Monument for, by and from inhabitants of the Dutch city Leeuwarden.
Fries Museum assigned an art project to Martijn Engelbregt about architecture in Leeuwarden. Engelbregt delivered 45.000 bricks door to door, one for each house in Leeuwarden. 45.000 bricks weigh over 80.000 kilos, which is enough to build three big detached houses.
45.000 bricks weigh over 80.000 kilos, which is enough to build three big detached houses. The bricks were cleaned at a social working place. After cleaning, the bricks were wrapped in colourful paper and a manual was added.
33 homeless delivered the bricks at every house in Leeuwarden.
Anonymous rumours were spread: People claimed that bricks would be used to damage the town instead of building a monument together. Based upon these vague rumours the major of Leeuwarden decided to put a stop to the delivery. Over 10.000 bricks were handed out by that time.
Therefore Engelbregt placed all the left over bricks on the square as a colourful sculpture. People were invited to collect their brick at the square so they could place it straight away.
Watched by a big audience and a lot of media attention Puk and Hiele placed the first brick together.
Bas was the first one to write a text on his brick, he did so in order to honour his sister who passed away a year ago. A lot of people followed his example, they wrote all kind of messages for their city on the brick.
After eight days of building the building area was cleared so that the result of 7.708 hands working together was reveiled.
After five months the GIANT Monument for Leeuwarden was demolished.
What remains is the memory and almost 4.000 portraits of people working together on a monument.