Jochen Gerz

Jochen Gerz: The Radical Democratisation of Art

The conceptual and performance artist Jochen Gerz is characterised by a radical, uncompromising approach to his art in relation to the viewer. In his artistic philosophy, the passive viewer does not exist: Gerz deliberately avoids terms such as ‘audience’ or ‘spectator’. Instead, he directly calls on people to participate as equal co-authors and active participants in his complex installations and his political and social projects in public spaces. For him, art is not a static object on a museum wall, but a living, social process.

An outstanding example of this participatory aesthetic was the visionary large-scale project ‘2-3 Straßen’, which was realised as part of the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010. For this ambitious long-term experiment, Gerz invited creative people from all over the world to live rent-free for a year in vacant flats on three streets typical of the Ruhr region in Duisburg (Sankt-Johann-Straße), Dortmund (Oesterholzstraße) and Mülheim an der Ruhr. Together with the long-established residents, the new tenants became co-authors of a collective text.

Over the course of a whole year, they documented everyday life and, through their mere presence and interaction, transformed the social fabric of the urban space – a monumental work of art that ultimately culminated in a book of around 3,000 pages.

During the creation of ‘2-3 Straßen’, Ralph Goertz was afforded the rare opportunity to closely document this exceptional artist on camera. In a wide-ranging, intimate interview, Jochen Gerz provides a thorough explanation of his idea of the radical democratisation of art. In it, however, he not only reflects on the present-day Ruhr region, but also draws biographical parallels with the formative stages of his life in the past.

He recounts the artistic influences of his time in London and Basel, and speaks in particular about Paris, where he lived for decades from 1966 onwards and from where he developed his internationally influential strategies of conceptual art.

This film captures the profound intellectual acuity and human warmth of an artist who has returned the authorship of art to society.