In 2022, we were invited to join the resistance movement “Save the Fechenheim Forest” (Rettet den Fechenheimer Wald).
The city of Frankfurt planned to clear this small but precious woodland area in order to connect the final section of the A66 motorway, which ends there, with the planned Riederwald Tunnel, a project that is scheduled for construction from 2026 onward. The urban climatic consequences of this intervention were largely disregarded.
It is a particularly controversial infrastructure project within the city itself, as it represents an attempt to manage the already existing and expected future increase in road traffic rather than to question it, reduce it, or pursue more sustainable alternatives—as would be appropriate in our time.
Through our solidarity art intervention
RAUMSCHIFF FECHENHEIMER WALD – DEPARTURE INTO NEW WORLDS,
we sought to draw greater public attention to the threatened forest and its significance.
We approached the city’s art academy, the Städel Museum, and the Frankfurt Art Association, asking whether they would be willing to publicly support the preservation of the forest and assist us in transforming the woodland into an enchanted forest together with local people, activists, and art students.
The idea was to install numerous small, unusual artworks throughout the forest—similar to our own intervention—in order to create a field of artistic attention and make the threatened woodland visible through art.
Yet these institutions, which seemed almost predestined to engage with such a project, withdrew from the initiative. They remain dependent on the goodwill of their financial supporters and public authorities, whose approval they do not wish to jeopardise.
The press came, and anyone reading some of the resulting reports quickly recognises a dismissive and even hostile attitude toward both the important resistance movement and the role of art within it.
This is revealing.
Here, too, profound change is urgently needed.
