Marco Bruzzone & Patrick Tuttofuoco
To Mistake An Empty Place For A Square (… jingle all the way )
20. August – 26. August 2012

Sunday, August 26, 2012, 5 p.m.
Neumarkt & Kunstverein Arnsberg

The Italian artists Marco Bruzzone and Patrick Tuttofuoco will be showing the installation "To mistake an empty place for a square" at Neumarkt in Arnsberg-Altstadt on Sunday, August 26, from 5 pm.

Karl Friedrich Schinkel's office designed the Neumarkt in Arnsberg at the beginning of the 19th century as the center of the new Prussian district. The square is framed by a neoclassical church, administrative and town houses, as well as the current Arnsberg tourist office and art association. There has been no market on the square for a long time and there is an underground parking garage beneath the square. Cars and buses drive around the Neumarkt in a traffic circle, isolating the square as an island during rush hour. Despite its central location, infrastructure and historic ambience, Neumarkt is mostly empty and is only occasionally used for events. The square is traditionally at its best at Christmas. This is when Neumarkt really comes alive and fulfills its original purpose as a center, marketplace and popular meeting place.

Not far from Neumarkt is a factory that clatters day and night in contrast to the quiet life of the old town. The Reno de Medici paper mill processes waste paper and produces cardboard from it. The contrast between emptiness, productivity and nature is decisive for Bruzzone and Tuttofuoco, who, following a visit to the factory, have designed a unique site-specific art project for Neumarkt.

Bruzzone and Tuttofuoco want to challenge the potential of the site and see Neumarkt as a place of encounter and action again for a day. They invite us to a kind of exhibition, festival and Christmas market at the same time. On the one hand, they combine the unusually quiet square with the active production of the paper mill and create dozens of Christmas tree sculptures from Arnsberg cardboard. On the other hand, they combine the energy and creativity of many young people from the town, who are invited to take an active part in the project.

The project consists of the exhibition of many colorful paper tree sculptures, which are designed by the artists and their young helpers and presented like a Christmas tree sale. From the window of the Kunstverein Arnsberg, located on Neumarkt, you will hear an artistic interpretation of a well-known Christmas carol (the subtitle of the campaign is "... Jingle all the way"). The song was produced for the campaign by the musician Baby Fox. Whether the artists succeed in transforming and enlivening the square for a Sunday depends to a large extent on the active cooperation of the people of Arnsberg, who are not only acting as assistants but also co-authors of the campaign.

The campaign is organized by Kunstverein Arnsberg and is kindly supported by Reno de Medici Arnsberg GmbH and Spedition Gössling.