C the bubble, C the gap, C the treasure

May I introduce Chemnitz? It is: Trettmann, Kraftklub, Mai Duong Kieu, “Kati” Witt, the Nischel, Böhmermann on an e-scooter, the NSU, pocket alarms and “Hase, du bleibst hier.”  Chemnitz: Strangely repulsive and attractive at the same time. Full of vacant and cheap old apartments that would probably be fought over in the bigger better-known German cities. A city that is so beautiful in some places that you might wonder why Chemnitz hasn't already been gentrified by all kinds of well-heeled West Germans. A city that some people might walk through shaking their heads in amazement and thinking to themselves: “There's a treasure buried here somewhere. It just needs to be found.”

But while cities like Nuremberg are considering constructing a maglev railway line, people in Chemnitz can only dream of a high-speed ICE connection. Instead, they have to make do with regional trains. Some of them are so old that Daniel Brühl, who played Alexander Kerner in the film “Good Bye, Lenin!”, could probably still fool his mother Christiane Kerner into believing that the fall of the Berlin Wall had never happened. And if you do catch a newer regional train, for example the RE6, which departs for Leipzig once an hour, the front carriage has been blocked off since the end of March. The reason: the smell. As there’s no electrified railway line, harmful diesel exhaust fumes in the carriage have led to the closure of the carriage on the already disruption-prone line. Chemnitz, a city where the question must be asked: Is there any connection between the shitty infrastructure and the shitty election results?

The fact that Chemnitz (including several towns and municipalities from Central Saxony, the Zwickau region and the Ore Mountains) was named European Capital of Culture 2025 back in 2020 was and is associated with a great deal of hope for many in the city. The people here still remember the livestream from Chemnitz, which showed the moving celebrations of the people here when the jury announced their choice of the Capital of Culture. For others, however, the decision and much of what followed has left an unpleasant aftertaste, at the very least. While Chemnitz Theater has had to move to an interim venue in the Chemnitz Spinnbau since the spring of 2022 and the urgently needed renovation work on the listed theater has now been halted indefinitely for cost reasons, tens of millions of euros are being pumped into the Capital of Culture. That has given rise to some anger in the city. Of course, the fact that the theater is now also lacking funds due to general cuts to cultural institutions doesn’t make things any better. A Chemnitz Action Alliance has also sought to draw attention to this. Around 150 activists and artists, including (former) employees of the theater, occupied the Chemnitz Schauspielhaus in Zieschestraße, which has been closed since 2021, in a peaceful protest at the beginning of May. The words “C the closed” could be read on one of the alliance's banners during the occupation. An allusion to the Capital of Culture, which has adopted the motto “C the unseen.”

But the financial cuts aren’t the only issue. As a result of the Capital of Culture, the city of Chemnitz also increased admission prices for museums and the zoo. And the zoo issue in particular could be grist to the mill for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), that attracted over 30 percent in the last general election here. If you put aside fundamental criticism of zoos and animal welfare, it’s often animals, especially cuddly and cute ones, that many people can agree on despite any otherwise massive differences. The joy in looking at and petting these little furballs – the lowest common denominator.

So how can we prevent Saxony's third-largest city, during its Capital of Culture year, from becoming a football stadium for away games played by culture-loving big city types? How can we ensure that the Capital of Culture year has a lasting impact and also benefits people for whom arts and culture are not so important at first glance? And what can the Capital of Culture do about the growing far-right scene? Hope, anger, cries for help.

It is into this pressure cooker of a city that the Fonds Darstellende Künste sent out invitations to attend the Metropol cinema on a late Thursday afternoon in May. The film “The Art of Staying Many” was celebrating its Saxony premiere in the building, which was built in 1913 based on the designs of the architect Wenzel Bürger.

In the film, director Felix Meyer-Christian documents the various forums for art, freedom and democracy, which toured the country in the summer of 2024 under the title “The Art of Staying Many” and was initiated by the Fonds Darstellende Künste. Instead of the usual big cities such as Hamburg, Munich and Frankfurt am Main, the focus was on otherwise less well-known cities such as Leipzig, Düsseldorf, Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Potsdam, Erfurt, Weimar and Dresden. But don't worry, Berlin was included too. The city is obligatory. Always.

But while the forums documented in the film were aimed at promoting social cohesion and discussing issues with the audience, according to the director, the 90-minute film, which was commissioned by the Fonds Darstellende Künste, is primarily about empowering people from the arts and cultural sector. It’s unlikely that this fact is immediately apparent from the film’s trailer in which it claims to brings together the many voices in the arts and summarizes exclusion and polarization in a discursive and poetic approach.

“The Art of Staying Many” begins in the country where the original initiator of the Capital of Culture, Melina Mercouri, was born: Greece. White roofs, motorbike rides on winding country roads, souvlaki, taramasalata on white bread, sun, the Mediterranean, Nana Mouskouri, ouzo. Yamas!

Well, not quite. “The Art of Staying Many” doesn't start in the clichéd summer holiday Greece of today, but in ancient Greece – the cradle of Western democracy. This is where several hundred years before Christ, the agora (from the ancient Greek ἀγορά, “marketplace”), an urban meeting place for citizens, was created. An ancient form of the Speakers' Corner, one could say. A place of exchange and discussion. A place for listening and agreeing and disagreeing. A place of diverse perspectives and a place of community. And the film asks: Has Germany lost the agora, the place of encounter? Is Germany's agora broken?

The film initially looks for answers in West Berlin. A city like an excited schoolchild who constantly thinks it has all the answers. The two presenters of the film, Tina Pfurr and Hauke Heumann, stand on the Teufelsberg and view the Berlin skyline at sunrise. You can see the radio tower, large and clearly visible. Behind it, small and somewhat obscured, is its East Berlin counterpart: the television tower. This image of the large, over-present West in front of the small, foggy East in the background – an analogy for Germany?

On their tour through Germany, the film team and the two presenters spoke to a wide variety of artists and politicians from the democratic parties. This resulted in over 100 hours of video material. The film team curated the 90-minute film from this jumble of 16 terabytes and 60 interviews.

“The Art of Staying Many” doesn’t attempt to tell a cohesive narrative. Instead, the aim was to capture a moment and show perspectives. In the film, director Felix Meyer-Christian addresses the question of whether (experimental) art can still take place and continue to exist in the current political situation. What can art achieve in politically charged times like these and how do people from the arts and culture sector manage to avoid splintering into the individual parts of their own disagreements? How can people from the arts and culture sector fight right-wing extreme(ist) forces as their greatest common enemy instead of getting lost in arguments about coronavirus measures, arms deliveries, Gaza or anti-Semitism? “The Art of Staying Many” has not set itself the task of becoming more. The film is primarily aimed at people from the arts and culture bubble (without any derogatory undertone). Artists and politicians are given space to explain the reality of their work and the motivation behind their artistic and political endeavors with the aim of finding a more productive internal culture of debate. While this is certainly very beneficial for many artists, it also fails to meet the expectations of the audience in Chemnitz – at least of many of those who spoke up in the follow-up discussion. This reveals an urgent desire to finally find ways of escaping their own or society's general paralysis. How to talk to the far right? What to do? Is what we’re doing even right if things are not getting better but worse and worse? Absolutely relevant thoughts that make the audience's expectations understandable: A film about the agora should itself be an agora for all citizens. But the film cannot and will not fulfil these high expectations.

Topics that have the potential to divide a typical artist bubble (here too without a derogatory undertone) are only touched on. Although there is one person who talks about how their own stance on the Gaza conflict became a potential barrier to a professional collaboration, on the whole, the film does not give the impression that the independent performing arts scene in Germany is worryingly divided or threatening to split. The tenor of the interviewees is marked by harmony and unity, especially in terms of tolerating other opinions and not avoiding people with different opinions. But can this be taken as a criticism of the film? It probably wouldn’t be very effective to depict a fragmented and warring art scene.

Nevertheless, a clear antagonist can be identified in the film: The threat from the far right. This includes the political forces that ensure that Carsten Brosda – Hamburg's Senator for Culture and Media – is receiving a growing number of applications demanding that money be channeled into maintaining green spaces rather than the funding of arts and culture. And Aljoscha Begrich, curator of the Osten Festival in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, has also made the acquaintance of dodgy characters patrolling the festival grounds in a threatening manner.

At the same time, “The Art of Staying Many” shows that the far-right threat is not only a reality in the arts and culture scene. Awet Tesfaiesus, a member of the Bundestag for the Greens, says that she knows people who have already made preparations in case the far-right AfD comes to power. Following the motto: passport, suitcase, car keys, let’s get out of here. And every time the film breaks away from its specific target group of the arts and culture industry and takes on a more universal dynamic, it’s particularly regrettable that there are almost no conversations or interactions with the people labelled as “normal people” in many working-class families. In one short sequence, at least one visitor to an art event in a public space has her say. Someone in the audience asks a performer:
-What did you stop doing?
-Tap dancing.
-Why?
-Hips.
A dialogue, laconic and at the same time touching, one could propose marriage to him and the woman with the hip problem in an exuberant and unironic way. According to Felix Meyer-Christian, a sequel to the film would be needed for more such interactions or even interviews with people far removed from the arts and culture industry. How about a sequel entitled “The Art of Staying Many”?

However, it’s not just recorded interview snippets and insights into the forums and events that are a recurring element of the film. There are also regular interludes in which Tina Pfurr and Hauke Heumann walk through nature or stand in front of monuments and provide the appropriate historical details along with metaphorically flashing lights à la “We have an educational mission.”

In other sequences, the two presenters can repeatedly be seen standing in a sea of white sheets. Waves of fabric. At first, you might think they’re lying in bed and you’re sitting intimately with them under a blanket. But as time goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that Tina Pfurr and Hauke Heumann are trapped in a bubble. In their own bubble. In the end, this inflatable is deflated. It loses volume and collapses. This bubble then lies wonderfully flat on the floor. Like a chafing blister that has finally burst.

Tina Pfurr and Hauke Heumann also step out of this echo chamber into the world. Perhaps now is the time to take words like those of Deniz Utlu to heart and to admit what you are not, in order not to drown in your own world of opinion. Perhaps it’s now time to take Dr. Luce deLire's words to heart and get into the habit of seeing art as a hospitable institution and act accordingly. And perhaps it’s also important to remember the words of Şeyda Kurt and realize that much of what we do is not only in our own interests, but will sometimes only be of benefit to the generations to come.

So, get out of the ICE and into the regional train to look for this treasure buried somewhere in Chemnitz. And once you've found it, you should share it with as many people as possible. Perhaps this treasure is an agora for society as a whole.

C the Unseen - the slogan for the Capital of Culture Chemnitz became the invitation for two days to students on the Master's course in Cultural Journalism at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich to follow the program of “The Art of Staying Many. Forum for Art, Freedom and Democracy: Germany and Europe” and to explore Chemnitz. Their impressions, encounters and experiences to read, watch and marvel at.