Shrinking Cities – Rethinking Regions ///
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Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund; Liebfrauenkirche, Duisburg |
International Investigation
February 17 to April 27, 2008
in the Museum am Ostwall
Ostwall 7, 44135 Dortmund
Hours: Tues., Wed., Fr., Sun. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Thurs. 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. / Sat. noon – 5 p.m.
Opening: Sunday, February 17, 2008, 11:30 p.m.
Shrinking Cities
Interventions
February 27 to May 11, 2008
in the Liebfrauenkirche
König-Heinrich-Platz, 47051 Duisburg-Mitte
Hours: Wed. – Mon. noon – 7 p.m. / Tues. noon – 10 p.m.
Opening: Tuesday, February 26, 2008, 7 p.m.
For decades, the Ruhr Valley has been dealing with a massive structural transformation as a consequence of deindustrialization. Over a period of decades, cities like Gelsenkirchen and Duisburg have lost up to 30 percent of their populations. Despite massive interventions and remarkable successes in the structural transformation, the shrinking process will continue in the next decades. The population will become smaller, older, and more colorful. Authorities assume that, by 2050, the region will lose another 17 percent of its population. The Ruhr Valley will have to re-organize, restructure, and repeatedly re-invent itself in these processes.
In Spring 2008, with the double exhibition Shrinking Cities – Rethinking Regions, the project will conclude in the Ruhr Valley by showing a resume of its 6 years of research work. To this end, a series of new works, in particular those on the cases of the Ruhr Valley and of Hakodate, Japan, will be presented for the first time.
The exhibition Shrinking Cities – International Analysis at the Museum am Ostwall Dortmund will show six international regions of investigation: Halle/Leipzig, Detroit, Manchester/Liverpool, Ivanovo, Hakodate, and the Ruhr Valley. In their contributions, artists, architects, filmmakers, photographers, journalists, and scholars in culture and the social sciences explore the appropriation of spaces, changed practices of everyday life, survival strategies, and new forms of work under the conditions of urban shrinkage and criticize existing planning cultures.
In the Liebfrauenkirche in Duisburg, which is being used as an exhibition space for the first time, the second part of the exhibition, Shrinking Cities – Interventions, will show international proposals for dealing with processes of urban shrinkage: from artistic interventions and self-empowerment projects through architectonic, landscape, political, and media interventions, to the new legal regulations and utopian designs. A series of projects being shown in Duisburg for the first time focuses explicitly on the Ruhr Valley. For the duration of the exhibition, a café will be set up in the foyer of the Liebfrauenkirche.
Accompanying the exhibitions will be a comprehensive program of events (lectures, discussions, workshops, film screenings, concerts, city tours, etc.) in several places in the Ruhr Valley. More information will soon be available here.
The exhibitions in Dortmund und Duisburg are a collaboration with: Landesinitiative StadtBauKultur NRW, Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, Stiftung Brennender Dornbusch / Liebfrauenkirche, Duisburg, Stiftung Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Stadt Duisburg.
With support from: the Federal Cultural Foundation, the Sparda Bank West’s Foundation for Art, Culture, and Social Matters, the Ministry of Construction and Transportation of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Bertelsmannstiftung, and ARGE Duisburg.
Under the sponsorship of Prof. Dr. Karl Ganser.
Contributions to the exhibitions /// Museum am Ostwall:
CDN: Christopher McNamara, Stan Douglas; D: Michael Baute, Bertelsmannstiftung, Nikolaus Brade, Antje Ehmann, Johannes Ehmann, Harun Farocki, Laura Horelli, Brigitte Kraemer, Konrad Knebel, Projektbüro Philipp Oswalt, Albrecht Schäfer, Andreas Siekmann, Bettina Steinacker, Ingo Vetter, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Annette Weisser, Rochus Wiedemer, Kathrin Wildner, Tobias Zielony; GB: John Davies, Mike Figgis, G.L.A.S. (Glasgow Letters on Architecture & Space), Ken Grant, Dave Haslam, Aidan O’Rourke, Lee Thompson, Tom Wood; NL: Bas Princen; RUS: Sergei Bratkov, Savva Miturich, Sergei Miturich, Elena Samorodova, Vera Samorodova, Sergei Sitar, Boris Spiridonov, Alexander Sverdlov; USA: Robert Andersen, Mitch Cope, DCDC (Dan Pitera, Christopher Lee), John Ganis, Derrick Gilbert, Tyree Guyton, Aurora Harris, Jody Huellmantel, iCUE / Kyong Park, Toni Moceri, Kelly Parker
Liebfrauenkirche:
A: fiedler.tornquist arch+urb, Isa Rosenberger; CH: FLAG / Bastien Aubry und Dimitri Broquard; D: Autorenkollektiv / Wolfgang Engler, Stefanie Bremer, Friedrich von Borries, complizen, Jörg Dettmar, Jesko Fezer, Eva Grubbauer, Pia Grubbauer, Dirk Haas, Stephan Lanz, Latz+Partner, Wiebke Löper, Martin Luce, Joost Meuwissen, PE-P, Walter Prigge, Projektbüro Philipp Oswalt, Uwe Rada, Henrik Sander, Christoph Schäfer, Deborah Schamoni, Holger Schmidt, Andreas Schulze Bäing, Boris Sieverts, Springer & Jacobi, O. M. Ungers, Johannes Weisser; DK: Superflex; FIN: Päivi Kataikko; GB: Paul Cotter, FACT / Sean Treadway, Leo Fitzmaurice, Neville Gabie, Gareth Morris, Cedric Price, Heidi Rustgaard, Eike Sindlinger, SMC Will Alsop, Ulrike Steven, Susanne Thomas; NL: AMO / Rem Koolhaas, Crimson Architectural Historians