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HIKOHKI GUMO
 

A SKYWARD-REACHING QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE

An 8mm-thick piece of flax cord hangs from a sack lying outside on the ground or on the floor of an at least 10m-high room. A clutter of 47 3-metre long and 45mm-thick ash-wood poles, tapered at both ends, lie strewn all around. In the midst of the clutter, three poles roped together with flax cord at their centres rise above the sack to form a tripod. HEINZ climbs up the tripod and lingers a moment, squatting on the intersection where the three poles meet. Leaning down from his perch, he picks up the pole lying closest to him on the ground and tugs the flax cord from the sac from which he cuts a 1.5m length. He then fixes the pole vertically to one of the tripod’s skyward pointing legs and straps another pole from the heap to it, thus connecting the tripod leg to the ground. Propped up with one pole bound steadfastly to another, a structure gradually unfolds to form a tower reaching for the sky.



HEINZ

proves himself to be an excellent climber as he glides up and down in his labyrinth of poles, and with dexterity and surefootedness, over and again he tests the towers’ structure and its strength as it progresses upwards from the ground. HEINZ interrupts his work three times to eat an apple, and by the third pause the tower has reached its peak. Although every tower ever built may differ in form, towers not yet built and those erected in the past all obey the same enduring principle. On the day on which the ultimate tower will be built, HEINZ will go on upwards from its peak. In the meantime, while waiting for that day to come he patiently detaches pole from pole, leans them on the tripod and throws the cord on a pile beside the tower. A few hours later, once HEINZ regains the ground and walks away, all that’s left is a heap of cord and a collection of ash-wood poles stacked together to form a cone.
Translation: Andreas Flückiger


Julian Bellini performs HEINZ BAUT in 2014
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