Falling Garden

Gerda Steiner & Jorg Lenzlinger
San Staë church on the Canale Grande
50th Biennial of Venice, 2003

The Doge (Mocenigo) needed a church so as to be able to have a monumental tomb built for himself, the church (San Staë) needed a saint so as to be able to be built, the saint (San Eustachio) needed a miracle so as to be pronounced a saint, the miracle needed a stag in order to be seen, and we built the garden for the reindeer. The visitors lie on the bed above the doge’s gravestone, and the garden thinks for them.

Components: Plastic berries (India), cow pads (Jura), waste paper (Venice), baobab seeds (Australia), beech, elder and magnolia branches (Uster), thorns (Almeria), nylon blossoms (one-dollar-shop), pigs’ teeth (Indonesia), seaweed (Seoul), orange peel (Migros shop), fertilizer crystals (home grown), pigeons’ bones (San Staë), silk buds (Stockholm), cattail (Ettiswil), cats’ tails (China), celery roots (Montreal), virility rind (Caribbean), wild bore quills (zoo), banana leaves (Murten), rubber snakes (Cincinnati)...

The Vegetative Nervous System
Museum Kunst Palast Düsseldorf, since 2006
The vegetative nervous system is a permanent installation in the 20 metre high entrance hall of the museum kunst palast. You can look at it from different levels.

Its ends branch out into pillars, railings, walls and ceilings where they join the body “museum”. They stimulate it and give the necessary impulses.

Unimpressed by will or order the vegetative nervous system (the autonomic nervous system) works autonomously in the body and takes decisions independently. Luckily - if human beings had to initiate the control of all the organs intellectually they would never have had the time to invent the refrigerator. Autonomous actions are the fertilizer of the inner garden.