theatercombinat : SCHLAFgegen düsseldorf

theatercombinat | 24. - 28.06.2002 SCHLAFgegen düsseldorf, 5 days long city/sleepinstallation in context of city-mapping/FFT (forum freies theater, düsseldorf), theater der welt 2002 (d)

sprache/language: deutsch, english

SCHLAFgegen düsseldorf

variant 1: (excerpt) time as duration and rhythm: investigation if by a decelerating activity in the urban space, by sleeping/resting in public and at unusual places (in front of the supermarket, museum, round-abouts) the daily-life-rhythm can be irritated or even transformed. sleeping in public space, usually only seen with zoological interest or disgust in case of homelessness. activity as connecting experience. the activity of reproduction, usually happening - no matter what or how we produce - in intimate spaces is «exterritorialised» from privacy and set in the public space. the closed circle of social production, representation and reproduction is interrupted. resting or sleeping, the body becomes soft, intimate, exposed. the sleeping body represents nothing.

variant 2: these version is the consequence of the first under actual economic and administrative conditions:
the now 99 places (before: 1.500) are installed at the left side of the rhine, opposite the riverpromenade and the parliament (before: dispersed over the inner city). firms, organisations, academies, the army, the parliament are asked to join the sleep. the beds have to be block-like, red and fixed into the ground. sheets, blankets, cushions have the same colour. the distance from bed to bed is 3,99 m, making with a length of 2 m per bed an installation of 600 m along the rhine. for the nights, each bed has a reading-lamp.

happening: whole firms or enterprises, as addressed before, did not come to stop their work. but there were smaller groups and persons from most different social backgrounds. a group of 100 roma slept one day long, demonstrating for their right to stay. there was no small irritation about the fact that one could get a bed, sheets, books, coffee and food for free at the «hotellobby» 24 hours a day. the economy of exchange-value is deeply rooted. the experience of «nothing’s for free» deeply inscribed. what is the sense?

participants of the midnighthours were consciously chosen from diverse backgrounds. the experiment was to confront various fields of knowledge, discourses and experiences. they were astonishingly well and heterogeneously frequented – given the rough weather, the time, the marginal place and the strange situation. the invited «experts» could choose the conditions of their speeches – the results were rounds, arguments at the bar, a talk via megaphone, «moving» dispositions, thus creating different communicative possibilities, experiences, clashes. strange and touching discourses under the bridge at the riverbank, between sleepers and speakers, one-night guests and long-time sleepers, housewives, homeless, academics, neighbours, teens, theatre-people, visitors, citizens.