Ludwig Vandevelde
Silence, - I’m not hearing anything!

The wall surrounding the cemetery of the parish church in the Limburger district, Heel, actually looks like a desecrated gravestone. In 1993 Ludwig Vandevelde furnished thirteen meters of the cemetery’s wall, which is located on the Catualiumplein, with seven pairs of bronze ears and a large number of bronze letters and punctuation marks. The latter serve to spell out the sentence ‘‘Stilte, - ik hoor niets!’’ (“Silence, - I’m not hearing anything!�) , which reappears on the wall five times.

The bronze text is hard to distinguish on its dark brown concrete carrier. Furthermore the letters are placed in a random order so that, even after one realizes this, it is hard to reconstruct the sentence. Vandevelde wanted to activate the viewer. The humble character of the work suitably matches the contemplative atmosphere that is exuded by the cemetery and the overall religious building style. Moreover the sentence expresses the ambivalence of the surroundings as detected by the artist: a sense of peace prevails despite the fact that the cemetery is a public space in the heart of Heel. The sentence also contains a similar paradox. Is someone asking for silence in order to hear better or is someone simply acknowledging that there is silence and thus nothing to hear?
(Bart Krieger)