Sibylle Hofter A three-year-old girl is in the kitchen knotting a Chinese measuring tape from drawer to cupboard door, from refrigerator to table, and from stool to door. "Thirty hundred meters," she says, "eight forty, and fifty hundred," emphasizing the combination with "hundred." What she's measuring with the red-printed tape, which displays inches on the more attractive side and centimeters on the less clear, fiddly side, remains a mystery. The adult reluctantly refrains from explaining that knots in the tape render the measurement unusable and that the side with the smaller increments is the one commonly used in Germany. The time the adult spends sitting idly at the kitchen table brings to mind the twelve-year-old autistic boy who, in Nijmegen, meticulously measured the kitchens of the friends he visited once a week. The distances were accurate, and the scale was correct. Had you encountered Christian Hasucha on the street, you would have mistaken him less for a surveying artist and more for a literary or real-life land surveyor. (To my knowledge, none of the surveying engineers who reliably and meticulously oversaw the development of the capital city have ever been featured in guided tours of the Berlin exhibition.) This impression may also have contributed to the smooth installation of the work along the B246: A van, two men, two reflective vests, one of each of the 28 carefully pre-produced signs, and an earth auger formed an ensemble that so clearly demonstrated the legality of their task that none of the passing motorists stopped to ask who had authorized the action, even though it is hardly conceivable that a number of tenants or owners of the relevant land parcels, or their neighbors, were not among them. This is not only an amusing story that offers renewed hope in Prussia, but also a model for how Hasucha's work is perceived in the world. Perhaps the matter doesn't even need to be dissected: The work tells its own story: how, using not only the familiar but also the mimetically adapted, it creates distance from the habitual gaze and opens it up to a different form of perception. If Hasucha had come along with hand-painted signs and hammered them next to the respective measuring object, he too would have indicated the distance to the road, but everyone would have said, "That's art, what's the point, and where's the permit?" Its mimicry makes the work all the more clear; it prevents it from being so easily relegated to the art corner (which is also the corner of the poor lunatics). So, what distance do the signs indicate? Does the driver, upon passing a previously undefined tree, learn that he is 101 meters away? – but the driver traveling in the opposite direction learns the same thing, and yet no accident occurred when the two met. Therefore, the driver's subjective perception cannot be the zero coordinate in the temporarily deployed or implanted system. The center line of the road is more logical (and accurate) than one of the lateral boundaries. Perhaps it's unfortunate that the implanted system is based on objective conditions rather than the driver's subjectivity (this question arose from a lengthy discussion during the project's preparatory phase). Otherwise, the specifications would have had to be complicated with something like +/- 1 meter or be different for each direction of travel. However, in my opinion, it reflects the realities of Brandenburg to brutally declare the objectivity of the federal highway as the zero coordinate of this system. I would even say that this has already happened. The primary zero coordinate is the motorway; an alternative would be the railway line, which still exists in the area because it simultaneously connects two major cities. The secondary zero coordinates are the federal highways. The location within these classifications determines people's economic and living conditions. A socially integrated life without a car is only possible near these secondary transport links (buses). If one were to consult a map without industrial parks, the location of existing industrial parks could be determined with statistical accuracy based on transport connections. That the availability of a roadworthy car has become a prerequisite for life in the countryside is a truism, but one that is nevertheless worth examining more closely. Although people have preserved enclaves such as gardens and, in some cases, their own tractors, which allow them to perceive, for example, the weather outside of their car or the road to it, this perception largely takes place through the windshield: A lot of time is spent commuting daily, and one sees the same stretch of sky every morning and afternoon. Its changes are appreciated differently, as one is no longer directly dependent on its blessings. The time spent on the commute has long since been replaced by the desire for leisurely drives with integrated visits to gas station restaurants. Susken Rosenthal's idea of displaying art along thoroughfares takes this reality into account and enables the participating artists to break free from the conventions of exhibiting art and to emancipate themselves from their audience. Now, no one needs to feign interest in anyone else; it's either there or it isn't. The presence of the works is continuous but unobtrusive over a limited period; nothing needs to be understood on first glance. For example, Hasucha's meter markings are initially integrated into the specialized section of the road's practical signage, the meaning of which is only known to those involved (road maintenance, the military, etc.). Thus, they exist outside of everyday perception and are only noticed because they appear as a change. In subsequent viewings, one wonders what the markings refer to, and so on, until the work (or the plan) is fully formed in one's mind and the last sign is discovered far away in the woods. ... I m a land surveyor Kafka emphatically introduced the literary (supposed) surveyor into literature with K. in the Castle in 1922. However, the surveyor Old Shatterhand from Dresden already appears in the Wild West in 1879. Knowing just a few surveyors (such as Jeremiah Dixon in Pynchon, the (grand)father in Danilo Kiš, and "I Am a Surveyor" as the title of collected conversations between Alexander Kluge and Heiner Müller) is enough to identify a literary topos. (What was the discussion about yesterday? The objectified views, achieved through measurement, are an expression of power over emotionally grasped magnitudes. The discussion devolved into the assertion that both forms of orientation offer potential for the exercise of power.) Let's summarize: Measurement is a form of ordering an approach to realities based on a defined unit of measurement/scale, which (given a consistent object) allows for repeatable measurements. The scaled baseline forms the zero coordinate of a frame of reference. The (freedom of) choice lies in selecting this zero coordinate. Once it has been chosen, the rest follows automatically: The world can then be assigned unambiguous references to one's heart's content. The measuring child doesn't need to make any statement about their frame of reference, because they can do nothing but measure the world with themselves. The situation may be similar, yet different, for an autistic person. It seems that the childlike need to measure the world using oneself as a yardstick has become separated from this self and now stands as an absolute need for order between oneself and others (with fear as its counterpart). www.jova-nova.com: Self-Marketing, see "10 Platinum Rules": 1. Always define yourself in three words: When asked what you are or what you do, always answer: I am a land surveyor. (Replace "land surveyor" with a single noun that describes you.) Even during periods of unemployment, don't answer "job seeker," but "land surveyor." If you don't know exactly what you are, or if you do many things at once, you are a land surveyor. Cf. Project documentation No. 42: On the street