In our everyday use, and by crossing it, we use only part of the available space. We subdivide it in “used” and “unused” zones. In a certain way, we create seperations, “mental frontiers” between “living” and “dead” zones.

The space I choose for this installation is one of the two flights of stairs at the H.d.K. in Berlin, a passage and a meeting place. The mental frontiers created by crossing it draw a threedimensional open bracket.

In this installation, I choose to materialize these frontiers in form of symbolic walls or what could be the rests of the foundations of them. Three years after the Berlin Wall had been torn down, the memory of it was still very present.

The building material are coal bricks, a natural element, a fossil keeping its potential energy, and a very common heating material in Berlin. The energy of this material will be freed when it consumes its history in embers and ashes.
In German, the word for coal, “Kohle”, also means money.

J.K. 1992