Odonien: a “free state” for art and culture in Cologne

Cologne’s Odonien is an integral part of the city’s club and culture landscape as well as a backdrop to unconventional events like the “Robodonien” robot art festival. The creative mind behind the concept is artist Odo Rumpf. In the heart of this industrial setting, Odo has built an outdoor studio where he and other artists produce large-format works and where a wide variety of (sub)cultures can develop. We met up with him for a chat.

Odonien sets out to be a “free state for art and culture”. What does that mean to you?

Odo Rumpf: The term “free state” contains the idea of freedom and that’s a good description really. This place gives me and other artists the opportunity to develop freely. We get to try out crazy, absurd things, things outside the norm.

You’ve been working as an artist for over 30 years though you actually studied mechanical engineering. What brought you to art?

I come from an engineering family and there were lots of things I could see myself doing after school – including something creative like design. I applied for a wide range of university courses and got a place on a mechanical engineering course at RWTH Aachen University straight away. Even as a child and teenager, I was always tinkering around with something metal – bikes, mopeds, motorcycles. So I had an affinity with the material. On top of that, mechanical engineering is extremely creative. Artists develop things – just like mechanical engineers do. There are really many parallels.

I always had a creative streak. One of the reasons I started shifting towards art was that 80% of my friends were designers and artists. Thomas Virnich, for example. I worked on art projects for him in the holidays. Looking back, everything I was doing then was art.

What did you do after university?

It wasn’t the work of an engineer that didn’t interest me, it was the mood of the business and the absurd goals. Mechanical engineering was aimed at global markets and high sales figures. I didn’t like that one bit. I’d just moved into a new flat in Leverkusen, near Cologne, and set up a small workshop there. Using a welder I borrowed and a flex, I started making eccentric furniture from bent, broken and rusty metal parts. It was the complete opposite of mechanical engineering, really, but the precision I’d learned meant that the pieces I produced were very sophisticated, almost leather-like, and the shapes were out of this world. My focus was on the naturalness, aura and atmosphere of the furniture but it was fully functional too. It was the early 1990s and what I was doing created quite a stir. It made me one of only a handful of exotic designers like X99 from Cologne and Christoph Ernst in Berlin.

The next step was your studio in Cologne, where you mainly created large objects.

I was incredibly lucky to be able to set up a studio in the old railway repair shop in the neighbourhood of Nippes. I didn’t have to pay rent or any other costs. It was heaven working with my preferred material in a space measuring thousands of square metres. I produced big solar kinetic works such as Solarvogel (Solar Bird), which won me a European art prize. In the mid-90s, these were totally new art forms that made solar power visible for the first time. My technical expertise meant people couldn’t actually see how the objects worked so it looked like it was all done by magic.

It was always important to me to build heavy objects in a way that made them appear very light. Having studied mechanical engineering, I was able to create large sculptures – including works for public spaces. I carried on for 15 years and at some point there was no turning back. In the end, deciding to call myself an artist was a mere technicality.

In 2005, you moved out of the repair shop to a site that became Odonien.

The railway company asked me whether I was interested in the site. It had been the base for construction work on the large railway bridges, which was a stroke of luck because it turned out to be a real treasure trove. There were walls, bits of buildings that had never been demolished and masses of junk. It was just my thing and ideal for me. I was able to develop it the way I wanted. I took a lot of things with me from what I’d collected at my old studio – we transferred 50 lorryloads easy on one weekend. Other people collect stamps – I collect a few larger things. Over time, I’ve built loads of new things to add to the collection. Essentially, this is all one massive installation.

Other people collect stamps – I collect a few larger things.

Odo Rumpf

As well as being open to other artists to use as a studio too, Odonien is also a club and regularly stages cultural events. How did that combination come about?

Even when I was back in the repair shop, I always liked the idea of opening the space up to other creative minds. The big buildings were crying out to be used as a testing ground for all types of art and as a place to present them to an audience. That’s why the plan from the start was to open a small beer garden at Odonien and incorporate things like theatre and performance arts. Today, one component of Odonien is the club. It involves an incredible amount of licensing effort but ultimately it also finances other things like new performance or music events that don’t make a profit. Sadly, there are umpteen requirements for events nowadays – we need security staff and good technicians and pay an arm and a leg for music rights. Those costs have to be covered, obviously, so we often have to draw on funding schemes and/or cross-subsidise.

How do you manage to balance being an event venue with being an art space?

The staff who bring their professionalism and expertise to the table are part of why it took off the way it did. I don’t interfere in the running of the club. Obviously, I get more involved in formats like the robot festival because my artist friends are part of it. So everyone has their own areas they’re responsible for, which is a good thing. I like to let things develop and be open – and you can do that across the board here. I have my own workshop with a yard where I can be creative all year round. I schedule things so that I work on large installations when the beer garden closes over the winter and there aren’t any cultural events. And I do need that time.

What’s your vision for Odonien?

There are still numerous projects that need to be completed. Signs for the sculpture park, for instance, with QR codes and videos. Then there’s the restoration work that needs to be done on the old sculptures. But we can’t make big changes and we don’t want to either. Instead, one of our visions is to take smaller projects by artists who visit Odonien and are forever producing fantastic new works for the site and give them a new home – to open a kinetics museum somewhere in Cologne. I’d love that.

Odonien entrance: Hornstraße 85. There’s a map of how to find it here. Beer garden opening hours (May to September): Friday and Saturday, from 5pm; Sunday and public holidays, from 3pm. Upcoming events are listed here.