Apr2nd

Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock
SAIC Auditorium

    "Our lives are not for sitting in an ivory tower and thinking "Oh God I am a genius," said Renata Stih. "It's boring to sit in your studio all day." Stih and her collaborator, Dr. Frieder Schnock, do the very opposite. They have worked together on several large public art projects in Berlin that deal with social and political issues, some of which they described at a recent joint lecture, where they also spoke of Berlin as a place for making art. "It is important to bring art out of the narrow clique of art people and bring it out to daily life," Stih said.
    Asked who the intended audience was for their work, Stih replied, "I think it is for everybody who is interested. I don't have art racism. Everybody is as interesting as everyone else." She is as interested in the opinion of her butcher as of a well-known art critic.
    The very public nature of their projects testifies to Stih's populism, though it can also bring unexpected incidents. When their Places of Remembrance (1992/93) was first installed in the Bayerische Viertel neighborhood in Berlin, it was removed by police officers at the request of offended locals, who complained about anti-Semitic propaganda. Ironically, the installation was intended as a memorial to the Jews that had lived there until they were deported during WWII (among them was Albert Einstein). Stih and Schnock rewrote Nazi laws from 1933-45, printed them on eighty 60 x 70 cm aluminum signs along with a corresponding image, and placed them around the neighborhood. One sign showed a red park bench on one side and on the other side read, "At Bayerischen Platz, Jews may sit only on yellow park benches." The work was reinstalled four days after its removal, and has remained there ever since, along with the addition of explanatory plaques requested by the public.
    Schnock, with a Ph.D. in Land Art, is also an art historian; Stih lectures at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. Referencing her early, more traditional artmaking days, she recounted, "We are staying in the 162 N. State St. building. I went up to the studio on the 17th floor and I saw all the paintings everywhere and thought it looked like my old studio from the academy. I expect students to throw stones at society. That's what artists should do."