Descriptive text
For an art project in Bischofshofen (Austria) six artists, architects had been invited to make their contribution to the theme “Real Landscape”. The initiators` idea was to develop objects on this theme along a path – on the one hand through the centre of the town, on the other through the adjoining forest. To formulate this theme in a kind of directness, holds the foundations of failure to a certain extend. Hence, our project was called “Real Landscape-Real Mistakes”. It consisted in connecting the remaining objects on the theme, lining up next to each other with a zebra crossing – thus, a four kilometre zebra crossing.
Zebra crossing and the urban space
The zebra as sequentially lined up code of a path…pictographic language of a path, running past locations…running pass through spaces, landscape solids…rising over the landscape, transforms as element of movement, of human rhythm the passing surroundings into a condition of silence, into a kind of museum aura… an aura of observing. The zebra, celebrating the standstill, lines up an enormous number of snapshots – in exactly the same way a museum is a kind of snapshot. Not the location is the actual urban space, but man is the urban object. By the moving, passing human being the location becomes transit space. Hence, man is the mobilizing element which makes location urban space…. man, unambiguously, is the active medium. The location takes its theme and specification by man….in this sense the location as common element stands directly opposed to man in passivity to a certain extend.
Zebras are one possibility to formulate paths by codes… linear and purposeful – standing protectively between A and B – we know them… elementary and sequentially appearing, comprehended as more or less two-dimensional object. Zebras, seen metaphorically, stand for right… For the right of movement during simultaneous standstill.
Not the location alone is urban space, but the human being makes the location urban space. The Zebra does not run past formulated points, but leads through a landscape conglomerate – through the landscape-solid. So, the zebra would not really need the formulated points.
Detachment as clarification …the three-dimensional zebra
The zebra as three-dimensional sequence runs pass through spaces and landscape solids …..rises over the landscape in the open neutral forest- and meadow-region and becomes a sort of built self-utopia. There is no pre-set direction of movement… the zebra turns into definition of a special non-locality. The zebra itself is the idealized link …. the “Real Mistake” … at the border to absurdity. Tectonics of the forest and the open landscape put the zebra into position and turn both of them into the condition of standstill by the nearly “non-human movement” …into a kind of museum aura – into an aura of yearning gaze of movement and standstill … the picture of a simulated movement becomes attempt of paradoxical clarification.
In this sense the “locations” as common free elements stand directly opposed in a self-staged passivity. The human being has the task of taking as theme and specifying locations and lining up an enormous number of snapshots…. he is the spatial active medium.
