Art at Dortmund Central Station: Self-optimization at the optician

Shortly before 12 noon on a Wednesday: normal operations are taking place at Dortmund Central Station. A typical contemporary transit room, everyone is in a hurry, you just want to get out of the track tunnel and quickly through the vestibule. On this morning, no one pays attention to the large, glowing blue display board at the end of the tunnel in the hall above the heads of those rushing. “Departures (hottest to coldest)” is the name of the installation by the Berlin-based artist Aleksandra Domanović, which plays with the look of real train station display boards, but does not list departure times, but the weather data from 200 major cities worldwide in real time, and shows the currently hottest city at the top left and the coldest city at the bottom right.

It is not the only work on the “Uncanny Shifts” art trail that addresses climate change. The art course, spread over nine stations in downtown Dortmund, is intended to encourage the audience to “discover a variety of places,” as Britta Peters puts it. As head of Urban Arts Ruhr, the continuation of the cultural capital Ruhr.2010's action art program, she helped design the course.

Art in public spaces often has a difficult time being noticed. Especially when it cannot be easily recognized as art. Or is simply overlooked. Like Neda Saeedi's “Monument of Oblivon II”: The flyer gives an address opposite the station forecourt, but there you stand in front of a locked door. Until you realize that the strangely tangled, pale blue construction rubble tubes on the not exactly well-kept lawn in front of them are the work of art you are looking for. The plastic tubes are installed in the shape of a Möbius strip and are played with sounds by sound engineer Nicholas Bussmann, which are, however, lost in the traffic noise.

“Uncanny Shifts.” Art course at Dortmund main station, as part of the Ruhrtriennale, until October 4th

The sculpture “PO-2022”, a joint work by the Ukrainian Hans Ostapenko and the art and architecture collective MNPL, is similarly inconspicuous: a narrow piece of concrete wall that, in its characteristic shape, is still present in the “post-Soviet space” today, as the brochure explains. Unfortunately, there are no photos of the art in the flyer, and the location is rather vaguely stated so that you just walk past the deliberately unspectacular art. This makes you realize how important good mediation is.

It's easier with the Church of Saint Petri, where five works are presented. These include “Simply Cool, 2026” by the interdisciplinary engineering and artist office Transsolar: Air conditioning units stacked high form a wall that is seen as a warning vision of Central European inner cities in the face of climate change. A sound work by the Georgian artist Anushka Chkheidze works with sound carpets for “Polyphony Meters/Matters”. In these, the church's autonomously playing organ mixes with recordings of a Duisburg choir.

The most interesting thing is what is shown in an optician's shop. The rancid charm of the interior, which was probably designed in the 1970s, provides a nostalgic setting for the multimedia work “The Factory” by artists Ellinor Aurora Aasgaard and Zayne Armstrong. They have created a fictitious gym using bizarre paintings, videos and bizarre sculptures. Bodies inspired by Henry Moore's abstract, round figures are filled with air and collapse again. Self-optimization is the theme of these spectacular works.

But here too, the supervisory staff tend to sit alone in the exhibition. But on the way back to the main train station, a different picture: Now a handful of people are standing under the air conditioning installation and are watching the competition for the hottest city in the world with interest.