In 2006, the Ruhr region in Germany was named European Capital of Culture 2010. The organizers invited artist Jochen Gerz to produce a project as part of the region’s cultural programme. His proposal was to turn three ordinary residential streets with vacant apartments into a year-long ‘exhibition’ that would be entirely accessible to the public, and to invite people to live there rent-free for twelve months, in the process becoming part of this open exhibition.
Gerz found twenty apartments in a building in the Hochfeld area of Duisberg, thirteen apartments in the large Hans-B.ckler-Platz apartment block in Mülheim, and twenty-four apartments on Borsigplatz in the Nordstadt area of Dortmund, areas that were characterized by high unemployment and a mix of nationalities. They were streets, as Gerz describes, ‘without any noteworthy sites or occurrences, streets that could be found in any number of places … typical of postwar cities with apartment buildings, stores, garages – nothing worth mentioning in a city guide’.
Selected from 1,456 applications, 78 participants from 30 countries were given the free accommodation for the year. They included artists, musicians and designers, and were aged from nineteen to sixty-eight.
Text from Jochen Gerz, 2–3 Streets: An Exhibition in Cities of the Ruhr, Ruhr Valley, Germany (2010) in Claire Doherty’s edited volume Out of Time, Out of Place, Public Art (Now).
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Public Art (Now) Produced in association with Spike Island Film and Video, eight film interviews with artists and curators on the subject of new forms of public art will be released over the next six months. The films form part of a national programme of talks, publications and workshops dedicated to challenging conventional assumptions about where, when and how public art takes place. #publicartnow
About Situations Situations is an internationally renowned arts producer, based in Bristol. Situations opens up the potential for artists to make extraordinary ideas happen in unusual and unexpected places, inspiring audiences and participants to explore new horizons. Our work is guided by our core values: the arts have the capacity to change and enrich how we see, and act in, the world; artists should be trusted and supported to experiment and innovate; and spaces outside conventional arts venues offer rich and rewarding contexts in which this can happen.
Public Art (Now) has been made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Cultural Value programme, European Cultural Programme, Paul Hamlyn Foundation Breakthrough Award, Public Art Agency Sweden and the European Network of Public Art Producers.
