800.000 Years of Photosynthesis – Organisms Democracy Gelsenkirchen

>>>MAPPING STATE Organisms / citizens

OPENING SESSION OF PARLIAMENT AND RELEASE OF THE INTERACTIVE AUDIO_MODULE:

08.05.2021 14:00 Gelsenkirchen, Consol Park

GUIDED TOURS OF CONSOL-PARK SUNDAY 04.10. 15:30, MONDAY 05.10.10:00 with Club Real and more than 300 species

PROJECT SYNOPSIS

2020 is a year of big changes. “How do we want to, how can we live together?” Suddenly there are completely new, unstable answers to these questions. And the questions: “Who are We? Who belongs to this We? How do we as humans think of the other living beings with whom we share the Earth? ”appear with renewed vigor and demand fresh answers.
2020 is also the year in which a mixed group of various species decides to face the overwhelming legacy of the former “Consolidation” coal mine in Gelsenkirchen.
The coal party was short and exhilarating. In 160 years 221,462,500 tons of coal were extracted from the depths on the grounds of the Consolidation mine alone and blown into the atmosphere as CO2.
What’s next?
A forest the size of the site now turned into the Consol-Park would have to photosynthesize for 800,000 years to reverse this. Although this is significantly shorter than an eternal task (mining in this area has left a few so called „eternal tasks“ to be performed, such as pumping water to keep toxins from entering the ground water), it is still very long on a human scale.
This challenge is faced by a mixed group of living things: plants, fungi, bacteria, invertebrates and vertebrates who live and work on the site of the former mine.
Together they are writing a new narrative, a narration of the many, which leads from the chaos and horror of the resource-extracting Anthropocene to other futures. Futures as diverse as the number of species shaping them together. To do this, they need a new form of politics, a politics in which all species have the same political rights:
An Organisms Democracy!

In the face of crises, democratic decisions are repeatedly felt to be too slow or replaced by authoritarian “emergency governance”. The climate crisis is not only incredibly urgent; in the case of the Consol-Park in Gelsenkirchen, overcoming it also requires 800,000 years of sustainability.
In this context we ask ourselves: What can democracy do? For example, can it stop a climate crisis? Or is the climate crisis itself a democratic crisis disguised as an ecosystem change, which shows us that we have never been as democratic as we would have liked to? Of 2-10 million species who inhabit the planet (approx. 71,000 in Germany, excluding microorganisms), only one species has so far had political rights. This needs to change.

info@clubreal.de, Tel: 0179 52 55 802

Consol-Park: Bismarckstraße 240, 45889 Gelsenkirchen

info@clubreal.de, Tel: 0179 52 55 802

AS PART OF RUHRDING: KLIMA

2020/2021 Urban Arts Ruhr

in cooperation with Consol Theater Gelsenkirchen