Northword (Nordwort)

> german version

Temorary installation in public space, 1989

(Ten posters plastered onto commercial billboards, oversize photocopies, each 260 x 360cm)

Ten different texts were placed for a ten-day period onto ten official billboards located in the northern district of the city of Dortmund. The texts were citations from a range of daily and literary contexts having to do with the term “north.” The sentences were generated via a word database, selected and then translated into Turkish and Serbo-Croatian. A notation set in brackets indicated whether the sentence came from a newspaper, a non-fiction source, or a novel. Once removed from their original context, the texts provided a cryptic form of commentary on their new surroundings. That they remained unidentified made it impossible to trace them back to the author or the original purpose.

Commissioned by: City of Dortmund for the exhibition Nordstadtbilder – Stadterneuerung und künstlerische Medien With support of the Secretary for Urban Development, Housing and Transportation of the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia

Shown at:

1989

Dortmund, northern district of the city