10 October, 12 until 7 pm and 11 October, 11 am to 6 pm

NEW OCEAN was created in 2019 as an attempt to make the climate crisis physi­cally percep­tible. Seven years later, the project returns to a world in which the crisis is no longer hard to recognize, and to a glacier that continues to disappear. On October 10 and 11, 2026, the Ballet of Diffe­rence, under the direction of Richard Siegal, will present NEW OCEAN Hombroich Ed. · Morte­ratsch Glacier—an adapt­a­tion developed speci­fi­cally for the Zwölf-Räume-Haus—a work straddling the line between art and science, combining sound instal­la­tion, perfor­mance, and sculpture.

Origi­nally developed as a full-length stage work in dialogue with Merce Cunningham’s OCEAN, NEW OCEAN premiered in 2019 at the Schau­spiel Köln. Climate data formed the basis for a choreo­gra­phic system that trans­lated envi­ron­mental processes into movement. In 2021, the work was reim­agined at Kolumba in Cologne as NEW OCEAN SEA CYCLE: a conti­nuous perfor­mance spanning day and night, struc­tured according to sidereal and lunar time. In 2025, the project expanded at the Museum Folkwang with LUNAR CYCLE, a 28-day live instal­la­tion spanning a complete lunar cycle.

The Hombroich edition is based on Ludwig Berger’s audio recor­dings of the Morte­ratsch Glacier—its cracking, flowing, and melting. Richard Siegal trans­lates the glacier’s daily melting rates, modeled on a daily basis, into a choreo­graphy that seven dancers from the Ballett of Diffe­rence perform in the museum’s Zwölf-Räume-Haus.

The exhi­bi­tion pavilion takes on the form of a year: its twelve rooms corre­spond to the twelve months, trans­forming it into a choreo­gra­phed calendar through which dancers and visitors move. The intensity shifts—from focused and almost medi­ta­tive to physi­cally urgent and relent­less. In one room, a swarm of dancers invites the audience to set balls in motion. Play, pleasure, and a sense of agency thus stand alongside the glacier’s ongoing disap­pearance. In front of the building, a block of ice rests as a memento, slowly melting during the perfor­mance. This monolith provides a physical connec­tion to the massi­ve­ness of the ice and makes the glacier’s disap­pearance an immediate expe­ri­ence. NEW OCEAN asks what art can mean when knowledge of a cata­strophe, pleasure, and our ability to carry on as before coexist.

Richard Siegal is a dancer, choreo­grapher, and artistic director of the Ballett of Diffe­rence at the Staats­theater Nürnberg. In his work, he brings artistic practices and diverse forms of knowledge into dialogue with one another through the creative process. The ensemble was based at the Bühnen Köln from 2019 to 2024. Recent projects include the 28-day instal­la­tion perfor­mance „Lunar Cycle“ at the Museum Folkwang, created in colla­bo­ra­tion with the Ensemble Musik­fa­brik and Folkwang Univer­sity, as well as the video instal­la­tion *art.Life*, which premiered at the Lenbach­haus in Munich in 2025.

Since its reopening in June, the Zwölf-Räume-Haus has been open to the public until the end of September in its purest form, without the permanent coll­ec­tion on display. During this time, visitors encoun­tered numerous artistic inter­ven­tions there. The focus was always on the fleeting nature of the moment, as well as on the intense expe­ri­ence of the present and the spatial struc­tures. NEW OCEAN marks the conclu­sion of this summer program. It was curated by Frauke Dannert, Sven Hirsch, and Rainer Nonnen­mann. NEW OCEAN marks the conclu­sion of the Morteratsch@Hombroich series, which Sven Hirsch developed together with Richard Siegal and Ludwig Berger.

Admission to the event is included in the regular museum admission fee. Advance booking is recom­mended.

With the kind support of the Nuremberg State Theater. Funded by: