blümerant
2007
public art project by the artists' group msk7
at Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin
a walk-in crossword puzzle, citing the Berliners' penchant for absorbing French words and sounds into their everyday speech
"The history of the language of the urban populace is also part of the history of the city... Huguenots, French émigrés fleeing the Revolution, on numerous occasions occupying forces. They all left traces that linger, which, sometimes well-concealed, surface again in common turns of speech and in typical sappy Berlin sayings and are also always time capsules recording echoes of their era."
Ewald Harndt, Französisch im Berliner Jargon
Until 1935 the Gendarmenmarkt was framed by lawns. blümerant brings the green back to Gendarmenmarkt for a few weeks and invites visitors to take a stroll. Here lawns are a straightforward metaphor for gardens: in "Jardins du Monde" (German edition: "Geschichte der Gartenkunst"), Michel Baridon identifies a correspondence between the Reformation ban on images in church buildings and the sensual pleasures of gardens. Creation itself now fills the niche formerly occupied by stained-glass windows in cathedrals: the open book of nature outside responds to the open Bible within the church building (quotation based on Dr. Otto Schäfer, "Hugenottisches Erbe in Pflanzen und Gärten").
