Glücksspiel/Trampelpfade zum kleinen Glück
Durational socially engaged public art intervention
Role: Collaborating Artist, Research and engagement, Exhibition narratives, Events and performance development
A series of public art interventions in the German Ruhr Area by Jeanne van Heeswijk, commissioned as part of ‘B1|A40 Die Schönheit der grossen Strasse’ by Markus Ambach Projekte - The Resistance of Small Happiness (2010), followed by Glücksspiel (2012) Trampelpfade (Desire Paths).
With residents of Kaiserberg and Werthacker, Marcel van der Meijs, Lodewijk Thiessen, Johannes van der Assem, Mariska Vogel, Minke Themans, Ramón Mosterd.
Kreuz Kaiserberg is one of the biggest highway junctions in the region. In between canals, train tracks and the motorway intersection, there sit a small village inhabited by a hundred people, whose families came living here from Prussia after World War 2, a large buker, at present used by heavy metal bands from Duisburg, an idyllic fish farm, a cow farm, a manor house and a trailer park.
Merging Ruhr cities have resulted in the autobahn A 40 being assigned a unique centrality quite unlike its previous peripheral position, turning it into the central boulevard of a metropolis with more than six million inhabitants. As such, the Ruhr area is becoming an exemplary international laboratory for urbanisation processes.
With the project “Glücksspiel – Was setzt du auf’s Spiel?” (Game of luck, what’s your stake?) a team of local and external experts travelled through the larger Kreuz Kaiserberg area and engaged in conversation around the use of the area and the ideas for its future. They travelled through the area with a gigantic mobile gaming machine to collect stories and display various scenarios.
‘Trampelpfade’ closes the series of projects that started with ‘The Resistance of Small Happiness’. The project investigated whether collective awareness and responsibilty can arise in a fragmentary organised, vernacular landscape as in the Kreuz Kaiserberg. With a mobile museum it displayed active groups in the area and researched the possibilities to bring the various players closer together and maybe create a sense of solidarity. During the summer, it travelled with various exhibitions in order to show and explore individual and communal themes, plans and desires for the future of the area.