One large-scale mural is painted each year in Halle-Neustadt. This creates contemporary monuments of modern mural painting that serve as instruments of creative urban planning and contribute to the long-term positive development of Halle-Neustadt. In cooperation with a specially founded advisory board and artists, long-lasting and both locally and internationally relevant works of art are created. Five central guidelines and the participation format Wall & Space bring attention to the wall and the area in front of it as a place of participation, interaction, and sustainable transformation. ha:neo explicitly ties in with Halle-Neustadt’s original plans, which envisioned an area-wide artistic design of public space as early as GDR times and implemented this vision with numerous murals, structural elements, and sculptures.
ha:neo is a cooparation-project with Freiraumgalerie – Kollektiv für Raumentwicklung.
The ha:neo overall concept drafts various design scenarios for Halle-Neustadt and defines five central guidelines under which the large-scale murals will be created. These are as follows and deal with the following topics:
CITY
SPACE
- overall picture, architecture and layout of Halle-Neustadt
- history, society and current situation of Halle-Neustadt
- Halle-Neustadt’s tradition of art in public space
- relationship of Halle-Neustadt to surrounding districts, especially towards Halle city centre
SPACE
- contents and functions of public space around a planned work of art
- surrounding buildings and future construction projects
- visual axes, lighting moods and soundscapes
- traffic situations: uses, frequencies and speeds
- detailed spatial analysis from different angles and heights
WALL
- structural-physical condition and mineral composition of the façade and surface
- building specifications
- material planning
HUMAN
- population composition in the vicinity of a planned artwork and Halle-Neustadt as a whole
- citizen* participation
- identification with artwork, neighbourhood, Halle-Neustadt and ha:neo themes
- contact and exchange between the population and participating artists
TIME
- preparatory meeting and artist-in-residence programme with participating artists
- longevity of the works of art and their anchoring in urban events
- district tours, workshops and cooperation with schools and other educational institutions
- documentation, further development and archiving
WALL & SPACE
- participation formats and data collection in front of the potential areas to be designed and in the immediate surroundings
- temporary area design as communicative and attention-grabbing intervention
- workshops, accompanying cultural programme and inauguration during and after the design process
Together with the team of Freiraumgalerie one of the 2021-to-be-painted walls at the entrance to the Neustädter Passage is used as a temporary advertising space and creates a colorful mural. Such a publicity-effective design in a highly frequented urban space generates a lot of attention and provokes immediate feedback from bypassers and visitors. Parallel to the design process, surveys and short video interviews were conducted with lively participation, since the art action on site functions as an excellent communication impulse.
In November 2020, the wall was painted a second time and is now promoting the overall design on pane D.
In order to provide the project optimal support in the conception, implementation and further development of ha:neo, an advisory board was established in 2018. It consists of representatives of the municipal planning and cultural offices, the Neustadt neighbourhood management, housing cooperatives, art, architecture and social sciences. In this way, the project benefits from the individual expertise of the experts and different perspectives on Halle-Neustadt.
The internationally renowned artists’ collective Boa Mistura has been won over for the 2021 planned design of the Neustadt market area. The Spanish group of mural painters, designers and architects works with large and colourful shapes of colour as well as typography and terms that always show a relationship to the surrounding space and its architecture. The participation of local residents and their identification with the respective design location also plays a decisive role in their works of art. This is one of the reasons why Boa Mistura are predestined to participate in the ha:neo project.
