Lunch Talk - Tanja Dückers

Today, summer academies author in residence Tanja Dückers presented a project calling itself remote words. Originated in Cologne in 2007, the idea takes the viewer to the skies as words and short sentences are painted onto the roofs of galleries, art institutions, but also private residences and factories now used for other purposes.

She then showed the audience different examples, like a gallery in Kiel that made an anagram out of their name Stadtgalerie(city gallery), leading to the words Edle Artist AG (noble artist CO), or a mineral water factory on the german island Sylt that adorned the roof of their art space with the words: Ich sehe nicht, was ich nicht sehe(I don't see what I don't see). For her own project on the roofs of an old coal mine in Lohberg in the Ruhrgebiet, the former industrial heart of Germany, Tanja chose the words Was bleibt ist die Zukunft (what remains is the future). But not only houses in Germany are decorated thusly, the idea has already spread as far as to the township of Soweto in South Africa and the university of Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Once the location and words are found, they are written on the roofs in red, black or white paint, which can be a taunting job as utmost precision and care is necessary in the process. Then, a plane is flown over the buildings to give an aerial view of what in the future will appear in google earths world viewing program. Some of the institutions toy with this fact, as did the academy of arts, Berlin. They embossed their roofs with bright red letters saying: Off limits to google. Funnily enough, they got denied permission to fly over the building for the photos due to their proximity to landmarks such as the Brandenburg gate and the german house of parliament. For those of you who got interested now and are the proud owners of a roof, ready a word or short sentence and check here for more information: www.remotewords.net But remember, it's permanent.