The Earth is Poison
For two days a major art installation covering 15,000 m2 and
consisting of 2.500 white crosses had transformed one of Denmark’s most
beautiful parks into a thought-provoking visualisation of the pollution of the
Earth. The initiator of the project is the Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot in
cooperation with 500 gymnasium students.
On 10th November 1997 in the morning 500 students from
Tornbjerg Gymnasium began setting up the 1 m. high wooden crosses. The crosses
were set up in one of the most popular parks of Odense, a place called ‘the
Meadow’ in the suburb Fruens Bøge. The previous week the students had been busy
writing their ‘feelings about pollution’ on the crosses. The cross park was a
sort of time barometer for how a certain group of young people view one of our
civilisation’s biggest challenges.
Vandalism
The crosses were planned to stay until 20th November, but
they were displayed only two days, until a group of vandals in the dead of the
night took up all the crosses and collected them in four heaps. Until now,
nobody has claimed the responsibility of the act, so the motives of the
vandalism are unknown. The pulling up of 2500 crosses, hammered into the
ground, is undoubtedly a big and hard job. So the perpetrators must have been a
rather numerous group.
Crusade
to the Town Hall
The
vandalism caused a deep feeling of frustration and powerlessness among the
students. They saw it as an attempt on their freedom of expression. As an act
of protest they arranged a ‘crusade’ through the City. Each student was wearing
a cross in a procession from the railway station to the town hall. On the Town
Hall Square a meeting was held where three candidates from political parties
expressed their views on ecology and pollution. This happened on the eve of the
municipal elections.
Symbolism
The crosses were set up in straight lines with 2.5 m. gaps between them
covering approximately 15,000 m2. Put up this way the installation
was almost identical to the big memorials for victims of the second world war in France. In addition
to the ‘graveyard-feeling’, the observer could contemplate some beautiful
diagonal patterns appearing when the rows were viewed from different angles.
About the symbolism of the installation Jens Galschiot pronounces:
“An art installation is characteristic by its openness for
interpretation. The symbolism will therefore function at many different
levels, all dependent on who’s looking at it. E.g. the amount of crosses may
visualize the extent of pollution, among other things the 3,500 poisoned plots
in Denmark or the 100,000 chemical substances that are being marketed without
any investigation of their harmful effects”.
“But who can survey the impact of 100,000 different substances on the
environment?
The cross symbolizes the hope that the nature will survive.
Simultaneously the cross symbolizes death, the destruction of the earth as a
lifegiving element, transformed into an unhealthy area. Many people will
recognize the cross-park as a symbol of the great world wars. Here it becomes
the symbol of the human chemical and biological warfare against nature, the
victims of which will eventually be the human race itself.”
2500
Statements about Pollution
The cross-happening is a part of Tornbjerg gymnasium’s topic year,
called The Earth is Poison. Students and teachers will integrate the
debate on pollution into the curriculum for the rest of the year. Each of the
500 students has received 5 crosses on which they have written their personal
point of view, concerning these 5 topics:
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| 1997: The Earth is Poisonous |