Ruhr Ding: Schlaf

Caught in eight-hour waking and sleeping patterns, flexible working hours, body clocks and the social pressure to be non-stop available, productive and awake, sleep represents an almost resistant state—a phase of non-production and non-consumption. Yet even when resting, our bodies can be digitally measured and optimised by numerous inventions designed to help us sleep better. Sleepless nights are juxtaposed with the creative state of being rested, and fantasy worlds alternate with nightmare scenarios turned into reality. The concept of sleep is as multifaceted as the artistic examination of it. At the Ruhr Ding: Schlaf (Ruhr Thing: Sleep), numerous projects in the southern Ruhr Area testify to this.

The Ruhr Ding: Schlaf marks the end of a three-part exhibition series presented throughout the region by the Urbane Künste Ruhr under Britta Peters’ artistic direction. After the Ruhr Ding: Territorien (Ruhr Thing: Territories) 2019 in the center of the region and the Ruhr Ding: Klima (Ruhr Thing: Climate) 2021 in the north, the wandering exhibition will take place in the southern cities of Mülheim an der Ruhr, Essen, Witten, and the Erle district of Gelsenkirchen in 2023, shifting back to the Ruhr area’s industrial history with the beginnings of mining. The third Ruhr Ding series shifts our focus from questions about the environment and our surroundings to the human body itself and its need for sleep as something we all share. Using art, we present reflections on our relationship to the body and time, leading to the question: How do we want to live?

The Ruhr Ding: Schlaf presents 22 projects by 19 international artists and collectives. It is curated as a polyphonic dialogue in which different artistic positions relate to each other: they complement and contradict each other, some involving their audience. Some projects are loud and impossible to miss, but alongside them quieter voices and more subtle interventions assert themselves. Whether film, sculpture, painting, language, text, music or sound, whether installations, workshops or performances—they were each created for concrete places and contexts in the Ruhr region.

With: Wojciech Bąkowski, Maximiliane Baumgartner, Cute Community Radio, God’s Entertainment, Michel Gondry’s Home Movie Factory, Healing Complex, Nik Nowak, Katarina Jazbec, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Stephanie Lüning, Melanie Manchot, Museum für Fotokopie, Yuri Pattison, Joanna Piotrowska, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Alicja Rogalska, Nora Turato, Viron Erol Vert, The Wig

Opening days
May 5, 2023: Mülheim an der Ruhr
May 6, 2023: Witten
May 7, 2023: Essen

Opening hours: May 5–June 25, Wednesday–Sunday, 11am–6pm

Free admission. 

The detailed program can be found at urbanekuensteruhr.de. 

Urbane Künste Ruhr is a polymorphous decentralized institution for contemporary art in the Ruhr region, under the artistic direction of Britta Peters since January 2018. Founded following the Capital of Culture year Ruhr.2010, Urbane Künste Ruhr cooperates with local and international partners to initiate projects in public spaces, exhibitions, residency programs and events. Along with the Ruhrtriennale, Tanzlandschaft Ruhr and ChorWerk Ruhr, Urbane Künste Ruhr is part of Kultur Ruhr GmbH, whose proprietors are the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Regionalverband Ruhr and whose headquarters is located in Bochum.

T +49 (0) 175 757 93 49 / info [​at​] urbanekuensteruhr.de
Press contact and accreditation for the press preview on May 4 and 5: presse [​at​] urbanekuensteruhr.de

Artistic Director and Curator: Britta Peters
Project Director: Daniel Klemm
Assistant Curator and project coordination: Alisha Raissa Danscher
Assistant to the Directors: Tanja Borcherding
Technical director: Stefan Göbel
Project management: Roy Huschenbeth, Larissa Koch, Nora Memmert, Nicole Trzeja
Production assistants: Julian Holl, Erik Wittbusch
Art education: İpek Gençtürk, Josephine Hofmann, Kim Lempelius
Marketing: Kerstin Finkel, Evelyn Walton
Press: Hannes Klug
Magazine Editor: Laura Konert