The Meaning of the Earth describes an almost unknown revolution that took place in London the 1970s. A revolution where a bloody power struggle raged for many years before its decisive battle ended with a tremendous sacrifice. But no lives were lost in this revolution, just as it was unmarked by rebellious pathos and public calls to violence. Nor did it intervene in contemporary society. Instead it toppled a regime internalised in western individuals. It led to the death of the decrepit and irretrievably dialectically animated spirit that had set the historical revolutions in motion, inspired them and drove them on. It ended too the Christian-influenced and increasingly secular salvation history, and opened a new evolutionary chapter.

Its two revolutionaries, Gilbert & George, emerge not unscathed but nonetheless victorious from this inner power struggle. Wolf Jahn's text tells of their world revolution of the soul in the twentieth century and its fruitful results in the form of a new creation and anthropogenesis.

About the Authors

Wolf Jahn: Born in Stuttgart in 1955, he currently works as a freelance writer. Over the past forty years he has studied and written extensively about the works of Gilbert & George.

Gilbert & George: Since they met at St Martin's School of Art in 1967 and proclaimed themselves 'living sculptures', Gilbert & George have been making art that continuously asks us to question what it is that makes us human.