The Monument

The Monument consists of a pedestal but no statue. In its base five plasma screens appear in a frieze-like arrangement. At the top there is an empty podium: people who climb up the Monument become the missing sculpture. The piece is surrounded by scaffolding that situates it in an intermediate segment of time, in between being put up and taken down. On the back there is a slide. The only way to descend from the top of the Monument is either by turning around and going back or by using the slide; both options are uncomfortable. During performance days a retired opera singer, clad in full regalia, reinterprets the slogans from the top of the Monument. The five videos at the base of the Monument are titled Wende (meaning ‘turnaround’ or ‘twist’ in German), a term commonly used to describe events surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall. It seems a very small word to describe the enormous change it brought about worldwide. Just a turn. Here the ‘turn’ is enacted literally. Five scenes of masses (groups of 300 people) describe in simple movements the five major turns that have taken place during the last hundred years.