das Gras auf der anderen Seite

Cologne, Germany 2025
2K video, colour, sound, 7:14min

performance: Leo Gnatzy, Haitang Zhang, Beljana Metje
sound: Matthew Kerr

In 2021, the city administration of Cologne installed three huge floodlights in the popular Hiroshima-Nagasaki-park, due to incidents of violence against police officers who tried to stop illegal parties during covid restrictions. With these restrictions long gone, the floodlights stay in use preventively. For over a year, every Friday and Saturday night at least one of the lights was switched on, creating a surreal environment within the park.

By inviting three performance artists into this space, I re-framed the park as a public stage. Guided by exchange and shared thoughts on commons, defensive architecture and nature-culture-relations, Leo Gnatzy, Haitang Zhang and Beljana Metje developed an improvised set of performances on the grass. The short film das Gras auf der anderen Seite (engl: the grass on the other side) combines footage recorded during these performances with observational footage recorded previously, creating a mystified visual narrative of a contested urban commons.