Trash People
Trash People
Not since the invention of abstract painting has any art form been as thoroughly discussed as action art. Abstract art had a profound impact on thinking and creating during the first half of the 20th century; and now many aspects of action art have likewise passed directly into everyday life. During the past three decades, everyday elements have have been influencing art more and more strongly, and art has been responding to everyday life more and more quickly. In no other era has been anything like this dialogue between art and everyday life. The range of materials used in art has never been so wide as today. Anything can be made into art. Mankind’s confines have narrowed, the freedom of art is unlimited.
We live in the trash time: we produce trash and we become trash. Therefore HA Schult’s ‘Trash People’ are images of ourselves.
In 1996, when HA Schult has installed one thousand life sized ‘Trash People’, in the Amphitheatre of Xanten, the idea was born to send them around the world.
Like the pyramids of Giza send messages to us from times past, HA Schult’s ‘Trash People’ will travel as a ‘now time expression’ to the world’s most important spots.
1999. Paris
—————————————-HA Schult calls himself Macher and is in fact a Poet. What at a first impression seems to be like slapstickshows has in all events elements that cause offence, excite, call attention and force to think.
Much of what is done by HA Schult is directed against the present state of affairs. This is the central aspect of HA Schult. He is partly a radical democrat.
He develops his ideas full of comment on contemporary issues, promotes them in a process and tries to initiate criticism of our present situation with naively disguised intellect. Now and then he overdoes things with verbal energy – and in this respect he resembles Joseph Beuys – as a person himself, a solist playing himself, marked as a work of art.
He embodies a strange mixture with its own values. Someone who expresses his feelings of loneliness in public, like hardly anyone else. However, he has achieved perfect self-presentation. A conversation with him is like a performance with Samuel Beckets heirs.
Speechlessness fills the pauses between the gushing monologues. Somehow the essential features of speech
I do not know another German artist who grasps his tasks so comprehensively, no one who has such a sense of feeling for the essence of our society. In HA Schult the gap has been closed, that has been for 200 years between art and the general public.
Jens Christian Jensen
1999. moskau
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Born in 1939, HA Schult grew up in the ruins of Berlin and from 1958 to 1961 he studiedat the Art Academy in Düsseldorf.
In the 60’s he invented the terms “Macher” and “Biokinetik” which have become statements of our society. His actions focus on the social fauna of cities and regions such as Venice (“Venezia vive”, 1976), New York (“Crash”, 1977), Berlin (“N.Y. is Berlin”, 1985), Cologne (“Fetisch Auto”,1989), St. Petersburg (“Krieg und Frieden”, 1994), Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Cairo, Kilkenny and Zermatt (“Trash People”, 1999-2004). Germany (“Aktion 20.000 km”, 1970), the Ruhr (“Ruhr Tour”, 1978) and the Rhineland(“Rheingeist”,1996).
At Cologne-Bonn airport autobahn he realized “Hotel Europe” (1999), the world largest sculpture till its blasting on May 13, 2001. In 2001 he created his “LoveLetters Building” in Berlin-Mitte. 2003 he created “Trees for Peace” on Zollverein in Essen, since 1991 his “Golden Bird” stands on top of the Cologne city museum. 2000 he relocated his “Welkugel” (Globe) from Severinsbrücke to Zoobrücke.
Because he was the first European artist to deal with the ecological imbalance in his work, he is a major contrib-utor to today’s new ecological awareness.
His works were on show on all continents; they can be found in many private and public collections all over the world. He participated twice at the documenta (1972 and 1977).
Since 1968 he is living and working in Munich, Cologne, New York, Berlin. In 1986, the ‘HA Schult-Museum für Aktionskunst’ was established in Essen and moved to Cologne in 1996.
2001, Peking
HA Schult is not alone in his work. Elke Koska is at his side. As a living work of art she irresistibly draws all eyes (and cameras) to her person (and HA Schult). She speaks in a cool, charming and clever manner. She organizes, telephones, writes, takes photographs and keeps the archives.
2002 Kairo
HA Schult is her profession.
She does her job in an excellent way. Everybody loves Elke, from manager to the museum guide. She is always very cheerful, very clever and friendly.
2003, Kilkenny-Castel
Elke is something unique and, by the way, one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the emancipation of women in our time.
Evelyn Weiss
2003, Zermat
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