Impulse Theater Festival

Cologne, Düsseldorf, Mülheim an der Ruhr

4-14 June 2020

DIE GROSSE SCHERE (THE GREAT DIVIDE)

05.—14.06.

When we look in the middle, there’s practically nothing there. What used to be the centre of society has become increasingly empty. Because the poorer are getting ever poorer and the rich ever richer. As a city, Mülheim an der Ruhr also has an empty centre. The rich live in the woods, the poor behind the station and between them flows the Ruhr. Of all the cities in North Rhine-Westphalia, Mülheim has the highest per capita personal debt and yet at the same time it is home to several multi-billionaires. Where better to look how society is drifting apart than here? 
This project by artists’ collective Club Real illustrates how the social divide is becoming ever wider: slowly but constantly. How long can this go on? How much can society take? THE GREAT DIVIDE makes increasing inequality impossible to overlook. How can we close the gap again? How can we fill that empty centre?

Club Real: Paz Ponce, Mathias Lenz, Marianne Ramsay-Sonneck, Georg Reinhardt
Dramaturgy: Haiko Pfost, Wilma Renfordt
Production Management: Zsolt Káldy
Production Assistant: Anna Jungfer  

A co-production between Club Real, Ringlokschuppen Ruhr and the Impulse Theater Festival, funded by Kunststiftung NRW and Fonds Darstellende Künste.

BUILDING SITE TOUR with Club Real and Eva Gajek, research associate in the research group 'History and theory of global capitalism' at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen. She is working on a cultural history of wealth in the 20th century.
Language: German
06.06. 15:00—16:30
07.06. 15:00—16:30
Meet at: Hauptbahnhof Mülheim an der Ruhr, exit to Eppinghofer Straße, next to ‘Radstation’

BUILDING SITE TOUR with Club Real and Volker Kersting, sociologist at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Regional Research (ZEFIR) at the Ruhr University Bochum and former Director of Urban Research and Statistics for the city of Mülheim an der Ruhr
Language: German
11.06. 15:00—16:30
13.06. 15:00—16:30
Meet at: Hauptbahnhof Mülheim an der Ruhr, exit to Eppinghofer Straße, next to ‘Radstation’

THE UNVEILING with Club Real and guests
Language: German
14.06. 16:00
Venue: Stadthafen Mülheim an der Ruhr, Ruhrbania

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On Club Real

The artists’ collective Club Real has realised participatory site-specific projects since 2000: through installations, one-to-one encounters, political role-play and participatory urban development projects, Club Real invites spectators to assist them in creating alternative realities. From 2015 to 2017 the group produced the project Folkstheater / Teatr Ludowy in Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice which they documented in a book published by Verlag Theater in 2018: ‘Partizipation Stadt Theater’. In 2019 Club Real appeared in Cuba at the 13th Havana Biennale with the immersive performance installation ‘LASA10CARNAVAL’. Club Real is currently in Berlin and Freiburg working on the participatory political experiment ‘Beyond Nature’, an exemplary project that recognises the political rights of non-human creatures. The Viennese work in this series was invited to the Impulse SHOWCASE in 2019. For DIE GROSSE SCHERE (‘THE GREAT DIVIDE’), Paz Ponce, Mathias Lenz, Marianne Ramsay-Sonneck and Georg Reinhardt will be working together as Club Real.