GRIDS & NETS | WEIMAR 2004

About This Project

An individually designed project, a public intervention and a in situ temporary installation οn an empty playground next to the main parking lot (size 12X33meters) of the city, as well as a parallel action, chatting with neighbors, about art and the history of the place.  The materials I used were chalk, rope, nails and paper, as well as a compass and a hammer as a tool. The duration of the intervention was 2 and half months (April to June 2004). It was presented on the site, in the city area Stadionvorplatz in Weimar-Germany, on June 2004, and was held within the framework of the Postgraduate program Art in public space and new artistic strategies, as well as within the collaborative project On The Edges [An den Rändern], between the Bauhaus University of Weimar and the municipal authority of the city for the formation of public spaces. It exists in photographs and video-documentation.

Keywords & terms: Sisyphus, artistic production, paradox, community, neighborhood, grid, modern city design, net

The place of my action is the space of a public playground located next to a port of entry of Weimar in Germany, a parking lot for tourist cars and buses visiting the monumental Weimar on a daily basis. During my 2 and a half months working-time period, I was making with Sisyphus ‘ insistence Every day grids, with architectural thread, based on the architectural layout of neighboring buildings, carefully measured and with different direction according to the points of the horizon. I had as initial reference the urban layout of the modern cities, such as New York etc. I imprinted them by writing them on the asphalt with chalk, while using as tools the compass, the architectural measurement thread, the measuring tape, the hammer and cement-nails. At the same time, metaphoricaly, apart from grids, I also made “invisible nets” in the tradition left by my fisherman grandfather. Not to seize fishes but thrills, to get impressions from the life of the neighborhood and the place. Life full of the everyday of the residents, but also of the extraordinary appearances of tourists and visitors in this historic city, who were happy to talk with me about art and other issues.  Many of them were the same amateur artists, or craftmen, and even more quite suspicious in visual events, having the German education. Always acting in open space, and having everyday conversations, being in interaction with the whole environment. The visible form of the net (various rectangular grids drawn with chalk and made out of rope) was an actual effort to render my self in accordance to the place. Each drawing would vanish every day because of the rain. I gradually became part of the neighborhood scene.