Shifting Grounds

The mining heap as a testing ground between extraction and regeneration

The mining heap on the site of the Zollverein colliery, one of the most striking legacies of mining history, is now a constantly growing natural landscape. As the venue and centre of the ›Shifting Grounds‹ festival, the mining heap becomes a future laboratory, a place for exchange, participation and a space for diverse regeneration. The summer festival is dedicated to sustainable social practices and new, post-coal mining narratives. How can the slag heap as an ambivalent negotiation space at the interface of industrial romanticism, heavy metal pollution and local recreation area change views of exploitation and coexistence? How can other futures be imagined here?

As part of ›Shifting Grounds‹, discussions will be held over a picnic, botanical tours will take place and performances will be shown on site and on the PACT stage**.** Commissioned artistic works by Mascha Fehse, Sergiu Matis, Daniel Kötter, Marlene Helling and others will be specially developed, adapted and expanded for the mining heap.

This project is part of the Alliance International Production Houses, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media & Kunststiftung NRW

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Opening on Thursday, July 3 at 19 h

Restructured: Transformations in Life and Landscapes – An evening of conversation at the Zollverein slag heap

The site of the former Zollverein coal mine underwent a radical transformation in the years following the closure of coal mining. The earth reclaimed from the interior of the tunnels is now largely covered with dense vegetation, providing a habitat for rare insects, birds, and amphibians. PACT invites you to a discussion about the capacity for regeneration after radical interventions, about uprooting and resettlement, repurposing, and preparing opportunities for those who follow.

With Anna Ehlert, Sustainability and Environmental Manager of Zeche Zollverein, Uwe Schmitter, Jugendwerk of AWO Essen, Petra Leonartz, and more.

](https://www.pact-zollverein.de/en/programme/umgeschichtet-transformationen-leben-und-landschaften)

Programme

Friday

18:30 - 21:30 hDaniel Kötter ›Pembalakan‹PerformanceSlag heap

21:30 - 22:30 hMarlene Helling ›POOLS‹Performance Zollverein area

from 22:30 hmusic (DJ set by ISOKEN) and hangout At PACT

Saturday

15:00 - 16:30 hWalk through the industrial forestWith Oliver Balke, forester Wald NRW und Holz NRW

16:30 - 18:00 hTonio Flores ›anti-commodities and othered ecologies‹Workshop / Lecture

18:30 - 20:45 hSergiu Matis ›Earth Works‹Performance / DanceSlag heap / Main stage

20:00 - 23:00 hDaniel Kötter ›Pembalakan‹PerformanceSlag heap

from 21:30 h Conclusion, hang out & talksSlag heap / Recreational Successions

Sunday

16:00 - approx. 17:45 hChewing on the crumbs of extraction - A metabolic journeyWith Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Iazmin Al-Qaisi, Maria Cecília Rocha and Carlina RosséePerformance / LecturePACT Foyer

18:00 - 20:15 hSergiu Matis ›Earth Works‹Performance / DanceSlag heap / Main stage

ContinuosMascha Fehse ›Recreational Successions‹Wandering Spatial Installation

Tickets & Infos

Photo: Jubal Battisti

The new performance by choreographer Sergiu Matis consists of texts by authors from all over the world who describe their personal experiences with our existentially threatened environment. These reflections, commissioned for ›Earth Works‹, are recited, translated and interpreted by five performers.

Film still: Daniel Kötter

Familiar landscapes have turned into question marks. Trees have been felled, entire forests have been cleared. And now? What happens that nothing grows anymore? A question that arises in many places around the world. The project ›Pembalakan‹ by documentary filmmaker and theater director Daniel Kötter is an adaption of his theater piece ›Roden‹ and undertakes a topography of this loss.

Photo: Nemo Witte

The video performance ›POOLS‹ portrays three mining areas used for tourism. The open pit mine in Hambach , the Dead Sea and the Lusatian lignite mining area are the protagonists of this work. Marlene Helling tells of her encounters with these places through travel reports and a movement repertoire inspired by them.

Foto: Tonio Flores

Following a walk through the slag heap, this workshop/lecture examines the ongoing extractive logics in present day Philippines. Where feudal configurations from the Spanish and American colonial period still survive today, through landlordism, haciendas, and monoculture plantations. This speculation on ‘othered’ ecologies is told through a few common food items found in local markets, that were the main trade items during the height of imperial extraction from the Philippines.

Photo: Mascha Fehse

For ›Shifting Grounds‹, artist Mascha Fehse, a frequent guest at PACT, is designing ›Recreational Successions‹ – a wandering spatial installation made of modular elements that will serve as a temporary meeting point and provide a source of shade and shelter for the audience.

Photo: Dirk Rose

Today, the Ruhr region no longer stands for traditional heavy industry, but for change. Smoking collieries, coking plants and blast furnaces have largely disappeared, and thousands of hectares of industrial wasteland have been created in their wake. Humans have changed these landscapes in a profound, lasting manner. The terrain is often devoid of any natural soil, and characterised instead by waste rock, rubble or railway ballast.

Foto: Maria Cecília Rocha

On the final afternoon of the festival ›Shifting Grounds‹, we speak back to the heap – a toxic legacy of past mining activities and an ecological niche – in the frame of the experimental conversation format ›Chewing on the crumbs of extraction - A metabolic journey‹.

Through subsequent conversations and artistic interventions – sound recordings from the heap, biographical storytelling and chewing together – the foyer of PACT Zollverein becomes a space of possibility.