Thursday, January 10, 2013

Art in (re)construction


Last week I spent a few days visiting family near Karlsruhe, where I grew up. On an outing to the city we passed by the site of the German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht),  situated right next to the castle.


While we were there, the weather was quite different - this picture of the castle in the sun was copied from here

The court building is currently under reconstruction. 


I was enthralled by the fact that a cooperation of the court and the Art Academy in Karlsruhe had put art on the fence around the construction site, and thus into public view. If you care to take the time and notice while you’re passing by.


This is an installation by Bea Stach.


She randomly chose six rulings by the court that had been passed during the past sixty years, one ruling for every decade. The words, numbers, letters, symbols contained in the opinions of these rulings were arranged in alphabetical order and printed on large boards.








An interesting insight into the language of the court and into German as such – though more into the language of the court, as e.g. the word for “environment” didn’t appear, certainly due to the selection of rulings.

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