Exercise that proposes a different kind of physical engagement.

This is a citizens running club that exercised together at the Weimar Gauforum, as an active proposal for the re-negotiation of this site. The Gauforum is a monumental Nazi complex built in the center of Weimar, Germany in 1936. The site has been preserved as an acknowledgment of the past, but the city has banned public use of the central plaza.

The Gauforum Running Club looks to question. How does the city and its residents deal with the history of such a site? If the Gauforum is never opened to enable a new history, will it forever be held by fascist ideologies? Could active, open, public use of the Gauforum be a legitimate approach for reconciling history in a more civic way?

The Running Club suggests a quiet but persistent force that resists the dominant forces of control within the Gauforum’s history. It is not a goal oriented fitness regime, driven to achieve a physical perfection akin with the Aryan dream of a master race. This disparate group of amateur runners will never become a mob, rather they are a curious group of outsiders taking action.

This action is not a spectacle; instead it quietly suggests a state of alterity for the location and the community that develops between runners and passers-by. Though this action may lack the immediacy of something more spectacular, it holds the potential for long-term influence, instigated and experienced by the residents. The idea silently invades the space and integrates itself into society as a different kind of political, historical negotiation.