1998/99 "Sound Field of Stones on Mechtenberg " Work to the theme of "Cross"
Landscape Park Mechtenberg, Gelsenkirchen
A project in conjunction with "Industrial Culture Ruhr Region"
Four basatl pillars H:2,60 m


>> Please click for larger picture <<

The landscape of the northern Ruhr area in Germany is like barely any other impressed by human hands. The IBA-Emscher Park has been given the challenge to give impulses for the future ecological, economical and social reconstruction of this landscape. The project area of the IBA-Emscher Park belongs to the Landscape Park Mechtenberg.

Naturally given landscape forms and landscapes for art alternate. Industrial landfills, transformed to revived-livable landscapes, are the basis and conceptual departure for my project "Sound Field of Stones on Mechtenberg." Four Basalt sound pillars mark the trail junction at the entrance of the recultivated landfill site and now declines ramp-like four meters above the natural level of the land around it.

The unknown industrial wastes were planed, sealed with plastic film, and covered over with humous. A park landscape with trees and trails was created from this ground. At the entrance of this site, the pillars form a cross, the sign of an historically polluted location. The pillars refer to positions and standpoints, are opposite positions, locations of a middle, suggest open ways and directions, stand for an attitude.

In its universality as a symbol, the cross is the sound attributed as a concrete and tangible, binding element. To encounter a cross means to change a standpoint or opinion, to expose oneself to the inner area of conflict of the sculpture, it means pausing, to become aware, to procure an attitude.