ArcadiaLego, 2015
Netzhalde
The Netzhalde artist collective was founded in 2000 by Karl-Heinz Einberger (Memmingen, 1964), Hannes Gamper (Meran/Merano, 1976), Valentin Goderbauer (Landshut, 1964) and Stefan Wischnewski (Neumünster, 1974). It creates site-specific installations and interactive artworks, and holds exhibitions. In 2007, for example, netzhalde asked the residents of Bozen/Bolzano’s Don Bosco district to take part in a project at Cubo Garutti (an outlying venue of the Museion, Bozen’s Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art), by displaying artworks from their private collections. That same year, the international artist collective stunned its audience at the Skulptur Projekte exhibition in Münster with a “nutritious” take (by running a stall selling Rehburger or “roe deer burgers”) on the topic of sculpture in the public realm–an ironic reference to German sculptor Tobias Rehberger.
For their ArcadiaLego artwork in Meran, Einberger and Gamper also used a play-on-words. Not only does the installation’s title allude to the expression Memento mori that found its visual representation in 17th century art as Et in Arcadia ego (Guercino, Poussin), but it also hints at the Marconi Park’s original purpose as Meran’s Lutheran cemetery (a function fulfilled until the 19th century). Moreover, by a semantic transposition the word Lego brings to mind the park’s recent history (from the 1960s to the 1990s) as a playground with a mini-golf site that was abandoned after its closure. The project was supported by the local Street Worker association. It included the assembling and joining of cement slabs to a construction ruin.