Nordstadt Phantasien / Club Kohleausstieg

Who is eyeing up the last as yet unexhausted city districts and what do they want to do with them? Theatremaker and musician Schorsch Kamerun will collaborate with numerous professional urbanites to play out a boom time for a suddenly (and, it seems, surprisingly) fashionable area by claiming to give it a temporary upgrade.

What does it look like if an area that has plenty of space but has been ignored by the market is suddenly packed out overnight with brand-optimizing urban improvement specialists, super creatives and do-it-yourself profiteers? How many original pop-up shops, local food trucks or fringe galleries does it take to mobilize urban utopians from art students to investors to turn a “problem area” that was previously avoided into a highly desirable fashionable quarter?

Participants in Nordstadt Phantasien look into the film set of a contradictory but extremely popular neighbourhood whose “lively, diverse and edgy” atmosphere is already on the way to becoming attractive, exotic and no longer affordable. Headphones provide a live soundtrack made up of music and texts composed and written together with the residents of Dortmund. An opera singer, a crowing punk, a mineworkers‘ brass band, an organic bakery, a co-working space, a promotion team, genuine residents and fake scenery – all these are rivals for space that is soon about to become scarce. This unconventional musical investigative journey for approx. 100 persons at a time will come to a finale at the already hip Club Kohleausstieg – otherwise known as Recorder – where the celebrations – and evaluations – will continue with a programme of concerts.

The Club Kohleausstieg (in English: “The Switch From Coal Club”) of- fers a portrait of the manifestations and themes of contemporary pop culture. The concerts give equal status to a spectrum of performances ranging from small-scale, consciously experimental appearances to acts with a broader international presence. The participating artists are united by exploring possibilities of a form that is not too engrossing: amid the jostling spectacle of attention seeking – whether underground or mainstream – how music, text and views be articulated clearly in a way that would not work just as well at an autonomous youth centre or a reception for the FDP?

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