Manifesta 16 takes place in four cities across the Ruhr Area – Duisburg, Essen, Gelsenkirchen and Bochum. Former and under-used church buildings will be transformed into cultural and community hub, where Manifesta 16 will present events, workshops, exhibitions and site-specific artistic commissions and installations.

After decades of secularisation, churches in the Ruhr Area are now closing on a weekly basis, often then purchased by profit-hungry developers or left slowly to decay. These landmarks, once central to neighbourhood life for many, have become symbols of our diminished public realm: of social atomisation and the loss of collective experience. Manifesta 16 Ruhr takes place in and around a selection of the churches and responds to their situation. It asks: what can we do with these buildings? What is their meaning? How might they be preserved as social spaces? Can they contribute to the formation of a more just society?

The artistic programme has been developed by an inter-disciplinary artistic team, composed of eight Creative Mediators: Josep Bohigas, Gürsoy Doğtaş and three intergenerational tandems — Michael Kurtz & Henry Meyric Hughes, René Block & Leonie Herweg, and Krzystof Kosciuczuk & Anda Rottenberg.

manifesta16.org/biennial-main-programme