All photos here. Phil and I are avid watchers of TED Talks (in particular the shorter 10-15 minutes ones) which are often inspirational, witty, hilarious, thought-provoking, sad, etc etc etc. After seeing Candy Chang’s talk on the “Before I die” project she launched in her hometown of New Orleans, Phil decided that it would be a fun project to do the same thing in Baden.
Thanks mainly due to dedicated friends, the project came to be. Martin provided the four wall-pieces, Michael planned the structure (a cool cube), and organized the stencils with which we sprayed on the “Before I die”. Roger covered everything to do with design, and my in-laws allowed us to spend an evening spraying away in their backyard. It all came together, and from 9 to 11 August the wall ended up being in Baden. We would have left it up longer, but since the city of Baden (who one must note was extremely easy to work with!) charged us 50 CHF per day we kept it to a weekend.
Seeing the wall go up was fun, but what followed was the truly beautiful part. People of all walks of life and ages strolled up, took a moment to grasp the concept, and then either spent a moment reading other people’s comments or added their own. Everyone had something to add, and some people spent lots of time just reading each side of the wall from top to bottom. As the night progressed, the comments degressed, but even young kids with a bottle of vodka took the time to set the bottle on the floor and write something on the wall.
We documented our little project in a mini-site as part of the larger project, and it even made the local news. Thank you to Michael Schmied, Martin Sekinger, Roger Fehlbaum, Manuel Weibel, Amelia Meier, Roman Hofer, Samuel Hug, Martin Schwab, David Waldmeier, Karin Huber, and Peter & Lucia Meier. Also, this would all have not been possible without the help of the company Richi (Raphi & Team) for providing the walls, and helping with the setup. Without them we would have been extremely lost, and the wall would have probably collapsed on the first night.
