J o z e f   L e g r a n d

geb. 1957 in Niel, Belgien
lebt und arbeitet seit 1985 in Berlin

<< german

Susanne Altmann

The Disruptive Factor: Just as obvious is the extensive application of emblematic means of expression: buttons, labels and stickers, posters. Nearly the entire environment of the movement becomes an advertising platform: the participants´ clothing, cars, windows and doors of apartments and offices (above all in the freedom of the University environment), road signs‹nearly everything is covered and accompanied further with banners and "original" signs."

from: Hans Georg Soeffner "Die Ordnung der Rituale"

This case example by a sociologist deals with the peace movement´s immense visual force of articulation, as it modeled itself in West Germany after North American ideas at the end of the 60´s. The idea of being able to act out against war, violence and authoritarian reprisals enthused large numbers of mainly young people for almost a decade. That took place, as mentioned above, in the so-called "old" Federal Countries.

By the time the public in the former GDR grabbed for banners and posters, beyond the prescribed doctrine, the protagonists of the 60´s were already holding university chairs, were civil servants, publishers, journalists or elsewhere pacified. The phenomenon of collective ideals petering out among individual interests and identifications or from a change in generation has half-lives of different duration. Perhaps it is also this data of decay and decline which interested Josef Legrand in his work "Dresden Demo".

In any case, he sharpens the senses for it. So, some activists of the autumn of 1989 and their hopes and utopias seem as long ago, if not longer ago, than their former peace movers 30 years prior.

With his "collective performance" Legrand integrated more or less purposely assisted by agitation and instrumentation a heterogeneous art public into an artistic form of expression that generally belongs to the non art world‹in a demonstration that seemed to fulfill all the typical codes, including police escort. Even the positioning of the representatives of tourist passers-by in Dresden´s city center wasn´t missing.

The mere image of a succession of people was enough to provoke tendentious remarks like "Eco pack!" Bizarre was the fact that no one even read the slogans: ("No one is forcing us to do this", "I want my job back", "Errors are small wonders", "I do love you all", "I want privacy", "Peanuts, everything is peanuts"). The form of the demonstration

itself adequately polarized not least as a Saturday afternoon´s disruptive factor in the soft image of the museum zone of the city. People were turned into art viewers and at the same time into a part of a work of art which they certainly didn´t comprehend as being one or the other. Therefore, Josef Legrand´s "Demo" functioned subversively and transcendentally (above all within an art context), without being authoritarian or denunciating.

The route of the succession was mainly defined by various sites of the exhibition "CITY-INDEX", and skirted the center of the city with buildings in the Altmarkt, Prager Straße, the Frauenkirche, etc., and besides this, an entire catalogue of urban Achilles´ heals and pointing fingers.

This fleeting spectacle in the city gave reason to reflect and communicate, completely befitting Legrand´s self evident status as the "operator" of a "space/time matrix for culture commuters". He outlines his general concept in the following manner: "Conceived by myself as an incomplete, open system, this is put into personal,

concrete terms through each user. It happened to be that this arrive-at-yourself of the matrix operator triggered a powerful communicative moment."

For this artist who operates contextually, the result of the situation-specific considerations can be just as ephemeral as long lasting. The latter is valid for his design for the "Medial Platzes ©" (Medial Places ©) in Burghausen (1997-2000). Legrand sees public space (but astoundingly, not the internet) as the real home of

cultural nomads, and with the contemporary version of an agora, delivers a type of "constructed statement, where placelessness is temporarily abolished." (J.L.) and where the artist sets up the parameters of the city.

Communication as a possibility is released from its virtual entanglement and offered as creative power for urban space. In special instances during the parade, the offer of communication functions, as shown, outwardly, but points to interesting inner symptoms within the group of pseudo protesters. Emotions and treatments grow from Legrand´s supposition, the above-mentioned immaterial matrix, which might have their roots in certain inhibition about self-exhibition. You start to compare other experiences like when, and with how much inner participation, was the last time you took part in this type of demonstration?

Choosing from the personal mottoes on the signs causes much less difficulty: "I only love my car", next to "I would like to be a woman", side by side with "long live the Queen". Humor and a bit of surreal estrangement start to come into play! You become increasingly relaxed inside the demonstration´s succession, and instead of feeling exposed, you feel more protected within the mobile stage of the parade. The strange effect of the centrifugal power and security within the human construction becomes clear‹although neither marching in step or alignment is required, uniformity has the outward function of a carnival mask. The "Dresden Demo" is surely not meant for mass psychological examination. However, almost every participant, if possible the conscious ones, can notice a type of dissolving of the individual with the edge, a temporary merge with the masses as if this were a "real" or, ideological based demonstration. At the end there is a certificate representing the distant echo of the almost 90 minute long sense of community that attests, along with the according personal motto, that you have been "an inseparable element of the social artwork".

In the installed, "museal" part of Jozef Legrand´s work, a bivouac of blankets (chiefly from the reserves of the salvation army), surrounded by signs, creates the formal intersection between 2 types of mass movements. Centrally organized entertainment in the form of a video from the fringes of Berlin´s "Love Parade" meets with the leftovers of political activism from below, namely the forest of signs. In the latter case, the bedding could call to mind weeklong protests, hunger strikes on runways and in front of nuclear reactors. In the first case, the camp serves as an impromptu "chill-out" lounge, where the cathartically sensed, herd-like experience reverberates like a faraway pounding basso ostinato, where the individual orients himself again within his own space. "Love Parade" may serve as a comparable figure for increasing individualization and for the desire to belong‹as non-committal as this might seem. And if the issue is the 60´s, remember that that culture of protest drew its energy from a unique mixture of ideology and popular music!

In the dimly lit gallery room such thoughts are flanked by cardboard signs, tirelessly declaring their messages.

Their statements might create a flare up of selective politicizing and reminiscent political force, but within this disparate collage in the demonstration parade as in the later installation they cancel each other out. Such contrasts are amusing but ironic, in the sense of a protective distance, they are not. Because, is there not a quantum nostalgia contained in "Dresden-Demo" with regard to the faded ritual of the protest and citizen´s movement? In this regard, was this collective performance on the fringes of a leftist demonstration perhaps not less impressive than Joseph Beuys´ performance "Ausfegen" (1972, West Berlin)?