Performin' the House
site-specific performance art project
winter semester 2013/2014, University of Osnabrück and Ruller House e.V., Rulle.
As part of a seminar on site-specific performance art at the University of Osnabrück, I developed a project together with students for the Ruller House e.V. in Rulle/Wallenhorst. The house has a long and eventful history: Like on a palimpsest, its various functions and uses as a pilgrimage chapel, village school, forester's house, residential house and finally as a cultural center overlap. Its complex local history, marked by ruptures and contrasts, reflects overall social political and religious developments and upheavals of the last 700 years.
The students selected a location in the house or on its grounds and developed a performance or installation for it that related to the specific material, historical or social context in each case. In intensive discussions in the group, very different concepts transformed and unfolded, gaining complexity and density, until everyone felt the point at which the idea merged with the place, the time and their own personality and became coherent. The seminar ended with a public presentation and a stimulating discussion with the numerous visitors. Many of them, who have known the house for years, were able to experience it in a new way during the approximately one-hour tour on the evening of January 31, 2014.
photos: Lew Silber
