and then a day later…

Originally posted on www.droog.com

The day after the official opening of Droog Event 2: Urban Play, Stefan Sagmeister’s graphic piece of art turned out to be completely gone!

The work, called ‘Obsessions make my life worse and my work better’, was built from 300.000 cents and laid out by a hundred and fifty volunteers during eight days at the Waagdragerhof, Amsterdam. On Sunday night, local residents noticed two persons sweeping up the coins and so they warned the police. The police came on site and put all the coins in a big bag, just to be on the safe side, and gone was the work of art! It was all in the game that this project wouldn’t stay, but that the police…

The Dutch newspapers picked up the news pretty well, with headliners such as ‘Police accidentally destroys piece of art’ (Algemeen Dagblad) ‘Police sweeps away coins art’ (Parool). The police stated the following:

‘21-09-2008 / art project cleared / Groenhoedenveem
Sunday morning the 21st of September, the police unintenionally cleared and secured a piece of art exisiting of 1 euro cents, after a report of copper theft. Police officers came across a large amount of coins spread all over the park. To them it was unclear who owned the money and why the coins were spread over the park. In collaboration with the calamity service of the municipality they have collected the approximately 260,000 pennies and stored them at a police office. Meanwhile it turned out that the police knew of this art project, but that the information had not been passed on to the police officers on duty. Meanwhile the police has returned the coins.’ (Translated from original police statement, 21-09-2008, bureau of communication of the Amsterdam police.)

Well, well…

Check out this link for some great footage on the Sagmeister project, published by one of the residents of the Waagdragerhof: www.flickr.com