Santiago Sierra’s competition entry for the Leipzig Monument to Freedom and Unity was undoubtedly the most radical design of the competition. It was inconceivable that anyone would ever implement it. However, it was conceptually and politically brilliant, which is why we were frustrated when the proposal was removed from the competition process.
When the call for submissions for the Leipzig Monument to Freedom and Unity was made public, I suggested to Santiago Sierra that he develop a proposal. In Leipzig, I introduced him to some of the key figures of the autumn of 1989, we conducted site visits, and eventually, we had a plan.
Sierra was, and still is, an anarchist and has worked with many anarchist groups worldwide. For him, it was clear: In Leipzig, a solution against the state and state order had to be found if the monument was to capture the essence of the 1989 revolution, which was nothing less than the goal of overthrowing the state to self-govern democratically as a people.
His proposal: The Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz, where the monument was to “stand” and for which we had detailed plans from the competition documentation, should be removed from the territory of Germany. Together with a constitutional lawyer from Berlin, I worked on the formal steps necessary to constitute the square as an extraterritorial area (see text panels).
What may seem like an “idea” at first glance is, on closer inspection, full of questions and consequences. How would a city population “share” and “manage” a space on which, for example, the police had no access? Would it become a place of new freedoms and possibilities – or a place of new repression, full of regulations and mutual surveillance? How would the millions of euros available be spent? What order would the people of Leipzig impose on this empty space that was entrusted to them?
The submission for the competition consisted of two A4 pages typed on a 1989 Leipzig-typewriter – a formal homage to the leaflets from the autumn of 1989. For the public presentation of the competition entries, two small display panels were available, which we used for a poster version of the text.
But we made a mistake. The competition rules stated that the artistic proposal had to materially alter the Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz. We had overlooked that… If we had written that a pencil line should be drawn around the square before it was removed from German territory, the entry would have been valid. As it was, it was easy to disqualify it for formal reasons, which almost led some jury members (those who understood art) to leave the jury.
The two text posters were occasionally exhibited in later years as Sierra’s “Conceptual Monument,” without the context being understandable. A shame.