GIANT Monument for Leeuwarden
Monument
for, by and from
inhabitants of
the Dutch city Leeuwarden.
Fries Museum
assigned an art project to Martijn Engelbregt about architecture
in Leeuwarden. Engelbregt delivered
45.000 bricks door
to door, one for
each house in
Leeuwarden.
45.000 bricks weigh over 80.000 kilos, which is enough to build three big detached houses.
The bricks were cleaned at a social working place. After cleaning, the bricks were wrapped in colourful paper and a manual was added.
33 homeless delivered the bricks at every house in Leeuwarden.
The manual inside the package invited the people to go to a central square were they could place the brick by themselves.
Anonymous rumours were spread: People claimed that bricks would be used to damage the town instead of building a monument together. Based upon these vague rumours the major of Leeuwarden decided to put a stop to the delivery. Over 10.000 bricks were handed out by that time.
Therefore Engelbregt placed all the left over bricks on the square as a
colourful sculpture. People were invited to collect their brick at the square so they could place it straight away.
Watched by a big audience and a lot of media attention Puk and Hiele placed the first brick together.
Eight days in a row people mortared their bricks.
Bas was the first one to write a text on his brick, he did so in order to honour his sister who passed away a year ago. A lot of people followed his example, they wrote all kind of messages for their city on the brick.
After eight days of building the
building area was cleared so that
the result of 7.708 hands working
together was reveiled.
People kept on coming back to
show their personal brick and see
the result.
After five months the GIANT
Monument for Leeuwarden
was demolished.
What remains is the memory and
almost 4.000 portraits of people
working together on a monument.