AN eyewitness to an accident in which a forerunner of Dreamspace became airborne, injuring five people, has spoken of his disbelief that tragedy struck twice.

Twenty years almost to the day before the disaster in Chester-le-Street, Maurice Agis’ earlier artwork, Colourspace, was dragged into the air by a freak gust of wind and dashed against flagpoles in the spa resort of Travemunde, on the North German coast.

Wolfgang Maxwitat was one of the first to reach the scene and the horror he witnessed has stayed with the veteran press photographer ever since.

Mr Maxwitat arrived only minutes after Colourspace had been picked up by a strong wind during a freak storm on July 29, 1986, and captured the scene in 75 dramatic black and white photographs that eerily mirror those taken when Dreamspace broke from its moorings and crashed into a CCTV camera pole at Chester-le-Street.

In the German incident, five people were injured as they fell from the structure when it made its terrifying journey through the air.

Mr Maxwitat, photographer with the Lubecker Nachrichten newspaper, said: “When I heard that something similar happened in Chester-le- Street, I honestly have to say I was very surprised.

“I think it’s very sad that people should have had to suffer after going out to enjoy a piece of art.

“They shouldn’t have had to die for a simple pleasure.”

Colourspace, which was substantially smaller than its later incarnation, Dreamspace, had been installed on the Brugmannpark – a park next to the Maritime Hotel, in Travemunde, near Lubeck.

Mr Maxwitat said when he arrived he saw the structure had been carried by the wind across the beach promenade.

He said: “Due to a sudden blustering wind, the tent came loose from its moorings and actually lifted off.

“It was secured only by wooden pegs.”

He said: “There were several people in the tent, who were injured. But luckily there were no fatalities.

“I was able to get really close because at that point the danger was over, because nothing was left of the object.

It looked really awful.

“Everywhere there were torn-off scraps of material, an air ambulance and three to four ambulances, where the casualties were being given medical attention.

“The accident is one of those events that I will always remember.

“As a press photographer, I have been to several big traffic accidents, sometimes with fatalities, but the tragedy in Travemunde is one that stuck in my mind.”

In a statement made by Mr Agis to German police, he said the structure, which had been secured by straps to 34 stakes in the ground, had passed fire, safety and stability tests and had also been inspected before its exhibitions.

He said he would use a loud speaker to alert visitors to get out of the structure when the wind was up.

Mr Agis, who was not present on the day of the German incident, said the gale force storm had come as a surprise to everyone.

Space and light – the artist’s view

MAURICE Agis, who describes himself as an author of spaces, has been taking various forms of Dreamspace all over the world since it was first displayed in Copenhagen in 1996.

Agis first started working on interactive public art in the Sixties, after training at London’s St Martin’s School of Art.

He became disillusioned with the established art world and wanted to liberate his work – making it accessible to everyone.

In the Sixties and Seventies, he worked with fellow artist Peter Jones creating Spaceplace installations.

In the Eighties, he went solo with Colourspace, a combination of 49 identical units that created “an ever-shifting infinity of asymmetric contrasts and abstract geometric variants of juxtaposed colour and light”.

Dreamspace was built on his ideas of form, colour, line, light, space, sound and movement. He created the first Dreamspace for Copenhagen as European Cultural Capital 1996.

He said: “Space is not something you contemplate, it is something you experience. Time is not something you experience, it is something you contemplate.”

Speaking once of of Dreamspace, he said: “If Dreamspace has any significance, it is the attempt to establish a work that gives a meaning to the word unification.

“Human beings have so many things in common.

My work is an action where citizens can meet and interact to develop a consciousness of this reality.”