Resonanzkraftwerk

an opening ritual for the Zschornewitz Power Station

The Zschornewirtz coal-fired power station no longer produces any megawatts. Yet, it still stands. What does it produce now?

Someone who knows a thing or two about rituals told me that rites of passage can only be a revelation of a process that has already taken place: a ritual doesn’t initiate any change, it can only bring something into the collective consciousness that has already been present and underway for some time.

Today, I would like to invite you to perform a ritual to celebrate the transformation of this power station. This will be an opening ritual for the new Zschornewitz power station, which for a long time already hasn’t produced any megawatts. But what does it produce, now?

I have myself absolutely no connection to this place. I’m from Belgium, and this is only the second time I’ve been in this hall. But in Belgium too, just like everywhere else in the world, we need energy to live, and to live well. Much more than megawatts, I believe that what we, human beings, need to lead a good life is: joy-energy, togetherness-energy, conflict-and-reconciliation-energy, energy of the senses, sisterhood-an-brotherhood energy, pleasure-energy, love-energy, spiritual energy, laugh-and-tears-energy, solidarity-energy, not-particularily-liking-eachother-but-still-sticking-together-energy, …

This is about the conversion of megawatts into relational qualities: an industry that can create almost everything from almost nothing, an industry that requires no huge investments. For it is an industry that no longer aims to change the world, but our relationship with the world.

Someone told me that this power station used to manufacture xylophones back in the day. So sound has long been part of what is produced here. I’ve also heard that they made swing seats. So next to kilowatts, cosiness is also something that they’ve been producing here. Perhaps what’s being produced here now is resonance and togetherness: interpersonal energy. But how does that work? Somehow, we’ve forgotten. Perhaps then this power station has become a place to learn again about it.

If you join in, we’ll shortly perform a ritual together to celebrate the completion of the transformation of the Zschornewitz power station, and to mark the inauguration of a new production process: The production of interpersonal energy. An energy that, whilst immaterial, is nonetheless very real and vital.

So what does it look like concretely? It’s very simple: we’re going to use this space — this machine hall — as a gigantic xylophone. As a giant musical instrument — a cast-iron-o-phone, a tile-o-phone, steel-o-phone, or glass-o-phone, whichever you prefer. We’re going to use these little percussion mallets to bring every surface, every material, every object and every part of this space into resonance. Together, we’ll beat a common pulse with which to explore this machine hall by means of the sounds that it can make.

The person who knows a thing or two about rituals told me such a ritual needs to last a certain amount of time for it to work. She said it must last at least 20 minutes. We’ll have to go through different phases during this time: excitement, tension, boredom, pain, re-discovery, enthusiasm, etc. The aim is to enter a kind of trance in, and together with the space. Are you ready?

concept & development: Christophe Meierhans, Unlistenable Music collecitve
facilitation: Christophe Meierhans
production: OSTEN festival, 2026
support: ICTUS, Brussels