157 m ü. N.N. 2000
157 m above sea level 2000 Herxheim / Palatinate (above Landau Chapel)
Swedish Bohus granite | milled, split, sawn | 70 x 50 x 410/400 cm
Lecture at the inauguration of the stelae for the equinox on September 23, 2000 | Text Jochen Kitzbihler, lecture with Dr. Sieglinde Eberhart
In a reference to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, Martin Heidegger writes in his 1969 essay “Art and Space”: “We must learn to recognize that things themselves are places and do not just belong in one place."
The essence of place, and this is what the stone sculpture placed here and landscape-related art in general is about, is thus defined by the identification of place and things.
Furthermore, Heidegger reflects on the characteristics of space in this remarkable text for contemporary visual art. Space - is a structure of places that gives human dwelling a “home”.
Space, and thus also landscape space, is perceived here as a “structure of places” related to existence. In a fascinating way, Heidegger's conceptual derivation can not only be understood but also experienced and absorbed on this hill shaped by agriculture.
Space can be experienced as an “assembly of places” (Heidegger) in a sculpture. Lost references to ground - space - ultimately our only reference surface - are to be reopened through intellectual and artistic impulses for the now-man without a romanticizing “rear-view mirror”. The artist provides the impulse for this dynamic way of seeing and perceiving time, place and space in the form of a pictorial intervention. Intervention as the American land art and post-minimalist Richard Serra has aptly conveyed in his works since the 1970s. Intervention is much more a process of setting coordinated with the conditions than an appropriation and desire to possess the respective surroundings.
For this type of approach, the artist requires not only a correspondence with the space, but also an “alliance” with the surroundings, its places, its things, its history. For the contemporary artist, this alliance no longer takes the form of a quest for the unity of man and nature. Rather, it is a process of clarification in the form of a constantly changing, friction-filled relationship of correspondence.
By wandering, by moving through places, we understand the space around us, we learn something about our existence. Such a search is certainly the main motivation for all movement under our own steam. In movement, time and space merge: 1 day and a distance are the same thing.
In breathing and walking, the Zen monk works on solving the koan - his meditation puzzle.
The English word “travel” has the same origin as the French word “travail”: walking, traveling is conveyed as physical - mental work - self-discovery as exertion. Direct physical movement in space, beyond all motorized escape attempts, is still an essential cultural and future aspect of our sedentary society.
Richard Long says :
There are millions of stones in the world, and when I make a sculpture, all I do is just take a few of those stones and bring them together and put them in a circle and show you. So as well as finding the right place, you can also bring things together, hopefully in the right way, and say this is what the world is made of. This is a microcosm. This is one way to look at the world. This is my position.