The renowned artist and sculptor Thomas Stricker deals with questions of public space and landscape. His projects go beyond the traditional understanding of sculpture and show social interdependencies and interactions between people, nature and technology. Stricker often realises socially and ecologically oriented projects as open participatory processes. His favourite project is the establishment and maintenance of the "Primary Schoolgarden Kalkfeld" in Namibia (www.primaryschoolgarden.com).

Thomas Stricker also created the well-known "Monheimer Geysir", which was inaugurated in October 2020. The eruptions of the geyser depend on the external conditions. Always after 64 hours of sunshine - and if the wind and outside temperature are also right - the domesticated geyser sends a fountain of water into the sky above Monheim several times in a time window of about four hours. Then the traffic in the street is also stopped by the authorities - art prevails. The eruption of the geyser can be followed on the page of the city of Monheim.

July 5, 2021

Interview Directory 

ART

Name: Thomas Stricker

Occupation: Artist

Mission: Exploring the destruction of culture.

Monheimer Geysir, Thomas Stricker ©Marcus Pietrek

"My first idea was: a conceptual reversal of time relations. I need something that was there before the traffic circle!"

What was your inspiration for your beautiful idea Monheimer Geysir?

I have been working as an artist in a wide variety of public spaces for many years. Very often, I start with an invitation to a competition, as I did here. I had always thought and even feared that at some point I would be given the task of designing a roundabout.

The dilemma with a traffic circle is that it is always a pedestal. No matter what you put in the middle, it becomes a classical sculpture on a socle. But in the middle of the last century, the socle was abolished in contemporary sculpture and since then people have been looking for site-specific sculptural solutions. How do you solve this dilemma?

My first idea was: a conceptual reversal of time relations. I need something that was there before the traffic circle! What can that be? Immovable and ancient! A fissure in the earth, a cave, an ancient tree, a spring, a geyser - it's always been there, you can't move it, the traffic has to go around it.

Is the Geyser solar-powered?

No, the Monheim geyser is not solar-powered. But the sun determines the frequency and timing of the eruptions. When the artificial cold-water geyser erupts is not up to us. Nature determines when the triggering moment has come. - That is an absolutely central point of the work.

The only thing that is certain is that every now and then the naturally overgrown, always slightly fogged island transforms into a huge temporary monumentality. The calm, promising mood is replaced by brief intervals of an unpredictably pulsating water sculpture. For a short time, nature reclaims its right and its space. Then the water retreats again into a small basin in the middle of the round, covered with dark river pebbles and delicately planted. For days or weeks, tense silence then reigns again. Only in the middle of the roundabout, mist rises constantly, mysteriously and at the same time quite naturally, as a promise and certainty that, whenever, the Monheim geyser will again show itself from its most spectacular side.

Why are there exactly 64 hours of sunshine?

The number 64 stands for self-determination and independence, it means self-sufficiency and stands for new ideas and new ways of doing things. And on a more mundane level, on average the sun shines 64 hours every 2 weeks in the Rhineland ...

What is your message to people with the geyser?

There's something slumbering ... the unforeseen, being at the mercy as part of life. A sculptural investigation with the ambivalence of an artificial geyser in urban space, where movement and standstill, beauty and traffic, order and destruction rub against each other, showing how far we are from the unpredictable and dwell in the utopia of controlling the nature of things. A powerful and at the same time humble plea for the inclusion of being at the mercy of things as part of life.

How do you feel about having created one of the city's landmarks?

Before its realisation, the Monheim Geyser had to endure a lot of gloating, criticism and bad satire. But then, already in its creation, the tide turned and now the geyser also asserts itself as a seismograph of climate change. The Monheim Geyser has not only won back its right and place, like nature, but also the hearts of the people of Monheim, and that of course makes me very happy.

What else do you want to achieve with your art and in life andwhat are the next projects?

Fortunately, I have plenty to do. In autumn, the memorial landscape for the Federal Archives in Berlin can finally be inaugurated, and in order to be able to realise the work I won for the German Embassy in Islamabad in Pakistan, I will soon start travelling again. A large exhibition in the Weltkunstzimmer in Düsseldorf is also planned for this year, and we also have big plans for our "Primary School Garden" project in Namibia, Africa, which has been growing steadily for 14 years.

11 Steel Beam Rust Drawing - Root Over Rock - 2021 Steel beam rust ink

911 Steel Beam Rust Drawing Potatoes 2021 - Steel beam rust ink on. ©Piers Secunda