On steel, flush with the ground in three locations around Zurich, is a 2007 art installation by the American artist Lawrence Weiner, in three languages:

In English at Bellevue:

BALL BEARINGS OR ROUND STONES

MADE TO ROLL

OUT OF WHAT THERE IS 

In German at Limmatplatz: 

KUGELLAGER ODER RUNDE STEINE

ZUM ROLLEN GEBRACHT 

AUSSERHALB WAS IST 

And in Italian at Helvetiaplatz:

CUSCINETTI A SFERA O CIOTTOLI LEVIGATI 

FATTI ROTOLARE 

AL DI FUORI DA CIÒ CHE È

Each statement ends, in a pronounced and intentional way,  with the word IS/IST/È - so much so that the words themselves feel like an unstoppable ball moving, gaining in power, to that open end - out of what there is. 

Ball bearings resemble something found in nature - “round stones” -  but are then engineered to serve a very particular purpose - controlled motion in machinery  - but they have the potential to roll out into the evermore without stopping, without rails, without guides, without any structure but the topography of the earth. 

The American Lawrence Weiner (1942-), from New York, used language as art itself, creating a portable construction, that remains in the viewer’s mind always. What there is. “Once you know about a work of mine you own it. There’s no way I can climb inside somebody’s head and remove it,” Weiner said. 

Appearing in three languages, in a multilingual city, the Ball Bearings installation can expand its reach, house itself in more people’s heads.  “If I could determine sculpture by the use of language, he said, “it would allow itself to move from culture to culture.” 

In Italian, the word for the bearing, cuscinetto, sounds like “little pillow,” the word softening the motion of objects, smoothing their journey through the grind of machinery. 

“If you can place a piece of stone and a piece of wood and you can put them in relation to the the flow of life,” Weiner said in an interview, “there is quite a bit there for people to use to be able to find their own relation to the world.” This small change to our common landscape opens an enormous conduit to what lies beyond what there is.