2-3 Streets

" 2-3 Streets. An exhibition in the cities of the Ruhr " by Jochen Gerz was part of the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010. 78 participants from Germany, Europe and overseas lived for a year rent-free in three cities of the Ruhr and wrote it as authors on a common text. The artistic experiment " 2-3 Streets " began with the start of the European Capital of Culture year in Duisburg, Dortmund and Mülheim an der Ruhr. The aim was to change the streets. A total of 887 people have become writers, and their work has left many traces in the streets.

Exhibition

The concept of Jochen Gerz for " 2-3 Streets " was created in 2006 by order of the NRW Culture Secretariat. After three normal roads with vacancies in three cities of the Ruhr should be a year to art and exhibition. 78 Creative were invited to one year to live rent-free in the exhibition and write a joint text, which would be published after the year in book form. Since basically everyone could participate in this creative process - old tenants, new tenants, passersby and visitors - was the tendency of the resulting this way works not predict, just as the development of social relations and changes in the streets: "We write. .. and at the end will not be the same my street. "

As an " exhibition" was the reality, are the everyday life in the streets to the subject of aesthetic experience. The audience of the cultural capital and the region's residents to practice in accordance with Bazon Brocks Visitors schools since Documenta 4 (1968 ), the " visitors' school in 2-3 streets ". Sociologists, cultural scientists and urbanists conduct scientific studies and media reports sheds additional light on the usually marginalized neighborhoods. In return spot new publics, where the road takes a picture of himself created. " 2-3 Streets " is a unique in the art landscape of social process, which aims not only to the change of the roads, but also to the art. It sets the creativity and authorship of the whole society requires as a basic condition of contemporary culture.

Expiration

Two years after the emergence of the artistic concept took " 2-3 Streets " concrete shape to. In three of the original five interested Ruhr cities - Duisburg, Mülheim an der Ruhr and Dortmund - could the issue be realized. They each chose a road, to rehabilitate vacant and provide one year rent-free. The streets were typical of post-war West German cities and contained no significant features. The criteria of selection mattered was that they lie in a neighborhood that " renewed, is changed or newly created, renovated, rehabilitated or repurposed. "

On the financing of the project in addition to the cultural capital of both the Ministry of Construction and Transport and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy of North Rhine-Westphalia, and the local housing associations involved, and thus showed their interest in the topic of creative industries. From town to town, the profiles of the neighborhoods were different. In Mülheim were 13 flats from the third to the 20th floor of a renovated high-rise building at the station, Hans Boeckler Place 7/9 part of the exhibition, in Duisburg- high-field, an old working-class neighborhood, 20 homes in the Saarbrücken Street / Saint-John - road, and in the northern city of Dortmund 24 apartments near the Borsig square in a square between locksmith and Oesterholz road.

On the display to the invitation of the participants ( " basic salary: one year rent-free living " ) in late 2008, which was connected in identical form in real estate portals, newspapers and cultural magazines, came forward in 1457 candidates. There followed a year of e -mail exchanges with the candidates, which allowed an early confrontation with " 2-3 Streets ". Criterion for participation was the motivation for a year to make their own, foreign environment and to regularly write on the same text. From the initially large number of candidates from 30 countries ( four continents ) were finally considered 78 participants. Their number depended on the number of provided by the cities of apartments.

The reference began in the fall of 2009, the artistic work on 1 January 2010. Locally and in a coordination office in Essen 20 employees worked for a year with the participants and supported the development of numerous projects with the neighborhood. By the end of the year more than 1,300 people toured the streets. 887 authors have co-written 10,000 articles on pages 3000. After the end of the exhibition were more than half of new tenants in the Ruhr. In terms of sustainability, a sequel was called outside the context of art in the concept as a goal of " 2-3 Streets ".

Letter of the text

The text is a not -to-control result of collective authorship. Residents, passers-by and visitors to the streets involved, each new post chronologically followed on from the already written and put together in the course of the year into a single text. In this case, all contributions were taken into account, as long as they come from the authors themselves and have not been previously published.

" 2-3 Streets TEXT" is a digital production, which was created through a browser- based software. The lyrics were written online and inactivity automatically saved by mouse click or eight minutes in a central archive. This archive was not visible during the year. The authors could not recall their contributions, nor correct or explicitly connect to the foregoing. The fact that they always new leveraged a permanent presence has been created, in which images an ongoing process. " The process is similar to that of the cut-up, but with the difference that here no text has been cut up and reassembled, but that were joined together in series by the writer heterogeneous, cuts ' and produced in the computer. In this way arose a document that more radical and direct brings the simultaneity and polyphony of reality into view, as all previous attempts of experimental literature were able this. "

A central, albeit invisible part of the exhibition in the streets was the text that could only be written on the spot. Only one monitor at the Museum Folkwang in Essen showed fleeting word for word at the moment of recording in the archive. The work was its authors after the end of the year with the publication of the book known ( The names of all authors are listed in the Appendix). Your contribution as a multi-voiced, 16 -language monologue becomes a " river without banks. " " 2-3 Streets TEXT" renewed the claim of contemporary literature, not only to describe reality but to make: The company as an author.

Change

Maybe shows " 2-3 Streets " more than the current possibilities of art and literature. The work traces the changes in social self- understanding of culture, economics, urban development not just to, but they provoked it. It starts from the observation that people in a heterogeneous " society " less than spectators in traditional culture (of whatever provenance ) orient, but to inform the media and constitute. The desire for self-insurance seems just as big as the dislike of Follow to be outmoded pattern. The resulting voltage uses " 2-3 Streets " twice. The work tested on the one hand, what can be the practice of art in these circumstances. On the other hand, it follows the change in the environment itself as a goal of the experiment that does not understand itself as art. This requires the extension of the concept of author in the area of the inactive spectator into society. Authorship is understood as the personal and creative contribution to the public as well as for his own life, and participation in the society of all.