OK, so these are not actual statues or sculptures, but it was too dark on Thursday last - at 11 am - to photograph "All in the Family", so you get what I like to call "inadvertent art" this week.
I had long marvelled at the bravery of this institution in having not one, but many little monuments to a late Afrika Korps and Wehrmacht luminary. Delightfully seditious, I thought, and a bit naughty: those open-topped, chipped stone-covered concrete cylinders scattered about University Avenue, each neatly labelled "ROMMEL", and obviously in memoriam of the Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel. And the fact that one could use them as refuse containers, too: at once a utilitarian and a profoundly deep statement on the rubbish-bin of history to which he has been consigned.
These nondescript beige bins are long gone; however, in their place I was pleased to notice these:
Just as beige, but striking in their arrangement: purportedly for more efficient recycling (divided into paper, plastic, bottles, etc.), but "Inadvertent Art" nonetheless - for several reasons.
First, the simple yet profound mathematical statement their lids make: two-dimensional geometric forms (square, oblong, equilaterial triangle, circle), juxtaposed like words in a brief yet highly meaningful message to an alien civilisation (quite appropriate for University Avenue, some SoJS might say, but no matter). Second, their mute messaging to those who use them every day: "we are more than receptacles, we have meaning"! Third, the fact that they are placed opposite the venerable Maths Block, on University Avenue: escapees from the stuffy halls of academe, into the world at large.
I call them "Acting Mathematica", and endeavour to use them every day. So should we all: such repetition may even bring reward, much as spinning a Buddhist prayer wheel does. It certainly wouldn't hurt.
