In 2004 we were one of the recipients of the Marion Ermer Preis.The price came with an exhibition at the Neue Museum Weimar, in Weimar Germany, which in 1869 had been opened as one of the very first German museum buildings. For the show we formalized research results surrounding a 10 Acre lot we had bought in ebay in North Eastern Nevada, site unseen and matched scale and layout of our models to the specifics of the museum. Results were “Airstrip for Houseplanes,” a paper tape wall drawing of the Enola Gay Hangar situated on a former military airbase in Wendover, Utah, and “Bridge Experiment #2” – a beam bridge construction that was inspired by finding ways to “overpass” a public dirt road that crossed our 10 Acre desert lot right in the middle. The beam bridge was designed and constructed by Peter Benz, who used as main building material empty beer crates, that we could temporarily lend from a beer distributor and return for further use after the show. What for us connected “Airstrip for Houseplanes” with “Bridge Experiment #2” was something related to the “Berliner Luftbrücke,” also known as the the Berlin airlift, which the Western Allies carried out from 26 June 1948–30 September 1949 to bring supplies to the people of West Berlin during a blockade when the Soviet Union blocked railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control.
To commemorate this event a three part monument was designed by Eduard Ludwig. One part of the curved concrete structure was revealed in 1951 in the former airport Berlin Tempelhof, two others were installed in 1985 and 1988 near the airport in Frankfurt where the American bombers loaded with supplies and food took off for Berlin. Whenever we left Germany to fly to U.S. we made sure to look for the monument near the airport in Frankfurt, it somehow symbolized one of the many connections between Germany and the U.S.