The Pink House in Bremen

http://www.pink-house-bremen.de

The Pink House in Bremen was an artistic project planned as a laboratory for international and intercultural cooperations as well as for  cultural and sociocultural encounter in Bremen. Therefore, in the range of different programmes the central idea was the main question: How will future urban societies look like? And How will people cohabit in a growing and developing Europe?

The complete and multi-disciplinary Pink House programme consisted of nine different parts:

1. Volksküche Babel
With the “Volksküche Babel” (Babel`s canteen) we invented a setting in order to attract public attention and to overcome inhibitions. The central idea was to invite all visitors to sit down and to have dinner together. The service was provided by the trainees of an off-the-job training in Bremen. The majority of these trainees were immigrants and we therefore asked them to serve a different menu every night, each hold in a different language. Moreover we asked popular persons from Bremen’s political or cultural life to give a small and entertaining after-dinner speech. The Volksküche Babel was sold out every night.
A special event was the Iftar-Night, performed in cooperation with the Moscs of Bremen during a common dinner at the time of Ramadan. More than 110 guest took part in the Iftar-Night.

2. Das gute Leben und der wunderschöne Tod des Herrn D.
The theaterkontor Bremen presented a theatre play “Das gute Leben und der wunderschöne Tod des Herrn D. (The good life and the wonderful death of Mr. D) which was first of all a german premiere and secondly fitted well into the central idea of the Pink House project. It told a story of migration and loneliness against the backround of the well-know Dracula-plot. With the combination of a traditional theatre work and the special location, we succeeded to attract new and theatre inexperienced audience and were able to test theatre in the outskirts of Bremen. Since the Pink House is generally not easy to play because of technical reasons, this production was able to cope with the difficult conditions of the Pink House (Noise/Light).

3. Das Orakel von Gröpelingen
The oracle of Gröpelingen is one of the projects which was developed in workshops with the participation of the inhabitants of Gröpelingen. It was realised with the help of professional actors and stage designers. Central idea of the performance was to provide an oracle in a post-modern Greek temple that gives reasonable answers to the essential questions of the requirements of future European urban societies. In a mixture of mythical stories and performance the oracle answered question like: „Who is going to pay for all this“ or „ Do the things really don’t move, when I stop watching?“.

4. Artists as guest
We invited two groups of artists in order to produce two pieces of art for the Pink House. Together with the project “Pinkes Rauschen” of Sabrina Zwach, and Herbert Fritsch, we produced a radio show in the Pink House in Bremen and in Rio de Janeiro about the fear in cities and urban surroundings. It was broadcasted live in Bremen. Together with the project “Sehkanal” of Christian Meyer-Kahrweg and his team we realised a four hour live VJ-/DJ-Performance in the area around the Pink House. The pictures were mainly taken in Bremen- Gröpelingen.

5. Themes and Discussions
Pink House was meant to be a place for discussion. Therefore, we organised a matinée with the topic “Language and acquisition of language”. In cooperation with the scientist Stefanie Haberzettl and the musician Sema Mutlu, the presenteer Libuse Cerna (Funkhaus Europa) was able to find an exciting balance between intellectual debate and provocative arguments.

6. Bazar of happiness
The bazar of happiness was the second contribution to the programme developed by the workshop in Bremen/Gröpelingen. Since this part of Bremen is mainly known as a depressing suburb, we wanted to sell, to raffle, and to donate the kind of happiness or luck that Gröpelingen is made of. Hence, the people who bought a lot won for example a ten minute dance-lesson, a poem et cetera.

7. Polish Night
As a greeting to Lodz (where the Pink House will be established after Bremen) we organised a polish night. The conceptual design of the Evening Event was developed by AgitPolska, an upcoming agency of polish artists and scientists who commits themselves to the intermediation of polish art and performance. Therefore, they invited two very different dance performances, namely a rock band and two DJs for the night. More than 150 people participated.

8. Interchange – Photographes Project
We cooperated with one partner of the Pink House and established an exchange-project between Budapest and Bremen. Two artists from each country were asked to travel to the city they don’t know in order to make a photo-portrait this city. Six large size pictures were produced during this project, three by each photographer. They were exhibited in both the Pink House Budapest and the Pink House Bremen.
As a side project, three pieces of video-art, filmed in Budapest, were exhibited by the Bremen artist Lea Dietrich during the Pink House Bremen period.

9. Temple and Stage
The organisers in Bremen emphasised the fact that the spectacular artistic temple will get an consistent inner décor and surrounding. Therefore, we put major effort into the stage building that suited all functions needed (stage for theatre play, stage for oracle, floor, room for photoexhibition and so on) and also fitted to the temple as a piece of art.
The floor was a gently inclining wooden construction which caused a permanent irritation by the visitor. The middle of the room consisted of a small water basin and two cubes which were used for the performances. The cubes were covered with a special fabric which could be changed from transparent (when illuminated from the back side) to nontransparent (when illuminated from the front). They where use as part of the scenery in the theatre play and the oracle performance as well as videoscreens in the lounge during the night programme.

The walls were also covered with a fabric, so that the six light boxes which exhibited the art pieces of Lea Dietrich (Bremen) and Gabor Gerhes (Budapest) showed to advantage.
The temple was furnished with sofas and couches by citizens of Bremen, lent to the project for the time running. Hence, the temple became a cosy place where the visitors could either rest, have a coffee, watch the exhibition or a performance or stay for one of the matinées.

In conclusion, it is safe to say that the Pink House Bremen with all its difficulties in the planning process, was a full success in terms of inter- and sociocultural cooperation. As presumed, it was a playground and a laboratory for the artistic reflection of future urban societies. It clearly exposed the existing differences (and difficulties) between all involved partners (within Bremen as well as with the international partners) during the working process. The consistent realisation of all parts of the programme (international and regional/sociocultural and artistic) is the living proof of an effective multi-disciplinary artistic project.

By “Kultur vor Ort“