29=42. Refusal Of The Afterimage: Memorial To Jan Zwartendijk
2017
Sign on pavement, press release
Site-specific intervention in front of Laisvės al. 29, Kaunas
.
PAULINA PUKYTĖ / Installations / Refusal Of The Afterimage
Jan Zwartendijk, Acting Dutch Consul in Lithuania in 1940, worked in 29 Laisvės Avenue in Kaunas. In July of 1940 he issued 2345 permits for persecuted Jews and their families to travel to Curacao, Dutch island in the Caribbean, thus saving their lives from the Nazis. The memorial is a temporary sign with the number 42 on the pavement in front of the building No 29. The sign reads: Look at the number for 42 seconds and then look at the wall. If the wall of No. 29 were plain, you would be able to see on it, for a few seconds, an afterimage of 42. But shiny green tiles reject the afterimage.
The non-existing memorial to the Righteous Among the Nations Jan Zwartendijk will remain on the façade of No. 29 forever as a refusal: in 2003 the owner of the building rejected the Kaunas Municipality’s request to place a commemorative plaque to the saviour of Jews, therefore the plaque had to be placed on house No. 42 Laisvės Avenue instead.”
If the Jews, running away from death, were able to dig a tunnel straight through the Earth, gravity would have taken them from Lithuania to Curacao on the other side of the world in just 42 minutes (Paul Cooper’s mathematically calculated “gravity train” effect).
In Kabbalistic tradition 42 is the number with which God creates the Universe.
“42” is the answer “to life, the universe and everything”, given to the hitchhikers through the galaxy by a computer called Deep Thought after seven and a half million years’ calculation.
In Egyptian Book of the Dead there are 42 questions asked of persons making their journey through Death. If they are able to give answers to all 42 questions, they can reach the ultimate goal of becoming a Star that gives light to the Universe.
42 is the angle for which we see a rainbow.
29=42. Refusal Of The Afterimage: Memorial To Jan Zwartendijk
2017
Sign on pavement, press release
Site-specific intervention in front of Laisvės al. 29, Kaunas
.