Fangen Sie an! My first attempt at saving the world
Fangen Sie an! means Start now! and is my first attempt at saving the world. I am fighting to protect all 30 of the human rights detailed in the UN’s Universal Declaration. Fangen Sie an! is a non-violent call to action in the form of a book as well as a tear-off calendar covering a year’s 365 days on 740 pages. It is also the beginning of an interface with action. Fangen Sie an! is very efficient as a book that calls for action but it does not set down any rules, does not provide any ready-made answers and does not call for revolution. This book is not intended to be an incentive to action but rather is the action itself. Every day on the calendar contains an outline of one of the 30 human rights and a corresponding story. In my process I refer to this system as “projecting.” Each of the stories is as unique as each person, appears for one day only and is true.
The center of each page is perforated from top to bottom. The front and back of each page has the same contents. Owners are encouraged to tear the pages with the human rights and the stories from the calendar and to drop them wherever they may choose. Creativity knows no boundaries – so far I have inserted pages from the calendar in books, notebooks, other people’s jacket or pants pockets, in the frozen food department of my grocery store and into mailboxes and I have even shoved them under doors. This makes it possible to reach various groups of people and to disseminate information on human rights throughout the world in a very subtle way – a viral, intriguing concept for communication.
