Marcus Lütkemeyer Here today, there tomorrow (Excerpt from the booklet) In the context of the exhibition project Christian Hasucha made a multi-layered intervention in Hamann Square (Coerde market), Münster-Coerde. In the foreground of the construction area, directly in front of the town library branch, a 10x10m section of the pavement with winding pattern was rotated by 180 degrees. The 100 square meters were accurately cut, the individual paving stones stacked and stored temporarily and then replanted in the same space with this changed orientation. An existing park bench and gravel crate found new positions in their appropriate places, as did a light-post with a spherical lamp that had to be excavated and reinstalled. As commented on the notice board: "The Münster-Coerde Rotation will remain in place for half a year and then be reconstructed, reverted to its original orientation". Despite the nature of its installation and its reference to the local, the aim of the work is not sculptural intervention, as other sculpture projects from Münster are renown for. Furthermore, this work does not propose to be an addition to the range of visual sketches that come to represent different city regions and add to the concept of the city as a Museum. The fact that the 'place rotation' occurs in Coerde results from the artist's precise observations: on one hand the resulting work refers subtly to the centralistic administrative structures and the compulsive shaping of identity, while on the other hand dealing with the fact that the area has, to a large extent, remained spared from artistic interference particularly because it is an area one would not expect to find an art audience. Instead of the high-speed living, stage scenery of the inner city there are structures grown around a town-planning concept of a consumer friendly area that is forty years old. Hamann Square has Pueblo style buildings developed around a long plaza defined by a central water-feature, it is a variant of early town planning and exemplifies the triumph of the pedestrian zone where daily shopping is declared to be a leisure time activity. By now it represents an incorporated form of economisation redefined as every day living that causes by far greater perception erosion and intensive irritation than the highly polished surfaces of urban centres, which hardly contain surprises anymore. Thus one finds in Coerde a combination of retailers, blocks of flats and discount shops, cafes, a weekly market and a library that form an apparently socially and culturally independent, satellite town. "Place Rotation" reaches into this interconnected functional space unquestioned. Christian Hasucha creates an authoritarian setting leaning against the free discretion of the authorities, so that a local building site develops allowing the pedestrian to become, directly or peripherally, visually and communicatively part of the artistic process. Above all, for the regular users of the bank, the new scenery changes but remains nevertheless familiar. Although the base structure is unaltered, the cut out section appears as a foreign substance, the new mode creating an exemplary, a model disturbed in context. Not only the former resting place itself comes under scrutiny but also formerly observing users become objects as they sit more exposed than before, and now act as players on an exemplary field, viewed as cultural activity on a public stage. In the early stages of the project there were some local protests against the artistic cultural occupation - a reflex of district defence, which (although the arguments presented were simplified) have nevertheless to be taken seriously, as within it the claim of cultural respect manifests. At the very least an interference in outdoor space inevitably marks the symbolic occupation of a place. Thus, the autonomy of the artistic work stands in explosive contrast to an environment strictly arranged for function, neither blending itself within the context of this functionality, nor wanting to transcend it recognizably. Rather this transferral of a model - that is well know in virtual form - the "cut and paste", causes a strange weakening an instability of the area. It is exactly the engagement with these contentious moments that give the work its polarizing potential and why it aims particularly at the autonomy of the viewer and the reflection on sovereignty: Thus the "Münster-Coerde Rotation" enables; a reflection on identity building and politically effective aspects of public space, which were effectively channelled/centred in the townscape and disable the visual consumer from the experience of sovereignty. Regardless of the form in which it was promoted, the installation in Coerde focuses on the old and threatened tradition of public life and makes it clear that only through the permanent questioning of these places the public sphere's relevance can be constituted.