RUHRORTER

RUHRORTER, a collaborative theater and art project involving refugees, was founded in 2012. What began as a project has, over more than a decade, grown into an independent collective that consistently combines artistic work, anthropological research, and urban-based installations.

At the core of their work are site-specific productions and installations that take place in vacant spaces—in buildings and rooms that are themselves part of the Ruhr region’s history of migration. The choice of these locations is not merely an aesthetic decision: it makes the intertwining of urban history and migration history tangible.

RUHRORTER’s primary motivation is the search for artistic and aesthetic forms that create a publicly visible counterbalance to the stereotypical, stigmatizing categorization of refugees—in civil society as well as in the media and in documentary art. The aesthetic approach deliberately avoids reducing art involving refugees to a matter of authenticity.

Over the years, RUHRORTER has explored the thematic areas of migration, flight, administration, and law in a variety of formats—through site-specific theater as well as film, radio plays, and installations.

RUHRORTER is part of the nationwide PostHeimat network, which was founded in 2018 and brings together theater groups whose work is particularly linked to migration, flight, and exile.