from the archives. Künstler*innen im Archiv

A cooperation of Urbane Künste Ruhr and Stiftung Geschichte des Ruhrgebiets.

Archives are institutions that serve to collect and store documents of all kinds. But the buildings themselves, in which the objects stored for various reasons and selected according to various criteria are located, are also called archives. Since collecting and storing is done according to certain selection principles, it always has a political dimension as well. For Michel Foucault, an archive is a mobile system of discursivity, that is, a system of relations and statements within which we behave. Moreover, unlike libraries and museums, an archive is also characterised by the fact that only a small part of the archive material is created from the outset as permanent evidence.

So how can an archive be explored artistically? Is there a dormant knowledge in the archive that can only be awakened through artistic access? Where do gaps or breaks appear? Which neglected and untold stories emerge? How can they be recorded and presented? How dynamic are (material) archives actually and what new archives do we need?

For three months, the scholarship holders from Urbane Künste Ruhr and the Stiftung Geschichte des Ruhrgebiets had time to explore the archive material and archiving structures at the Haus der Geschichte based on these and other questions. During their stay, they were able to approach not only regional and supra-regional mining history(s) in an extensive fund of early mining literature, but also to deal with various international social movements since the 19th century through journals and ephemera.

With the event from the archives. Künstler*innen im Archiv, we invite you to get to know the artists' projects in lectures, talks, readings and screenings and to discuss questions that can be derived from the cooperation with the Stiftung Geschichte des Ruhrgebiets together with other guests. We are interested in how artists work in archives, the concept of artistic research itself and how Urbane Künste Ruhr, as an institution without a house, can make artistic research of the region fruitful for itself as a task and mode of action.

We would also like to give you an outlook on the future: From 2024, the residency programme will be transformed into a more production-oriented guest artist programme. Together with three cooperation partners, Urbane Künste Ruhr will invite six artists or collectives to develop a design for a site-specific project during a three-month residency.

The residency programme Zu Gast bei Urbane Künste Ruhr was launched in 2018 by Britta Peters as a sustainable network project and implemented together with several cooperation partners in the Ruhr region. Artists were given the opportunity to work on site in the Ruhr and get to know the region.

The Stiftung Geschichte des Ruhrgebiets, founded in 1998, promotes research into the history and present of the Ruhr and provides extensive book and journal collections as well as numerous archival materials for this purpose. In the foundation's building - the Haus der Geschichte des Ruhrgebiets - the Ruhr library and the archive in the Haus der Geschichte des Ruhrgebiets are open to all interested parties. Through close cooperation with the Institute for Social Movements at the Ruhr University Bochum, students and scholars from various disciplines as well as mining experts and others interested in the holdings benefit regionally and nationally. The cooperation with Urbane Künste Ruhr has existed since 2021.

The organiser is the Haus der Geschichte des Ruhrgebiets.