Ein neues Panorama für Remagen

Thomas Huber has for many years been concerned with construction billboards. These are always visions that correspond to the actual conditions on site.
For the Riverside Sculpture Park in Remagen, Huber created two such building billboards and placed them by the landing piers of the Nixe ferry, which operates between Erpel and Remagen. The piers serve as a replacement for the destroyed bridge at Remagen. The picture billboard on the Remagen river bank shows a panorama of Erpel developed by Huber, while a corresponding picture of Remagen’s newly designed promenade could originally be seen on the Erpel river bank. Both images are part of his utopian vision, for which he designs his ideal city with hotels, retirement homes, broadcasting companies, museums and burial chambers.
In 2006, Erpel’s local council decided to dismantle the Redesign of the Remagen Promenade billboard on their side of the river.

Removal of the building signboard Neugestaltung der Promenade von Remagen

The pictorial building signboard Ein neues Panorama für Remagen (»A new panorama for Remagen«) on the Remagen side is still in existence on the Rhine promenade in Remagen. The pictorial building signboard Neugestaltung der Promenade von Remagen (»Redesign of the Remagen promenade«) on the Erpel side was dismantled on 28 June 2006 following a resolution by the village council of Erpel dated May 2006. The five-year display period for which permission was granted initially was not extended.

The resolution was preceded by repeated criticism voiced by the residents of Erpel. They felt that Thomas Huber's vision Ein neues Panorama für Remagen was disparaging. In their opinion the pictorial building signboard disfigured the historic view of the village. Discussions that took place beside the pictorial building signboard in Remagen about the supposed new planning of Erpel in the near or distant future were a repeated source of irritation. Was it possible that this »building project« might even be realised?

Huber's deliberate confusion of reality and pictorial vision thus created new realities. Ein neues Panorama für Remagen, the view criticised by the citizens of Erpel, is still on view on the Remagen side. And by contrast, the version accepted by the residents of Erpel – Neugestaltung der Promenade von Remagen – is tucked away in an art depot.

Thomas Huber born 955 in Zurich, lives and works in Berlin.