Persuasive Vistas, Political Visions: Art and the Remaking of the Ruhr

This paper builds upon ethnographic fieldwork regarding the turn to art and design in the wake of the social and economic problems generated in the context of the Ruhr region's ongoing Strukturwandel. Though signs of crisis in the Ruhr's heavy industries appeared in the 1950s and 1960s, the region only recognized such trends as signs of an enduring structural crisis beginning in the 1970s. This crisis rendered the Ruhr’s economic reliance on coal and steel industries obsolete, ushering in a new wave of experimentation and innovation since the 1990s. Instead of the focus on direct job creation which characterized policy in the 1970s and 1980s, the 1990s marked a turn towards issues of landscape quality, image, and new forms of identity as a means to address the problems generated by shrinking urban areas and the retreat of industry. This paper examines the diverse range of practices the state has funded since the 1990s, from the well-known projects of the International Building Exhibition, which transformed a number of old industrial sites into areas for art, culture and recreation, to the experimental “Land for Free” proposal presented as part of the region’s successful application to the 2010 EU Capital of Culture year, to more recent public art initiatives spearheaded by Urbane Künste Ruhr. In my paper, I attend how these artistic practices mediate different images and visions for the future of the region and have catalyzed a series of alternative cultural movements and grassroots actions under the rubric “Recht auf Stadt.”