Jochen Gerz
«2146 Stones – Monument Against Racism»

This 3-year project is a collective production with art students from the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst Saar (Saar College of Visual Art) in Saarbrucken. For this uncommissioned intervention in public space, research was done at the Jewish communities in Germany and then a list was drawn up of all the Jewish cemeteries that existed in the country before the Second World War and the Nazi regime's persecution of Jews. The names were engraved on the underside of pavement stones of the boulevard in front of Saarbrucken Palace – the seat of the state parliament. Over a period of several months, the original stones were exchanged at night until all 2,146 engraved stones were in place. When the measure was finally made public, the 'making visible' of an invisible installation in public space was discussed, including with the state government. This led to the decision to rename the square the 'Square of the Invisible Monument'. Jochen Gerz's work here was not only a temporal process, but also an interactive group process of forming.

Rudolf Frieling