1977
During documenta 6 (1977) at Kassel, Neuhaus implanted his sound installation as a natural part of the environment, as an almost imperceptible, but all the more incisive action upon the wood in Karlsaue Park. Wandering through the sprawling park from the wood and steel paths by George Trakas to the rock piece by Robert Morris, one had to cross a small wood in which one suddenly heard a click-like sound which repeated itself. It seemed so natural that only a few people heard it for what it was, an artificially produced sound projected from speakers hidden in the trees. It represented something which had almost ceased to exist_the sound reminiscent of the quiet snapping of a twig, heard even where there was no one. Art transports our imagination back into a reality which has developed in a different direction. That installation was neither a gesture of politico-ideological denunciation, nor was it an emotional and merely reproductive idealization of nature. Rather, it remains the gesture of an alert artist who expects receptive hearers. It is completely different from the perverse falseness with which hackneyed feelings and phoney cosiness are these days sometimes evoked in postmodern metropolitan hotels (it was in Hiroshima that I once heard 'natural' birdsong coming from a speaker hidden in a plastic birdcage).
For his sound installation in Cologne, Max Neuhaus proceeds as he did in Kassel, adding a sound which might be expected by passers-by. But he does not only change the aural space, creating an imaginary aural structure which cannot possibly originate from an 'ordinary' bell. He also creates a new sound. At the test-ringing, the most diverse reactions could be observed: many passers-by walked on unperturbed. A few, wondering, looked up to the steeples, from which, however, the bell-like sound evidently and audibly did not originate. In one particular spot, however, near the two chestnut trees in front of the church-wall, a clearly discernible aural edifice with an invisible source was created. Thus, the hearers gained a new awareness of this little park, feeling it anew and perceiving its space, sounds and atmosphere in a new way.
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