In response to the changing role of urban space in the Corona pandemic, we are showing works by artist Christoph Schäfer in the Ruhr cities of Duisburg, Essen, Bochum and Dortmund over the next three weeks. On large billboards, the drawings titled Post von gestern (Yesterday's Mail) remind us of how fragile this normality is while waiting for the train, on the way to work or on the way home from a visit to a restaurant. The artist, who was born in Essen and lives in Hamburg, addresses the significance of public life during the pandemic and asks whether and how the social and urban situation will change as a result of the experience of the shutdown: In all three motifs, the incorporation of iconic buildings of Ruhr modernism - the Marl City Hall, the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen, and the Grugahalle in Essen - cites an earlier utopian moment of radical awakening.
Christoph Schäfer, both as a participatory artist and as a draftsman, deals pointedly with questions that also correspond to the interests of Urbane Künste Ruhr. Since the mid-1990s, the artistic and socio-political examination of urban development has played a decisive role in Christoph Schäfer's work. Together with other artists, neighbors and activists, he successfully initiated the Park Fiction project in Hamburg, which prevented the planned development of the harbor edge in St. Pauli and instead succeeded in creating an unusual park designed according to the wishes of the residents. The PlanBude project, founded in 2014, also develops art-influenced approaches to how the city can be planned and built differently.
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