28.06.2013 Monuments

28.06.2013 MONUMENTS

Poster Design for raumlabor Berlin. Special Tag: Now Will Expand

The intervention "28.06.2013, MONUMENTS" by raumlabor Berlin examines the presence of "temporary monuments" and questions the status quo of its antagonist: the classic, unmovable and stable statue. Therefore 6 monuments were build and moved unannounced through Nantes – confronting the inhabitants with a monumental (sublime) moment of the NOW despite the knowledge of its transience... Turning expectations into questions. The documentation of this work made by The Laboratory plays on the one hand with dichotomizing ideas (straight, monumental design grammar vs. its defeat) and uses the almost mythological sign of the Adobe Acrobat PDF file format to increase the feeling of misuse by changing familiar customs.

The PDF deconstructs itself by using different sizes and experimenting with rhythm and time aspects of the so called "Portable Document Format".

Turning ideas inside out

“Le 28.06.2013, la ville de Nantes fut conquise par l‘Art.”
“On the 28.06.2013, the city of Nantes was conquered by Art.”

The work "28.06.2013, MONUMENTS" by raumlabor is developed in three phases. Phase one is a phase of collective construction, dialogue, shared dinners and talks, the development of ideas, all this in the state of inhabiting the court of the Ecole des beaux Arts in the form of an art production camp. Phase two is the intervention in the city on the day of 28.06.2013. Phase three is the phase of memory to the 28.06.2013 in the form of an exhibition in the place of the production.

Phase one is dedicated to the procedural production, a conceptual sharpening of the work and dialoge. Phase two is dedicated to a series of placements of the constructed objects in the city spaces, it is the moment of the surprising encounter of the public with the pieces of Art produced, it is the phase of Art appearing in the space of everyday life. Phase three is dedicated to the memory. The objects are on display, as well as some remains of the production workshop.

raumlabor came with a set of drawings, inspired by the poetic drawings of the american architect John Hejduk. In his sketches, he talks about a poetic reinterpretation of the trojan horse for and through architecture. raumlabor takes this inspiration and brings it into the arts, into the city of Nantes, into the public spaces of the city. During the workshop the main narrative evolved, away from the military connotation of the trojan horse being a medium of attack and focussing on the object itself. Like this, the question of the possibilty of the monument entered the conversations in the camp. The production shifted accordingly. Four movable monuments were built and two movable instruments.

A second inspiration was a conversation with Julieta Aranda after the panel “Questioning the Constraints of Time and the Unpredictability of the Creative Process”. According to her, the time we perceive as presence has been identified as a duration of 6 seconds. But this time can be extended through different techniques, for example through meditation. raumlabor takes this inspiration to ask to extend the presence through the medium of Art. The time element of the work is to place the built monuments in city spaces and let them rest, live with the city for a while. It’s a proposition of a possibility. The phases of the work also follow this idea. The day 28.06.2013 became more and more important as a compression of time, of presence, of possibilty in one day.

On the 28.06.2013 the workshop group teamed up with a lot of people from Nantes, to move the objects through the city together. Encountering the occasional daily city users mostly unexpected, the pieces started to create their own athmospheric layer in the city. Accumulated moments of intensity unfolded, when the public entered the inflated sphere, the monument to public space released a large and growing cloud of smoke. From “le destin” you could hear seven bangs and turning around you discover a swarm of small paper stripes flying in the air. These two cloud like appearences immediately embraced the winds and started touching the city’s hard surfaces.

The intervention itself was calm and slow. The monuments moved through the city quietly, moved by a group of workers. In their grey working dress making a reference to the workers dress of public services. The monuments were placed in specific positions in the center of the city, left alone to rest and become part of the scenery. Some of the monuments unfold momentary activities as an unforseeable turn, a further compression in the creation of a temporay monument to the presence, to “us - here - now”.

Work description by raumlabor Berlin