A student project group led by Professor Dr. Andrea Lutz-Kluge from the Department of Social and Health Care at the Ludwigshafen University of Business and Society took part in the musical project "Complaint Choirs" at the Kunstverein Ludwigshafen. The "Choir of Ludwigshafen Students" provided the musical prelude to this series on April 11, 2019 at Maxstraße 29.
From April to June 2019, the Kunstverein Ludwigshafen is organizing a special kind of musical project in cooperation with the Ludwigshafen University of Business and Society: as part of the art performances by the German-Finnish artist couple Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen and supported by the musicians Coco SaFir, Roland and Bernhard Vanecek, four complaint choirs in Ludwigshafen will express their complaints on various topics by singing loudly. This series of flash mob events kicked off with the Ludwigshafen Students' Complaints Choir: on the evening of April 11, 2019, students from all Departments took to the outside steps of the university building at Maxstraße 29 to sing under the motto "Studis lieben ihr LU! Does LU love its students?" to make student concerns in Ludwigshafen heard in a rhythmic manner: In addition to demands that were clearly aimed at the situation at the university - functioning photocopiers, clean toilets, a student kitchen or a larger canteen - the students loudly sang their longing for more green spaces, better cycle paths, more parking space, pubs and cafés into the urban space.
In her welcoming address, Professor Dr. Ellen Bareis, Vice President for Studies and Education, Quality Management and Art and Culture, took up some of the motifs of the Complaints Choir and thanked Barbara Auer, Director of the Kunstverein Ludwigshafen, for "this impulse and this project, which brings together the departments of Studies & Education and Art & Culture in the best possible way" and further promotes the exchange between the university, the city and cultural institutions that has been underway for several years.
Chanting the verses and the catchy refrain "Ludwigshafen/We are not heard/We lack a beautiful campus/What bothers us mightily...", the musical-artistic society then processed to the Kunstverein at Bismarckstraße 44-48, where director Barbara Auer opened the actual vernissage.
After the musical kick-off on April 11, the complaint choirs will continue with a series of thematically focused choirs, each with several flash mob-like performances at selected locations in Ludwigshafen throughout the summer semester. Following the "Choir of Ludwigshafen Students", a "Choir of Work" (workshops on May 4 and 5 from 12:00-18:00, BASF-Gesangverein, Froschlache 11), a "choir of people looking for accommodation" (workshops on May 8 and 22 from 18:00-21:00 at Maxstraße 48, room A01) and a "Choir for Biodiversity" (workshops on 14.06. from 16.00-20.00 and on 15.06. from 10.00-18.00, at the Kunstverein Ludwigshafen).
The members of the Ludwigshafen University of Business and Society are not only active as choir members. In fact, students on the "Aesthetic Practice" course in the Bachelor's degree program in Social Work, led by Professor Dr. Andrea Lutz-Kluge, are accompanying the entire project, collecting "complaints", promoting the actions and being involved as mediators in all the "complaint choirs". "In this way, they get to know the artistic concept so that they can use it later for practical fields of social work," explains Lutz-Kluge. Two students from the course are already in the process of setting up their own "Complaints Choir" at the SOS Children's Village Palatinate in Eisenberg.
Background: What are complaint choirs?
The Finnish expression "valituskuoro" describes situations in which a group of people complain about a situation at the same time, almost impulsively. Literally translated into German, it could be called a "complaint choir". The German-Finnish artist couple Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen developed their concept from this phrase in 2005 and initiated the first complaints choir in Birmingham. The basic idea was to collect the complaints of the citizens of Birmingham, transform them into song lyrics and set them to music. Further information on the complaints choirs can be found at: www.complaintschoirs.de
The Complaints Choirs project in Ludwigshafen is funded by BASF SE's TOR4 cultural promotion program. With the impulse question "Why is everything actually getting better?", BASF SE is opening up a socio-critical discourse and supporting a total of 16 projects in the fields of music, dance, literature and visual arts in the metropolitan area Rhine-Neckar. Further information can be found at www.basf.de/tor4
Specialist contact:
Ludwigshafen University of Business and Society
Department of Social and Health Care
Prof. Dr. Andrea Lutz-Kluge
Tel. 0621/5203-543
E-mail: andrea.lutz-kluge@ 8< SPAM protection, please remove >8 hwg-lu.de
