Solvetur ambulando
site-specific installation
'UniKunstTage', Telgte 1999
The motto of the UniKunstTage 1999 was 'Walking as Memory' and the exhibition dealt with the phenomenon of pilgrimages. Solvetur ambulando means "it is solved while walking": 19 signs attached to 19 lampposts lined the 'consumer mile' of the small pilgrimage town of Telgte in Münsterland for two months. From old intercession books of the chapel, petitions and wishes to the famous Black Madonna of the pilgrimage chapel were copied, anonymized, enlarged and applied in different pseudo-individual handwritings in black on white signs. These wishes reflected very controversial views of religiosity and the 'function' of the transcendent in one's life. While walking and reading, a mosaic of self-referential, caring, mundane, existential, and material desires emerged. Many seemed like cries for help that should have been addressed to friends, neighbours, fellow human beings, and so it seemed legitimate to bring these wishes out of the sacred space and back into the world.
Sign inscriptions - selection:
Dear Mother Mary, let my mother find the check card again!
Dear Mother of God, help me get off the drug!
That my parents talk to each other again!
Dear Mother of God, I ask for a successful business year for my company.
Give me a lot of money. Let me lose weight well. No quarrels.
Please take away my pain.
I pray for good grades.
