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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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Local Blackouts

Lütfiye Güzel

A person in a brown leather jacket looks at a large printed newspaper on a stand with the heading 'Wesel'.

© Daniel Sadrowski

A sign with the word 'NACHRICHTEN' with an abstract newspaper layout with little text.

© Heinrich Holtgreve

Ausgangsmaterial ist ein besonders kurzweiliges Format aus dem Alltag: die Tageszeitung. Lütfiye Güzel, Poetin aus Duisburg und Vertreterin eines konsequent selbstverlegten, körpernahen Schreibens, lässt sich für die Grand Snail Tour von Projektpartner*innen und Passant*innen Lokalzeitungen und -beilagen aus den zu bereisenden Städten zusenden. Aus diesen Dokumenten erzeugt Güzel durch gezieltes Ausstreichen und Schwärzen von Textpassagen insgesamt 53 Gedichte — Local Blackouts —, die auf Aufstellern an jeder Station veröffentlicht werden.

Die Methode der Blackout Poetry ist eine Form der Found Poetry und wird bei Güzel zum politischen Akt. Das Schwärzen zitiert die Logik der Zensur, kehrt sie aber um, denn das unkenntlich Machen hat nicht Unterdrückung, sondern Verdichtung zum Ziel: Was bleibt, wenn der redaktionelle Lärm verschwindet? Lyrische Miniaturen, die in ihrer Knappheit dem Haiku ähnlich ist. Güzels Entscheidung, diese Textarbeiten im öffentlichen Raum zu zeigen, stellt zudem implizit die Frage: Für wen werden solche Texte geschrieben, und wer kommt darin vor?

Lokalzeitungen sind ein ambivalentes Medium. Sie fördern und informieren Nachbarschaften jenseits von Social Media — doch die Sprache und Nachrichtenauswahl ist häufig hetzerisch und vereinfachend. Tatsache ist, dass Lokalzeitungen an Bedeutung und finanzielle Unterstützung verlieren. Güzels Aneignung bewahrt und befragt dieses Erbe zugleich. Präsentiert auf herkömmlichen Presseaufstellern verleiht ihre Arbeit der Grand Snail Tour ein vertrautes Erscheinungsbild von regionaler Kultur und überführt diese gleichzeitig in die poetische Abstraktion.

Artist

Open Artsit

©Ben Knabe

Lütfiye Güzel

Lütfiye Güzel is a poet and has been publishing poems under her own label go-güzel-publishing since 2014.

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