Christian Hampe - Wuppertal

Seeing and Experiencing

Utopiatown – that sound’s great! At any rate, it does not sound like Wuppertal and even less like Mirke, the district in which train station the roots of Utopiatown lie. Christian Hampe is one of the initiators of the project and he worked, together with many volunteers, on whipping the quarter around the old train station into shape for years. Just like that the former individual actions like art experiments or science conferences turned into projects and the entir-ety of these projects became a sort of beacon for the quarter. One of these projects is the Reperaturcafé, which opens on every first Sunday of the month, so everything that once was whole, can be repaired. The slogan here is “repairing instead of disposing” A slogan that could well be Christian Hampe’s motto for himself. Repairing, restruc-turing, revaluating, reinventing the city quarter instead of disposing of it and leaving it for decay. A fine attitude – all the more when looking at today’s throwaway society. Fine, but also a little utopian.
Autor: Jan Kempinski