swissukraine Auschwitz. Voices - radio collage from original sound recordings of the negotiations in the 1st Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial 1963–1965, accessed on February 20, 2018
  8. ↑ site nootheater accessed on February 20, 2018
  9. ↑ a b nootheater , accessed on February 20, 2018.
  10. ^ Organization for the conversion of the Ronald Steckel cinema, accessed on February 20, 2018
  11. ↑ Interview: Marcelle De Michiel / Ronald Steckel Man is a double agent, accessed on February 22, 2018
  12. ↑ Deutschlandfunk: Liebe und Zorn - a long night about the mystic and theosophist Jacob Böhme by Ronald Steckel , accessed on April 4, 2020
  13. ↑ Deutschlandfunk Das Geheul, accessed on September 29, 2018
  14. ↑ Deutschlandradio Indistinct Landscape, accessed on September 29, 2018
  15. ↑ Deutschlandfunk I am the origin of everything accessed on September 29, 2015
  16. ↑ Tagesspiegel I want to be a comet accessed on September 29, 2018
  17. ↑ Radio play review , voice and pause Ronald Steckel: The letter to Winston Smith accessed on September 29, 2018
  18. ↑ German Film Spirit Award 2016 , accessed on February 20, 2018.
  19. ↑ absolut medien Morgenröte im Aufgang - hommage à Jacob Böhme accessed on February 20, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Steckel, Ronald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author, composer, director and multimedia artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH on Sylt