We Are Here – Raising Flags

The starting point for my work was the reorientation of the Reformed Church of Wettingen-Neuenhof: with the redevelopment, both the architecture and the church’s spatial and social positioning are changing. I was interested in this moment of transition as an opportunity to revisit fundamental questions: Where are we? How do we position ourselves within the time and society in which we live? How do we live together? And what place can faith and the church occupy within this?

During a site visit, the then pastor Lutz Fischer said of the future of the parish: ‘We are here. […] We are not going away.’ I took this statement as my starting point and expanded it into a poetic play on words. Four sentences, each consisting of three words, can be read forwards and backwards:

we are here / where are we

God is here / where is God

Twelve narrow, colourful flags each carry a single word. Arranged in four groups, they stand between the buildings and around the new meeting area. The tall flagpoles rise above the rooftops and trees, marking the site so that it is visible from afar. At the same time, the flags remain in motion: they turn with the wind, change direction and continually form different constellations of words depending on the viewer’s position and perspective. The wind thus becomes part of the work and determines its legibility.

The work transforms the flag, historically associated with territorial belonging and demarcation, into an open signal of questioning. Colour, language, movement and spatial positioning create a constellation that offers no single, definitive answer. The questions shift with the viewer’s perspective.