Art campaign „Unbehaust“ (Houseless): 100 tents in the Dortmund city garden

Camping in the city? No - the art campaign „Unbehaust“ ("Houseless", 1.-3. July 2011) was a „social sculpture“ with which dramaturge Daniel Kasselmann wanted to raise awareness for latent and urgent social issues – in cooperation with the street paper "bodo", and the Dortmund theatre and its anarcho department "City without Money".

From July 1 to July 3, 100 small tents covered the lawns of the city garden in Dortmund, reminding you of tent camps in Syria, fugitive dramas on Lampedusa, but also of a much closer situation, the nationwide homeless problem, the situation of the free art scene, of roots and exclusion.

Reading, Singing, Sleeping, Cooking

The tents weren't just simply erected directly under mayor Ullrich Sierau's office windows, and just stayed put - as part of an art campaign, they were of course art objects, being used as stage or canvas by more than 100 artists. The artists read, sang, maybe even slept, cooked, and lived in them - and considered this a comment on some momentarily virulent social issues.





Issues which have been addressed last but not least in the street paper "bodo" (based in Bochum /Dortmund) by its editor-in-chief Bastian Pütter; issues which are also taken care of by the Dortmund theatre and its director Kay Voges. „Who owns this city, who owns its public space?“ would be one of them. The artistic / naive question: "Are we allowed to erect a tent in the city park?"(No! First, you have to ask the local responsible parties, the Parkanlagen GmbH, and the office for environmental issues/emission protection) could also be translated into „Is a homeless person allowed to sit on a bench in an expensive mall for hours?“

Cliché hoboes and the free scene 

Are Roma allowed to hang out in the streeets of the Nordstadt district in Dortmund just like that? Why do elder people seriously experience the subway station "Stadtgarten" which has become a meeting point for certain (they just want to hang out there and don't harm anyone) youth groups as "threatening" according to a survey made by a daily paper? Are artists entitled to an interim use of vacant buildings? Wouldn't a non-conditional basic income help all those (who are not allowed) to participate in the social discourse?





These are issues that don't only affect the typical "cliché hobo", as Bastian Pütter aptly put it. It's all abut exclusion and participation, experiencing being "inside" and "outside", metaphorically. Initiator Daniel Kasselmann considered the tents in all their artistic variety being a reflection of urban freedom of speech and expression. Alexander Kerlin of "Stadt ohne Geld" talked about "recapturing the city by the arts". Tobias Bergmann used eight tents as stages with his "theatre partisans", announcing „performative acts“. One artist wanted to cut out butterfly-shaped pieces from the tent canvas, as a symbol of lightheartedness – that also would enable him to look at the sky from the tent's inside...

It was good to see the Dortmund theatre also participated in „Unbehaust“ - with this campaign, it complemented its committed programme of this season. If you haven't been to the great theatre experience of the „Waisen“ ("The Orphans") in the old Museum am Ostwall covering exactly this "inside vs. outside" topic in a breathtaking, claustrophobic production, please go buy a ticket for it.

Live music, poetry slams, impro theatre...

The „programme“ in the city park was remarkable anyway: apart from campaigns directly connected to the tents, various artists performed: Autopilot (a Punk band hailing from Bonn), Jonas Künne (Black Rust), Tobi Katze and Murat Kayi (Literaten), Boris Gott (the god of the Dortmund Nordstadt district), Oliver Hasse (a song writer), and Grotest Maru (a theatre group). And we're not ashamed to announce that this campaign was sponsored by the funds for socio culture, the tent company Fritz Berger, and the caffeinated lemonade brand fritz-kola, thank you very much!

On the afternoon of Sunday, July 3, there was an American auction to sell off the individualised tents - with a bid of 5 Euros even people who wouldn't be allowed to raise an arm during a "normal" auction could try their luck...


Related content

• Nothing's quiet on the Western front - Dortmund's creative scene continues to thrive in the shadow of the U
  
• German football capital Dortmund: footie as location factor
• Go digital! The new edition of "Ultra", a grafitti magazine made in Dortmund, is available in the real and the virtual world