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Healing Complex
(2018 — ongoing)

3.6.22 – 29.6.24

Address

Ehemalige St. Bonifatiuskirche 
Cranger Straße 338-342 
45891 Gelsenkirchen

Since 3rd June 2022, Urbane Künste Ruhr had been running the project Healing Complex (2018-ongoing) in Gelsenkirchen, initiated by artist Irena Haiduk, modelled on ancient healing sites that combined art and healing.

In her artistic practice, Haiduk collaborates with art institutions, which in turn can become economic catalysts for the production of paintings, books, texts, films and scenographies, metallurgy, weavings, architecture and garments, thus stimulating the public's imagination. At the heart of the project, baking as a universal and unifying element between people and cultures: a central oven was used to create a place for joint work and exchange for interested audiences and local residents.

Fungi serve humans as food, medicinal or intoxicating agents; they are sedentary like plants, but cannot photosynthesise. Therefore, they have to feed like animals by ingesting organic substances and digesting them through enzymes. In the kingdom of living things, fungi form a category of their own: they are neither plants (Plantae) nor animals (Animalia), but are related to both. As for us humans, communication and cooperation are essential for their organisation: they often live in symbioses formed via the mycelium – the complex, mostly underground network of fungal filaments from which mushrooms can then sprout above ground. The mycelium distributes vital nutrients in the soil and is also called "nature's glue" because it breaks down decaying material and holds it together. At the same time, it creates connections, giving rise to its own economy: they form the social network between the different organisms.

With an economy that is not only metaphorically based on the model of mushroom cultures – myconomy – the Healing Complex will reopen in March 2023. In addition to its own mushroom cultivation, which visitors can cultivate and harvest, the potential of networks will also be explored. Tokens designed by artist Irena Haiduk will serve as currency on site. To expand the myconomy, these tokens will also be available at the other exhibition venues of Ruhr Ding: Schlaf in Mülheim, Witten and Essen. They can be exchanged at the Healing Complex for workshops or participatory activities, the proceeds of which in turn remain with the participants. This circulating economy creates a network of knowledge exchange and cooperation in which experimentation can take place and through which new, reciprocal links are created.

Artist

Open Artsit

©Irena Haiduk

Irena Haiduk

In June 2022, Irena Haiduk opens the exhibition Healing Complex (2018—ongoing) in the former church of St. Bonifatius, which is becoming a new meeting and community place in Gelsenkirchen.

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Hamminkeln

The Grand Snail Tour will be accompanied by literary, photographic and illustrative artists, who will collect impressions and reflections from the same city at the same time as the Trailer is there and put them into visual or literary form. The result is a paratext on the three-year tour, a travel chronicle in the form of a kaleidoscope of stories, connections and snapshots in the 53 cities of the region, revealing the simultaneities and non-simultaneities of the Grand Snail Tour.

Hamminkeln by Erdem Teper

so müssen wohl die bäume über die menschen denken, 
der mensch ist ewig damit beschäftigt 
versteht, dass alles und jeder irgendwo
eins ist 
versteht, dass alles –  liebt und lacht und lebt in frieden existiert; stoa
versteht, dass es ist – ebenbild 
wenn mensch findet sich selbst 
vor uralten baumrinden 
ein wesen schaut das andere an, 
am ende haben beide einander
und somit sich selbst erkannt 
beide aus gerüst, beide aus haut 
nur dass der baum im wald sich zutraut
zurecht, dass er den menschen überlebt; 
während die zeit bereits 
das leichentuch des menschen webt 
und der baum schaut den menschen an, 
beide aus haut, rinde und knochen 
nur hat der neue mensch 
seine beziehung zur natur unterbrochen

Artist

Open Artsit

©priscilliagrubo

Erdem Teper

Erdem Teper writes about everything that makes Erdem feel. Themes in his poetry are often taken from philosophical and religious contexts.

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