Die Gesellschaft der Stadtwanderer

Strasbourg artist Mathieu Tremblin is the driving force behind the Gesellschaft der Stadtwanderer (Company of Urban Wanderers), a collective specially established for the Urban Art Biennale 2024. He spent a number of weeks collecting anecdotes from Völklingen residents, which he then fleshed out into a fairytale/legend-like narrative of Völklingen history. To enable the people of Völklingen to contribute, posters throughout the city published Tremblin’s contact details in advance. Poetic distillations of these anecdotes can now be found posted on walls across the World Heritage Site and in the city of Völklingen. As Tremblin explains, the project met with an enthusiastic response: “Right away, people were interested in talking to us. They wanted to find out what we were doing. For me, that’s the sign of a healthy city. If the place genuinely belongs to the people, they appreciate it when someone brings them something, as with our interventions.” Without doubt, the core of this work is its local content, which has made memories, moments, feelings and moods merge into an urban myth with a character all of its own.

Daniel Bauer