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Nita Tandon :
War Sint

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Unrealized
Zwettl, 1999

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In the pedestrian zone of the New Market the artist Nita Tandon planned a diagonally arranged corridor consisting of two parallel walls of glass and a step-high podium between them with the purpose to shorten the crossing of the square. Two sentences from Walther von der Vogelweide's poem "War sint" were supposed to be attached to the glass panels.

In the pedestrian zone of the New Market the artist Nita Tandon planned a diagonally arranged corridor consisting of two parallel walls of sheet of glass and a step-high podium between them with the purpose to shorten the crossing of the square. As it is difficult to prove Walther von der Vogelweide's contacts with Zwettl - he is supposed to be born in this area - the artist referred to this assumption by choosing two sentences from Walther's poem "War Sint":
"Owe, war sint verswunden ... alliu min jar!

Is min leben mir getroumet, ... oder ist ez war?"

(Oh, whither have gone all my years! My life, was it a dream or was it real?"). This text was attached to the glass panels, though not in simple spelling and easily to read, but in a way that makes it necessary to work at decoding it. The onlooker enters quasi the interior of Walther's poem, secures and unearths its traces and thus brings to life the universality and timelessness of these lines.