13 Participants of the summerschool will show 13 installations, artworks and other means of communication for the mariage of the world heritage site and the workers estates around it.
June, 1 * 11am-19pm. Meetingpoint Parking A2 Zollverein. Bicycle tours every full hour.
Since 2006 Observatotium has have been the park of Zollverein. Katja Assmann, director of Urbane Künste Ruhr, commissioned us to research the urban challenges and opportunities of world heritage Zollverein and it's surrounding city districts Katernberg and Stoppenberg.
"Urbane Künste Ruhr" develops and realizes projects that define the design of cities in a new way – always on-site and together with the people living here. Urbane Künste Ruhr risks a new perspective on the Ruhr Area, the city in general, and the possibilities of art."
We have choosen to focus on an area north of Zollverein and we called it the green shadow of Zollverein.
SPATIALLY this is a special place: we see the remains of a countryside wiped away by the metropolis: fields, forest, horses, a barn. Standing in the middle of the area we see the the typical Ruhrmix of intense infrastructure, bygone industry, garden towns and dots of forest. Where is the centre? What is the status of what I see?
SOCIALLY and culturally he global and the local are right bang next to each other and have no ties. On the other hand: global Zollverein is also a city park and the local (Katernberg) has many inhabitants of different nationalities. Slowly students are moving into the area. In terms of identity two stringly seperate worlds collide, but they stem from one source.
ENVIRONMENTALY we can see traces of farmland, wetlands, city park and protection forest to keep pollution of the coilery away from the garden towns. All this is part of the metropolitain landscape park, which at the moment needs more coherence, better communciation and above all a maintenance concept.
How to marry these worlds? How to enjoy the disconnections and contrasts? How to connect the very special and the very ordinary? How to anticpate the gradual decrease socio-economic and cultural subsidies? How to understand the Ruhr area as normal, as pretty, as exceptional, as an example? Where is the Ruhr going anyway? What would be a leading thought? Is the good life already there, or what is lacking in paradise? What can art do?
The workshop DER GRÜNE SCHATTEN will take these experiences further and lead to a travel (and development) guide for the area. The particpants of the workshop are introduced in the qualities and issues of the green shadow, will design a site specific artwork symbolizing a new use/ life/ culture and will write an article for the guide with Observatorium and Urbane Künste as editors.
The workshop is a public event. It takes place in public spaces and/or will be open the the audience. Guest lectures will be held by politicians, designers and users of Zollverien and it's green shadow. The public art pieces, inventions, interventions, the materailzed ideas for a marriage between local/global, heritage/future and negotium/otium will be visited by the public of World Heritage Day, June 1.
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