Jochen Gerz became known to audiences beyond the art world by way of his public pieces, created with the help of participants and, indeed, made possible by their contribution. Since 1986 he has realised numerous public authorship pieces, including several unusual (disappearing and invisible) memorials in urban contexts, also referred to as "counter-monuments" or anti-monuments. These memorial works reject their surrogate function. They hand the duty of memorialising back to the public, consuming themselves through their own temporality and then disappearing, only to reappear within the apparent paradox of an "invisible monument".
Monument against Fascism, Hamburg-Harburg (1986–93) Developed with
Esther Shalev-Gerz via an international competition organized by the city of
Hamburg-Harburg, the "Monument against Fascism" (a Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz collaboration) was a social experiment with an uncertain outcome. In a public square, the two artists erected column clad in lead beside which they provided a metal pencil and a panel with the following text translated in seven languages (English, French, German, Russian, Turk, Arabic and Hebrew): "We invite the citizens of Harburg, and visitors to the town, to add their names here to ours. In doing so we commit ourselves to remain vigilant. As more and more names cover this 12 metre-high lead column, it will gradually be lowered into the ground. One day it will have disappeared completely and the site of the Harburg monument against fascism will be empty. In the long run, it is only we ourselves who can stand up against injustice." According to Jochen Gerz, "Either the monument ‘works’, that is, it is made superfluous by the public's own initiative, or it remains as a monument to its own failure, (as)
the writing on the wall." Since 1993, when the last stage of the monument was sunk into the ground, only a one-square-metre lead plate, the cap of the column, has been visible, along with an information board. A photo sequence documents the process of its disappearance. The active participation and appropriation, which took a wide variety of forms, eventually led to the disappearance of the visible object over the years. It was covered with some 70,000 names, entries and graffiti (x loves y or "Foreigners Out!") and their strikeouts. Swastikas and even traces of gunshots were found in the lead coating. Jochen Gerz commented: "People, not monuments, are the places of memory." Elsewhere, he noted: "As a reflection of society, this monument is doubly challenging, in that it not only reminds society of things past, but also – and this is the most unsettling – of its own reaction to this past." File:Mahnmal gegen Faschismus, Krieg, Gewalt, für Frieden und Menschenrechte - Harburg 1986.jpg|Mahnmal gegen Faschismus, Krieg, Gewalt, für Frieden und Menschenrechte - Harburg 1986 File:Harburger Mahnmal gegen den Faschismus.JPG File:Jochen Gerz, Harburger Mahnmal gegen den Faschismus.JPG File:Gerz Harburg Tafel.JPG
2146 Stones – Monument against Racism, Saarbrücken (1993) Starting in April 1990, all 66 Jewish communities in both German States were invited to contribute to a monument by providing the names of the
Jewish cemeteries where burials had been performed until 1933. Together with a group of students from the Art Academy of Saarbrücken, Gerz removed during the night cobblestones from the promenade leading to the
Saarbrücken castle, seat of the regional parliament and former regional Nazi administration. They replaced the stones in the alley while engraving the names of the Jewish cemeteries into the removed stones before returning them to where they had been taken from. However, the stones were placed with the inscription facing down, so that the square remained unchanged and the monument invisible. The complete number of cemeteries contributed by the Jewish communities had grown two years later to 2146. Like the monument in Hamburg-Harburg, the Saarbrücken monument is not visible, but must be realised by each person's own imagination. Unlike the Harburg monument, however, this one was not created as a commissioned work but rather as an originally secret and illegal initiative that was only retroactively legalised by the regional parliament. The Saarbrücken Castle Square is now called the "Square of the Invisible Monument".
The Living Monument of Biron The Living Monument of Biron (1996) was based on a commission from the
French Ministry of Culture. The commission was unusual: a German artist was chosen to "replace" the memorial for those who had been killed in the First and Second World Wars in the
Dordogne village of
Biron, where the 1944 massacre by the SS was still far from forgotten. Jochen Gerz renewed the Obelisk and the plaques with the names of the fallen, and asked every villager the same question, which they were asked not to reveal. The 127 anonymous replies were enamelled onto brass plaques and affixed to the new obelisk. Two examples: "Life makes sense. To kill or give one's life is the same; it doesn't make sense today or yesterday. Life is everything: pleasure, joy, duty. We mustn't put it in danger. But I understand that people who knew the war don't see it the same way. However, I think that I wouldn't change my mind. It doesn't bother me at all to know that others here know what I think." "War is not beautiful. It destroys the poor people. Peace doesn't last long; wars have always existed, they can start again at any time: the front, death, the restrictions. I don't know what we can do for peace. You need the whole world to agree to it. When you are twenty you want to live, and when you go to the front, you go to the slaughter. The worst part is that it pays. Making money with the lives of others, it's really sad!" Even after the inauguration, the number of plaques on the "living monument" continue to grow. New and young villagers answer the "secret question" and carry on the village's dialogue with its present and its past.
The Berkeley Oracle – Questions Unanswered (1997) "The Berkeley Oracle" is a tribute to the 1968 student movement that spread from the
University of Berkeley campus to many European cities. Many of the values held during that time have long since become today's status quo. The spirit of awakening, however, has dissipated. In 1997 the following invitation was published online on a website shared by the
Berkeley Art Museum and the
ZKM Center for Art and Media in
Karlsruhe: "In a homage to times of questioning and change, you are invited to contribute to The Berkeley Oracle your urgent, unforgotten, new or never-asked questions." As early as the beginning of the 1970s, Jochen Gerz had begun to grapple with the cultural technique of the computer ("These Words are My Flesh & My Blood", 1971), and in the 1990s he increasingly made use of the possibilities offered by digital communication (e.g. "The Plural Sculpture", 1995; "The Anthology of Art", 2001). "The Berkeley Oracle" is an allusion to the
Oracle at Delphi. Is the World Wide Web the new oracle? "By neither promising nor delivering answers, The Berkeley Oracle steps out of politics and into philosophy, into art. Gerz invites the participants into a space of questioning and simply leaves them there. It is a space that Pyrrho of Ellis called ‘epoché’, a state of mental suspension in which final knowledge of things is understood to be impossible."
The Words of Paris (Les Mots de Paris, 2000) "Les Mots de Paris", a piece dealing with the by turns romanticised and stigmatised existence of homeless people, was realised to mark the new millennium. While they were in France once the subject of films, poems and songs, known as "clochards", nowadays the "SDF" (sans domicile fixe) are banned not only from popular culture, but also from the French capital's tourist hotspots. Gerz hired 12 homeless people for a period of six months as part of the artwork and rehearsed the exhibition with them on the most visited square in Paris – the forecourt of
Notre-Dame Cathedral. In the unusual exhibition local passers-by and tourists from all over the world came face-to-face with those who had become invisible. The homeless people spoke openly about their lives "behind the mirror" to an audience that was often surprised and hesitantly entered into a dialogue with them on poverty,
social exclusion and the role of art.
amaptocare, Ballymun, Dublin (2003 to present) The
amaptocare ("A Map to Care") project asked members of the public, especially from the Ballymun area, to sponsor a tree, select an area for its planting, and develop, in discussion with Gerz, generally face-to-face, a personal reflection to accompany it. It led to the planting of more than 630 trees from a choice of 15 varieties, which will grow for decades, each with its own metal plaque with the donor's words inscribed. A second phase of the project, with donor names blasted into the civic plaza of the area, and an illuminated map, was deferred but is expected to eventually be completed.
Future Monument, Coventry (2004) The "Future Monument" is the people of
Coventry's comment on their often quite traumatic past. Its story is one of enemies who became friends. 6,000 citizens contributed to the project, offering statements at once public and personal in response to the question: "Who are yesterday's enemies?" The city commemorated its destruction in the
Coventry Blitz during the Second World War while at the same time discovering how many immigrants there are in its current population, and what it means to have been a colony (England itself is named third). The most often named former enemies are listed on eight glass plaques on the ground in front of a glass obelisk: To our German friends To our Russian friends To our British friends To our French friends To our Japanese friends To our Spanish friends To our Turkish friends To our Irish friends
2-3 Streets. An Exhibition in Cities of the Ruhr District (2008–11) As a part of the
European Capital of Culture Ruhr.2010 Jochen Gerz invited people to live in the Ruhr region rent-free for one year, in the project
2-3 Streets. An Exhibition in Cities of the Ruhr (). This produced both a literary work of
collective authorship and a unique social process in the cultural landscape, summarised as: '"2-3 Streets" not only aims to change the streets, but also art.' Three cities (
Duisburg,
Dortmund and
Mülheim an der Ruhr) decided to take part in "2-3 Streets"; each one selected a street in a "socially difficult neighbourhood" and renovated vacant living spaces. A total of 58 apartments were made available. By the end of 2008, 1,457 candidates from 30 countries had responded to the invitation to participate ("
basic income: living rent-free for a year"). Over the next year there followed intensive
e-mail communication with the candidates. The criterion for participation was motivation to shape a foreign environment for a year and to write regularly. Eventually, 78 participants were selected. The
public artwork began on 1 January 2010 and ended 31 December of the same year. During this time, over 1,300 visitors, in the tradition of Bazon Brock's visitors’ school at
documenta 4 (1968), spent time in the streets as art. The "visitors’ school in 2-3 streets", turned the reality of everyday life on the streets into an aesthetic experience.
Sociologists, cultural scientists and
town planners undertook scientific studies, and the media threw an additional light on what were otherwise marginal and often problematic districts with a high percentage of migrant unemployment. New
public spheres were created, allowing each street to develop a new image of itself. Sustainability was discussed critically by sociologists, cultural scientists and city planners, but "social creativity" in this context proved to be a sustainable practice. While year after year, the cities of the Ruhr continued to shrink, over half of the participants of "2-3 Streets" decided at the end of the artwork to stay in their streets as new residents of the region. In Dortmund they continue the work on their own initiative since then under the name "Borsig11".
The artistic concept In his artistic concept (2006) Gerz refers to three books which open up a
multiperspective context for "2-3 Streets": "The Rise of the Creative Class" by
Richard Florida, "The
Cultural Creatives" by Paul H. Ray and Sherry R. Anderson and "The Fall of Public Man" by
Richard Sennett. The "2-3 Streets"-concept was for three perfectly normal streets with vacant flats in the
Ruhr area to be turned into an art exhibition for one year. 78 creatives were invited to live rent-free in this exhibition and, as part of it, become authors of a joint text to be published at the end of the year. As everyone in the three streets was able to take part – old and new tenants, passers-by and visitors of the exhibition – neither the text created in this fashion nor the development of
social relationships and changes on the streets could be anticipated: "We write… and in the end my street won't be the same."
Text The purpose of the one-year exhibition "
2-3 Streets" was to bring change to the streets by creating a collaborative text. The result was a book written in 16 languages on 3,000 pages by 887 authors, including both old and new inhabitants as well as visitors to the three streets. At the end of 2-3 Streets, half of the participants chose to remain and continue their life together. The contributions were generated online and were saved chronologically in a central digital archive, which could not be viewed in 2010 while the text was being created. Even the authors themselves did not have access to the work-in-progress; they could not call up their texts, or correct them, or react to preceding contributions. This constant creative process presented itself in the text as the present. The contributions flowed seamlessly and swelled into a "river without banks". A total of 887 people created 10,000 contributions in 16 different languages. Their work impacted the streets in many ways. The "2-3 Streets TEXT" amounted to some 3,000 pages in the publication. "Writing is overcoming emptiness and thus is the epitome of change." "Creativity, as understood here, is not the privilege of artists, but rather a renewable social energy".
Square of the European Promise (2004–15) The "Square of the European Promise" (Platz des europäischen Versprechens, Bochum ) was likewise part of the European Capital of Culture Ruhr.2010 and was commissioned already in 2004 by the City of
Bochum. It is located in the city centre, right next to the town hall. Participants were asked to make a promise to Europe, which remains unpublished. Instead of the promises, the names of their authors from all over Europe fill the square in front of Christ Church, of which only the tower, featuring a surprising mosaic from 1931 of Germany's 28 "enemy states" (England, France, USA, Poland, Russia, China ...) survived the war. The "Square of the European Promise" holds a total of 14,726 names. It was handed over to the public 11 years after its inception, on 11 December 2015. == Public Authorship ==