HA Schult, Art is Life | Action

Action Trash

The most important material used by HA Schult for his attacks against an impassive, and waning cultural institution is garbage. Garbage used as a material of refusal and provocation. Armin Zweite, 1974

If I were an artist educator, I would go with young people and walk the garbage heaps of industrialized civilization, because by destroying this order one breaks through its facade. Robert Jungk, 1973

HA Schult’s art is like a heavily loaded vaccination injection whose effects have not missed the mark regarding society’s awareness. Eberhard Roters, 1973

More and more artists are using trash not just as a material but also as a subject. Kim Levin, 2011

sub art Munich, 1968

Terra Extra Galerie Nächst St. Stephan, Vienna, 1969

Situation Schackstraße Munich, 1969

Unwelt Lenbachhaus Munich, 1974

Tribute to Beckenbauer Lenbachhaus Munich, 1974

Tribute to Beckett Staatstheater Stuttgart, 1974

Venezia Vive Piazza San Marco, Venice, 1976

Crash New York – documenta 6, 1977

Trash Concert Ruhrdistrict, Germany, 1978

Now Washington Street, New York, N.Y., 1983
Collection Annette and Peter Nobel, Zurich

Trash City National Studios, New York, N.Y., 1983

Broken Dreams Hertie Department Store, Bonn, 1984

Bonn, 1984
Broken Dreams

Art AttackMuseum Ludwig, Cologne, 1980

Attack against ArtGorleben, 2004

EndzeitAtze Brauner Studios, Berlin, 1991

EndzeitIngrid Caven, Johannes Willms, 1991

Trash People. In twenty containers they roam around the world like refugees of the consumer society. The Trash People are images of ourselves. We produce trash and we will become trash. Today's Coca-Cola bottle is the Roman archeological found of tomorrow.

The pyramids of the present are the garbage dumps. On them the consumer society lets grow the blossoms to flowers of civilization. The children of Coca-Cola and Vietnam, of Red Bull and Beirut skip 6000 years of history.

The poor collect the trash of the rich, the more poor men collect the trash of the poor. And the most poor men dig a hole in the Sahara for warming up with the hungry fire of the garbage. Over all is the black sound cloud of barking hell dogs. At the end it will be covered by sand and a year later a gulf hotel will be constructed there. HA Schult, 1999

Roman Amphitheatre
Xanten, 1996

Trash People in Paris La Défense, 1999

Red Square People Moscow, 1999

Great Wall People Young Chinese artists, 2001

Great Wall People Chinese photographers, 2001

Great Wall People Performance by He Chengyao, 2001

Great Wall People HA Schult, Karl Ludwig Schweisfurth, 2001

Great Wall People Jin Shan Ling, 2001

Great Wall People Beijing, Jin Shan Ling, 2001

Trash DanceBeijing Opera, 2001

Pyramids PeopleCairo, Giza, 2002

Pyramids People Cairo, Giza, 2002

Matterhorn People Zermatt, Stellisee, 2003

Grand Place People Brussels, 2005

Stille Tage in Gorleben Saltmine, 2004

Slum, Palais Herberstein
Neue Galerie Graz, Austria, 2006

Cologne People
Cologne, Cathedral Square, 2006

Cologne People
Cologne, Cathedral Square, 2006
1,200,000 visitors

Cologne People
Cologne, Cathedral Square, 2006

Roman People Rome, Piazza del Popolo, 2007
2,200,000 visitors

Roman People Rome, Piazza del Popolo, 2007

Barcelona, Plaza Real, 6:00 a.m., 2007

Barcelona, Plaza Real, 10:00 a.m., 2007

Longyearbyen Tuesday, 3/15/2011, 2:00 p.m.

Street into Advent Valley Tuesday, 3/15/2011, 5:00 p.m.

Street into Advent Valley Wednesday, 3/16/2011, 10:00 a.m.

Street into Advent Valley Thursday, 3/17/2011, noon

The Violin, Anna Zlotovskaya, 5:00 p.m.

Arctic PeopleAdvent Valley, 2011

Trash For decades HA Schult has managed to stimulate public awareness using images he has experienced. He stages topics in public places, which are normally edged away from the public. His art work is always directly related to the location where it is shown. He confronts the feudalism, which is manifested in gigantic triumphant buildings with the pauperism of the exploited workers who built them. He pays tribute to the unnamed soldiers and slaves and not to the heroes and sovereigns.

Places become no places, the living become the dead and the dead become the living dead. The glamour of history will be a dread, welfare will become a horror. In the name of clarification there will be a dual occupation, namely the re-entry of the invasion and the return of reality. HA Schult redefines places, sites and buildings that have already been named by the public.

The living dead, the depraved in the shadow, return to the light in HA Schult's art. The unnamed people who have helped others to glory and to the glamour of the history, they have build: the palaces and pyramids they have cleaned up the garbage and they were treated like rubbish. They are the victims who were historically considered to be trash by the offenders.

Now they will be rehabilitated. They will be presented right in front of the historic locations of power and glamour they built. People made of trash.

We live in an era of trash. We produce trash and we become trash and we, the majority, are always treated like trash. By showing the people who were made into trash by history and cruelty, the spectacle of horror becomes a mirror. The shocking wounds, which were inflicted on the people and other living beings become visible in an impressive picture, which returns from the zone of suppression, from the desert of reality. It shows us reality like a desert populated by zombies: Trash!

Peter Weibel, 2006

Einkehr in Telgte
Telgte, Germany, 2011

Colaman, Telgte
Collection Haus der Geschichte, Bonn