Performance + Installation: Agentur für neue Utopien

Utopias are a gift—a bold one!
In the fog, gently feeling our way through the depths, amid all the dust-covered, dancing particles, we try to uncover the severed connections of long-established structures and examine their utopian utility.
Agency for New Utopias

How do utopias manifest themselves? Can they take root and grow within architectural forms? And what happens when a built “real utopia,” born of times of crisis, is no longer used? Was the idea then a bad one? What is worth salvaging, preserving, and further developing on the path to creating new utopias?
With the work “Agency for New Utopias,” artist Ricarda Walter and her team invite viewers to a site-specific performance and installation. The Collini Center in Mannheim, built in 1972 as a construction project for the Federal Horticultural Show, serves as a utopian case study. With its brutalist architecture and public decay, the high-rise continues to divide Mannheim’s urban community to this day. 

The resulting performance and installation bring together ideas and findings developed during a residency at the Schwindelfrei 2024 theater festival in collaboration with Friedrich Byusa Blam and Sophie Lichtenberg. 
The performance takes place outdoors and begins at zeitraumexit. It is not wheelchair accessible. 

The “Agency for New Utopias” is part of the program celebrating zeitraumexit’s 25th anniversary.