In 2019, the entrepreneur Christian Zott had a mobile work of art built in Unterammergau that almost split the place. After a long back and forth, the huge steel sculpture has to finally leave the village.
The fact that the “sighting” is repeatedly dismantled is actually part of the concept of the more than 32 meter high work of art made of 13 stacked steel cubes that can be walked on as a tower. Otherwise, “Sighting I” by Hildegard Rasthofer and Christian Neumaier in 2019 would not have been able to move on from Reithofen in the Erding district to Munich’s creative district and from there – numbered as “Sighting III” in the order in which they were built – to the sculpture garden of entrepreneur Christian Zott, who had already equipped his old home in Unterammergau with a brand new ensemble of hotel, restaurant and art gallery. But now the sighting has to go there for good in order to comply with the building regulations and to preserve the peace of the village. Zott sold the plant, it will be dismantled this Thursday.
Whether sighting III is dismantled or number five will no longer play a role in Unterammergau. Because the work had immediately caused offense in the village and had been vilified as an industrial chimney, as a metal phallus or simply as a “rusty trumpet”. It also found defenders in town, but it was only approved as a “flying construction” for a short time – and the municipal council didn’t want to get involved in more than that in 2020. So the sighting moved on to the Flossenbürg concentration camp memorial in the Upper Palatinate, before Zott had it set up again in Unterammergau in 2020 and again received no permanent approval. The 70-ton sighting can be dismantled within a day – in Unterammergau now probably forever.