Festivalkatalog der Ruhrtriennale 2022

Dear Audience,
Very few people from outside the Ruhr area would describe it as »beautiful«.
They might say that the Schwäbische Alb, the Allgäu and the Lüneburger Heide
are beautiful. Yet there seems to be some agreement that people in the Ruhr
region are generally friendlier and more open than elsewhere in Germany;
this may have something to do with – as many people who come from the Ruhr
region themselves say – the »miner mentality«, which goes back to the coal and
steel industry. In other respects, however, the extensive green areas, the broad
sky and the meadows along the rivers are striking in the Ruhr region ... So, is it
beautiful after all? Where would the authority actually be that had the monopoly
on the concept of beauty – and, with that, perhaps even on the truth and good?
Hardly anyone is able to judge a region without bringing legends and clichés to
the fore, and we know the pitfalls of doing so. We know that our perspective
can narrow considerably if we unquestioningly take everything we believe to
know about a region as the starting point of our vision. So how do we awaken
the longing to strip away the attributions, to see this region differently, anew
and, as it were, without presuppositions?
The arts may be as subject to the changing times as any other discipline. They
may err, they may become threadbare, they must laboriously make friends
with constantly changing conditions and judgements.
One thing, however, they must always do, if they are to develop their power:
They must make a claim.
Bohemia lies by the sea is the title of one of Ingeborg Bachmann’s most
important poems. She took the geographically incorrect assertion from
Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale to explore poetically the possibilities of how
a society of opposites can come together, how different forms of the arts can
converge, and how a perspective on a different state of the world becomes
possible. This has nothing to do with a utopian idyll; rather, the shift of
Bohemia on the map is based on a painful experience. All who are to come to
Bohemia must know:
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