Unsere Arbeit Macht Uns Frei, 2005
Kunstraum Bethanien, Berlin, Germany
Paint on wall, vandalism
In collaboration with Darius Jones

During World War II, “The slogan, "Arbeit macht frei," (Work Makes Free) was placed at the entrances to a number of concentration camps; not as a mockery, not even literally as a false promise that those who worked to exhaustion would eventually be released but rather as a kind of mystical declaration that self-sacrifice in the form of endless labor does in itself bring a kind of spiritual freedom. Our version, which was placed above the exit of our exhibition space, reads, “Unsere Arbeit Macht Uns Frei” (Our Work Makes Us Free). We intended to take the sentence hostage and use it literally in relation to the construction worker costumes we would wear in order to install unsanctioned sculptures in the city. Also, we knew this would provoke immediate criticism and spontaneous debate. I was happy to see the work vandalized by a member of the public a month after Darius Jones and I had returned to New York.