Listening

The socio-cultural arts centre Makroscope, the Gruppe Ruhrorter and the Theater an der Ruhr are collaborating on the ‘Zuhören’ project. A participatory sound and encounter format that responds to the increasing closure of church community spaces and explores the losses and utopian opportunities this presents. The project takes place within the context of the programme of the nomadic art and architecture biennial Manifesta 16+.

The starting point is the closure of St. Engelbert’s by the parish in Mülheim-Eppinghofen. For a transitional period, the workers’ church—which combines neo-Gothic architecture with design principles from the post-Second World War reconstruction—will become a place where listening is made explicit as a social practice. Questions about future uses are met with complicating factors: loneliness, the town’s strained financial situation, and an ageing society. Yet these are accompanied by a longing for old and new forms of community, shared care and collective imagination. Through interviews, field recordings and choral singing, the project explores all of this and, over five days in July, presents a living archive of voices in the church. This creates a resonant space that draws on the voices of the neighbourhood and makes listening, as a prerequisite for speaking together, tangibly experiential.

Admission to all Manifesta venues is free.

The event will take place at St Engelbert’s Church, 47 Engelbertusstraße, 45473 Mülheim an der Ruhr.

A project by Makroscope e.V., Theater an der Ruhr, and RUHRORTER as part of Manifesta 16+, with the kind support of Freunde des Theater an der Ruhr e.V.