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Wood stumps, paper sheets (7 stumps, variable sizes)

Over the lime trees, Über den Linden

The city of Berlin is destroyed, the lime trees that gave their name to Unter den Linden blasted by the explosions and littering the ground. The women of Berlin collect and clean the bricks, passing Über den Linden with their loads.

The violent storm of December 1999 uprooted and destroyed millions of trees across Europe, including a few lime trees in a neighbouring garden. It was the stumps of these trees that were moulded to serve as models for the reconstituted stumps here.

Newspaper clippings taken from twenty different countries were printed on acid-free paper with “solid light” inks and then cut into the shape of lime tree leaves.

The leaves are arranged in line with the position they would occupy in space, sparse around the edge and denser towards the trunk.

The lease to the cabinetmaker’s workshop had been transferred along with its clientele and a stock of thousands of pieces of wood of different kinds and sizes (when no longer repairable, antique furniture made from rare or extinct woods is dismantled and the pieces are kept for use in restoration).

Today all the wood has gone back into the stumps, just leaving the clientele