WerkStadt – Solid Skills

WerkStadt is a space that any district could make use of. It is a stock exchange for knowledge, a meeting space in which old and new neighbours can encounter each other, as well as artists and academics from all over the world; a place for male refu-gees as well as for Lebanese women and young students. It is a place to cook, film, sew or photograph, and where the results can be publicly shown. WerkStadt is a forum for the concerns of people living in Katernberg.

In the past, when the Zeche Zollverein was still in operation, miners and their families lived in the area, but since the shafts have been shut down and the coke ovens turned cold, everything has changed. Benjamin Melzer says, in order to “confront the elemental challenges to life” and to “deal with all these new burdens” WerkStadt, which he manages, encourages a DIY sensibility and an inconspicuous resistance. Together with the area’s residents, author Pascal Bovée, performance artist Lenio Kaklea and audio artist Katharina Pelosi are exploring the question of how the people in the north of Essen are dealing with these changes and what individual survival strategies they have developed in their lives in confronting the situation. The interviews and conversations will result in a performative audio installation. A writing workshop with young people is also attempting to strengthen approaches to the challenges and resentments that a young generation on the periphery of the city encounter on a daily basis.

The WerkStadt was initiated by PACT Zollverein as an independent laboratory and meeting place in Essen-Katernberg. Solid Skills is part of the project Memory Stations by the Academy of the Arts of the World/Cologne.