A vision of the future of work and life, in which the Ruhr area becomes a single city: Ruhrtown.
August 2015: the leader of North RhineWestphalia, Hannelore Kraft, announces her resignation. György Albertz, a writer who has returned from exile, takes over the leadership in collaboration with a likeminded ally. 53 towns are joined together to become a single city, resurrected in ruins: Ruhrtown. A centre of attraction for all outcasts and those who have been systematically deprived of their rights. Together, they attempt to breathe new life into the postindustrial spaces. In a place that was once a centre of coal mining and steel production, designers and authors now get down to some hard work. Their concern is art. Here, they encounter people for whom art is primarily a business. Together they work towards generating the first hard currency, with the aim of making the Ruhrtown dream come true.
In September 2044, two people are searching for each other in Ruhrtown: Julieta and Rick. They have been separated from one another, and now stagger through a living freak show: from Camp Lintfort to Trans Town and through Jungleburg, following the trail of the golden treasure of Unna! Until the illusion of utopia shatters before their eyes and the wave throws them back: it’s capitalism, stupid!
Jörg Albrecht’s text roars through a landscape that we still call the »Ruhrgebiet« today.
Jörg Albrecht, born in Bonn in 1981, lives in Berlin. Studied comparative literature, history, literary and theatre studies in Vienna and Bochum. In addition to his novels he has published a number of radio and theatre plays in the last few years, the most recent of which is »Die blauen Augen von Terence Hill« (Terence Hill’s Blue Eyes), first performed at the Steirischer Herbst Festival in Graz in 2011 and then in Berlin and Jena.
