German-born artist Jochen Gerz is about to create in the heart of Paris a work produced with the help of tramps. Believing that art had had a social power to such an extent that it could not be left idle in museums, Jochen Gerz, an artist of the "Visul Poetry" movement and a manipulator of images and words who has been working in France, notably created a monument against fascism in Hamburg with his ex-wife Esther Shavez-Gerz, a 12 metre-high column covered with lead on which people were invited to sign their names and which was intended to plunge progressively into the soil.
The first signatures appeared on the colum in 1986 and the last in 1993 and what was only visible of the colum was a plaque with a text in seven languages recalling its presence.
Another monument against fascism was erected in 1993 in Sarrebruck with the help of the Jewish community and the students of an art school there. Some 2146 paving stones were replaced overnight by a similar number of elements each bearing the name of a Jewish cemetery from Germany on its hidden side.
The square leading to the provincial parliament, formerly the seat of the Gestapo between 1933 and 1945, now bears the name of the Square of the Invisible Monument. Gerz is above all interested in perpetuating memories. He notably transformed a monument dedicated to those people dead during the wars into a monument comemorating those still living in the village of Biron, Dordogne, in 1997.
During the trial of Maurice Papon, a prefect accused of having been a collaborationist of the Vichy regime, Gerz gathered 48 people who had the age of the accused to participate in a conference based on the truth in Cahors, south-west France. He also organised a show called "The Gift" during which visitors were invited to be photographed and then exhibited some 700 portraits on the walls of a school in Fresnoy recently.
He now prepares a project with Parisian tramps called "The words of Paris" using them as major folkloric figures of the French capital with the objective of giving them the opportunity to assert their presence since the traditional tramps of the 50s have been replaced by those people who have no homes nor jobs. He will invite passers-by to listen to them in front of the Notre Dame cathedral during three months from June 15 to September 15 with the aim of collecting money due to be given to Charity care organisation.
He said he had worked much on the theme of disappearance resulting from genocides, and notably that of the Holocaust since their victims were above all people. His idea has been to be as much active to keep alive the dead and not to keep them considered as victims only. In his view the most spectaculat disappearance is that of the traditional tramps as he believes that those people who have lost their place in society have still a role to play in the domain of culture.
"Tramps have been part of the mysteries and miseries of Paris for over a century and their images have been perpetuated in films, songsor postal cards. Tramp means a kind a freedom, a choice in life and this romantic equation is still vivid in many people's minds. Now were are facing a totally different situation because tramps nowadays are no part of a folklore or poetry. They are only an additional problem for society which has rejected them. They have thus disappeared and my project is to make them come back," he said.
"I want them back to show that they exist and must exist. I am not implementing any kind of sociological art, I am instead working with people and I represent their culture. I am portraying ourselves and that of my anguish. I am an artist and not a politician," he stressed.
Gerz studied Chinese and English and German literature in Cologne in 1958 and visited London, Basel in the early 1960s. He then studied archaeology and got interested in the meanings of language and writings working first as poet.
He came to Paris in 1966 and founded the Agentzia publishing house before taking an active part in the Students' uprising of 1968. Four years later he founded the "School of Practical Studies on Daily Life" and had a solo-show at the Musée d'Art Moderne in 1975 in Paris. The following year he exhibited his work in the German pavilion at the venice Biennale and took part in many exhibitions in Germany and in France.
His actions have always concentrated on art and language through various performances. Gerz is not a painter but a manipulator of words with heavy significance. They tend to demonstrate the difficulty people have in communicating, the frustration between what is real and what represents reality and thus with much humour.
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