Colliery Art: A Nightshift with the Buddha
From the mixing equipment to the hopper level, on the special terrain of the former colliery Zeche Zollverein the audience of Jetlag No. 3 walked through the theme of time. Visitors and experts approached the abstract concept in lectures, dialogues and performances.
9 July 2009
The coal ran out and the last shift was run at Zeche Zollverein in Essen in 1986. Today, Europe’s erstwhile largest and most modern mine is one of the most imposing architectural and industrial monuments of the coal industry; it is even a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The site, a silent witness to a past era, is the ideal setting in which to examine time. Today, nature has begun to reclaim parts of the plant making the passing of time very apparent here.
Photo gallery: Philosophy on unusual terrain
This weekend, the PACT Zollverein, Siemens Arts Program and Goethe-Institut held a “philosophical walking tour through the night” on this terrain. Over a course across the property of the colliery, visitors joined experts from philosophy, art and science in an examination of their own relationship with and understanding of time – in the mixing plant of the coking plant and on the platforms of the former pithead baths. How long do ten minutes feel if we do not have any measuring instrument to provide us with clues?
In an experiment by the Russian scientist and artist Sergei Romashko, volunteers with bound eyes gauged time with nothing more than their inner clockworks. Before a noisy backdrop of countless frogs holding a concert in the summer moonlight, philosopher and Asia expert Rolf Elberfeld explained Buddhist perspectives of the time philosophy.
During the intermissions of the seven-hour programme, the visitors were permitted to snuggle under blankets to listen to ideas of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levina being read aloud. At the speed dating session, participants were asked to discuss the ideas of church father and philosopher Augustine about love in one-minute intervals.
Shortly before midnight, the German-American literary scholar Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht dedicated his lecture to the subject of sport and explained how aspects of time make a football match more exciting to spectators or fans, for example, or what “better football” has to do with speed.
