A TIME OF GATHERING
Three thousand three hundred brightly coloured plastic soap boxes stuck on a wall at the Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin’s Mariannenplatz, composed in such a manner as to read the proposition "The truth does not set you free". A number of residual boxes lie piled beneath the construction, as if to emphasise that this is not a finished work, indicating that modifications - additions or indeed diminutions - are possible; indeed that the whole composition might change to its logical opposite “The truth sets you free”. In other words, we are given to understand that this is not the last word on the subject, that the dialectic between the ‘efficient cause’ (in the sense of Aristotle Physics II 3, 194b29 and Heidegger Die Frage nach der Technik), in this case the author of the installation, and the ‘final cause’ (the ‘final cause’, also in the Aristotelian and Heidegerrian sense, the Gegenstand, that which stands over against us, the viewers) namely Norbert Attard’s installation is potentially open and ongoing for the duration of the event (between 30th October and 8th November 2015) and, indeed, for as long as there are soap boxes and available surfaces, and authors willing to construct variations of the original. On one immediate level, the message is clear. Searching for the truth in the name of freedom often gets you into trouble. It may even cost you your freedom, especially if the truth threatens existing systems of power.