With small monuments and large banners on viaducts, lonely people who died in Eindhoven are commemorated. An initiative of artists’ collective Ploeg-E, which in this way calls attention to loneliness in society. The banners, which hung on two viaducts on the Kennedylaan this week, have since been removed, but the monuments are still in various places in the city.
Along the entrance of the parking garage on Stadhuisplein in Eindhoven is a small unobtrusive monument. It is a door with a mat on which a text is written.
According to initiator Corinne Heyrman, loneliness, and therefore also lonely dying, is a major social problem in the city. “The idea is that a monument is made with a front door and a poetic text on a doormat. I write poems about loneliness and looking at each other.”
Corinne believes it is important to show that with those lonely funerals we have lost us: “That front door symbolizes that we all have a front door that we can call and look at each other. The neighbor you may know that it is also lonely.”
The monuments are in places that have a link with the deceased. For example, in the Stadswandelpark there is a monument for someone who lived on the street. At the DAF Museum there is one for someone who loved trucks a lot. ”
The monuments are consciously kept small: “It is a kind of small memory of a deceased. Maybe not everyone will notice it and that is not bad either. But if you notice it, you read that memory and I think that is especially important. That you can think about that person by something small. If we don’t know it, I don’t know them yourself.
That the monuments do not immediately stand out, it appears at the entrance of the parking garage, where there is one. A woman who wants to walk into the garage has not seen the monument himself and no idea what it stands for.
She thinks it is a great initiative. “The monument is for the Polish homeless Adam. He ended up on the street and eventually died here. You will try to get as close to someone as possible. To commemorate the person and write something for it,” says Corinne.
It doesn’t have to be something very big for her: “It is more something that you notice and that you can think about. And if you walk past it, it is symbolic for loneliness. Because we often pass by.”
Earlier this week the large banners with poetic texts were already noticed. Motorists on Kennedylaan, the busy approach of Eindhoven, could hardly miss it.
Normally they are banners that have been hung to protest against something, as happened in the coronation time. Now it was suddenly a message about loneliness in poetry form.
The canvases, which were hung without permission, have since been removed, by whom is unclear. Ploeg-e plans to demand attention more often with banners.
