Experiments in art and community: For a month a vacant highrise building was transformed into a “city within the city”. The alltogether 45 individual projects by 75 artists used art to contemplate on contemporary utopias and alternative life styles while working and living a shared life at the periphery of Bremen. The project ended with the “Betonale”, a three-day festival presenting the results to an audience.
In 2010 the project was invited to present Bremen at the “Heroes” project @ Ruhr.2010. www.sproutbau.de (of 2007 design!) |
Idea & Curator: Christina Vogelsang
Finances & Assistance: Annika Schmeding Team: Oliver Hasemann, Daniel Schnier, Alexander Kutsch, Michael Ziehl Documentary: Yannick Radeke, Christina Vogelsang |
"On one floor a rooster and hens cackled amongst golden walls. On another goats frolicked before a wallpaper with an idyllic alp panorama. On a third the New Yorker artist Mary Ivy Martin draped rolled grass over soil hills, to give her Indoor Garden a natural foundation. You almost felt reminded of the Netherland Expo-Pavillon, one of the most impressive constructions of the World Fair in Hannover. There in the year 2000 the Rotterdam architecs MVRDV layered seven types of landscapes on top of each other. But here - in a housing complex in Bremen doomed for demolition - you could admire a remarkably larger variety and compaction of art- and real life environment."
(Deutsche Bauzeitung, Ocotber 2007) |
"The house seems to be a city of arts. You find almost anything: a Free Shop, a Sewing Store, a Roof Top Cinema, light installations, sound collages, sculptures and a so called community kitchen, where people share self cooked meals. Furthermore there is the play "Sixth floor, diagonally opposite", the home produced "Telenovela", a continuation novel in and about the Sproutbau, read every weekday night on the top balcony, or a tree made of cardbox that sprouts up all seven floors on one of the outer walls. The ideas that are explored and realised seem as big as the building is."
(Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, 31.8.2007) |