The Grand Snail Tour / open call: Zu Gast bei Urbane Künste Ruhr

What role does art play in a post-industrial landscape that has been undergoing change for a good 80 years? Can art contribute to transforming the proletarian pathos of days gone by into a new, contemporary self-image? What challenges does a semi-urban landscape pose that is characterized by high labor migration, rapidly growing infrastructure, fast growing prosperity, but also ecological destruction, loss of identity, and poverty?

Since its foundation in 2012, the institution Urbane Künste Ruhr has been confronted with a challenge that seems impossible to meet: to explore the Ruhr Area artistically, a former industrial region of 4,400 square kilometers with five million inhabitants in western Germany, in its historical and contemporary complexity.

The Grand Snail Tour, which will lead through all 53 Ruhr cities over the next three years, can be described as an exploration to find new answers to the questions above. It is far more than just an encyclopedic undertaking: Equipped with a trailer as an action and exhibition space, the Grand Snail Tour aims to present an artistic-performative program in public places in the Ruhr Area, to exchange ideas with locals, to strengthen partnerships and thus to build a sustainable network that is fed by regional structures already in place. The program is designed in cooperation with various local initiatives, with whom contact will be sought in advance. The route—from Xanten in the west to the north, east, south, and finally to Herne in the middle of the Ruhr Area—follows the spiral pattern of a snail's shell.

The long-term nature of the project, in which regional and international artists are involved, reflects the approach to the Ruhr Area in numerous facets—in the changing regional landscapes and the course of the seasons as well as in relation to the current political debates: Whose public space is it? Who do the streets and squares belong to and how may they be reclaimed? How can art find its way to the people and not the other way around? How can art institutions reach an audience beyond the major urban centers? How can cultural production lead to sustainable results?

The Grand Snail Tour kicks off on September 26, 2024 in Xanten.

In the overall program of Urbane Künste Ruhr, this horizontal exploration of space will be supplemented by selective “deep drillings” with the title Zu Gast bei Urbane Künste Ruhr, resulting from artist residencies which will lead to on-site research, projects, and exhibitions. The site-specific examination of the circumstances in each given place is crucial to this project. The Open Call is aimed at artists and collectives who are not only interested in working in the Ruhr Area, but also with a contemporary perspective on the region and its themes. The deadline for applications is March 31, 2024. The program will be implemented together with the regional cooperation partners Stiftung Geschichte des Ruhrgebiets (History of the Ruhr Foundation), Stiftung Industriedenkmalpflege und Geschichtskultur (Foundation for the Preservation of Industrial Monuments and Historical Culture) and others. It builds on Urbane Künste Ruhr's former residency program with the difference that the collaboration and the exchange with the partner institutions are intensified through work on a joint project or exhibition.

The two formats Grand Snail Tour and Zu Gast bei Urbane Künste Ruhr are key aspects of the new program following the contract extension of Artistic Director Britta Peters who has been in charge of the institution since 2018. The attempt to anchor art in public space in both breadth and depth in a site-specific manner follows an experimental logic of condensation and dispersion, acceleration and deceleration.

Urbane Künste Ruhr is a polymorphous, decentralized institution for contemporary art in the Ruhr Area. Along with the Ruhrtriennale, Tanzlandschaft Ruhr and Chorwerk Ruhr, Urbane Künste Ruhr is part of Kultur Ruhr GmbH, whose proprietors are the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Regionalverband Ruhr and whose headquarters is located in Bochum.