On Tuesday, 6 May at 7 p.m., Lord Mayor Sven Schulze and Miriam Koch, Councillor for Culture and Integration of the City of Düsseldorf, will open the representation of the twin city in the year of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 in the Stadtwirtschaft, Jakobstraße 46. This will showcase the living city partnership and is intended to further intensify the cultural dialogue between the two cities. The opening of the installation "eight planets, one star, one world (2025)" by Düsseldorf conceptual artist Mischa Kuball, who will also be present, marks the start of Düsseldorf's cultural representation in the context of the European Capital of Culture year 2025.
Admission is free. Representatives of the media are also invited.
The exhibition can be seen in House A of the Stadtwirtschaft, room 4.1.7. and will be open to the public free of charge from 7 May to 30 June, daily from 2 pm to 7 pm.
"eight planets one star, one world" is a walk-through installation that allows visitors to experience the incomprehensible and incomprehensible nature of the universe with all their senses. The names of the nine planets and one star of our solar system are projected onto mirrored spheres using stencils, so that the letters are reflected on the walls, ceiling and floor and whirled around by rotation and reflection. They lose their clear categorisation and form their very own galaxy with their reflections.
The conceptual artist Mischa Kuball thus refers to the human desire to explore the universe, from observing it with the eyes to looking through a telescope and travelling into space. The installation works with light as a material. This can also be understood as an allusion to the Age of Enlightenment, for which the metaphor of light stands, because human reason and scientific knowledge took centre stage.
"eight planets, one star, one world" (2025) is a co-production between the state capital of Düsseldorf and Mischa Kuball for the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025.
Mischa Kuball has been working in public and institutional spaces since 1977. He uses the medium of light to explore architectural spaces as well as social and political discourses and reflects on aspects ranging from socio-cultural structures to urban topographies in his works. With architectural interventions, he reveals historical contexts or reinterprets the familiar. Mischa Kuball has been Professor of Art in Public Space at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, since 2007 and was Professor of Media Art at the Academy of Art and Design/ZKM, Karlsruhe, from 2006 to 2008. He has been a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts, Düsseldorf, since 2015. In 2016, he was honoured with the German Lighting Award.
Background
The opening event is part of this year's Twin Cities Conference, to which the City of Chemnitz is expecting seven delegations from the twin cities of Düsseldorf, Kirjat Bialik, Ljubljana, Łódź, Manchester, Tampere and Timbuktu from 7 to 9 May. The twin city conference is embedded in the Europe Week.
Further projects under Düsseldorf's leadership will follow in 2025, such as a series of concerts entitled "fem_pop_fest" and a performance by the theatre collective "Pierre Vers" at the KOSMOS Chemnitz Festival, photographic works by artist Beate Knappe at the Garagencampus and participation in the Purple Path by Düsseldorf artist Corina Gertz.
The two cities of Düsseldorf and Chemnitz have enjoyed a lively partnership for over 35 years, which is reflected in numerous cultural initiatives. This partnership is now receiving a lot of new impetus, especially in the Capital of Culture year 2025.