The Commons

Public art project: custom campaign for billboards and mobile advertising platforms, permanent public sculpture installations, 2020-

The Commons is a poetic and provocative campaign in public spaces encouraging reflection on the nature of shared spaces, site-specific and evolving over time.

Societies are created in public spaces; they form a topography of social and political participation. Advertising also comprises an influential infrastructure in public space, not only along streets and squares but also in the digital realm, disseminating marketing campaigns to often unwilling audiences. Mobile devices advance the intertwining of analogue and digital spaces, such that we increasingly exist simultaneously in the inextricable intersection of both. As part of broader discourses around digitalisation and the attention economy, or social cohesion and exchange beyond filter bubbles, The Commons questions the commercial use of shared, public space. Do the public spaces we inhabit reflect our priorities, realities, and values -- and how could public space be transformed for social good?

Originally commissioned by the Culture Department of the City of Munich, The Commons comprised an ephemeral campaign for billboards in downtown Munich in summer 2020 and on Instagram (@TheCommonsMUC). The project has since expanded into a series and was shown again in Munich in winter 2020/21, in Los Angeles in early 2022, and in both Munich and Duesseldorf in summer 2024.

The first permanent public sculpture installation of The Commons was unveiled in the Schussenpark, Ravensburg in September, 2025. The nine text sculptures in powder-coated aluminium, under the title Ein Liebesbrief an oeffentliche Gruenflaechen (A Love Letter to Public Green Spaces), merge seamlessly with the landscape architecture of the park in an homage to intermingled living in shared spaces.

In 2026, a new permanent sculpture will be installed in a public sculpture garden on the Insel Grafenwerth, an island in the Rhine River near Bonn, thanks to a commission by the Kummer-Vanotti Stiftung and their Environment and Art Award.