On the day of the elections for the new Scottish Parliament Germ, a one metre square slab of marble marked with edited extracts from the Representation of the People Act 1983, was sited in George Square in front of Glasgow’s City Chambers. This temporary monument listed those groups of individuals excluded by law from the democratic process. The title of the work refers to the potential germination and spread of democracy through the continual questioning of the limits and institutions of representation.
'Greece is for us a germ, neither a “model”, nor one
specimen among others, but a germ.' Cornelius Castoriadis
‘A representative public sphere is representative insofar as it involves exclusions.’ Alexander Kluge
Ross Birrell and Dominic Hislop, Germ (Marble and Ink). George Square, Glasgow. 6 May 1999.
In ancient Athens – the birthplace of modern democracy – the laws, which represented the will of the people (polis), were engraved in marble and publicly exhibited for all to see. This practice indicated the importance of the public realm (agora) in the concept of democratic government. Castoriadis noted that, ‘General participation in politics entails the creation for the first time in history of a public space.’1 Democracy, in its purest sense, is a dialogue conducted in public space. Nevertheless, ancient Athens was itself built upon slavery and exclusion, a fact which cannot be erased in a consideration of the inaugural moment of Western democracy. Today, democracy remains grounded upon the systematic and institutionalised exclusion of certain individuals and groups from public space.
1 Cornelius
Castoriadis, ‘The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy’,
Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy: Essays in Political Philosophy, Edited
by David Ames Curtis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 112.