the mountain / der Berg
Aktion und Installation 2007
Hitz ond Brand Appenzell/CH


The mountain, a force in plain sight, stands also for “potential renewal of substance” (Beuys). A mighty system of nature with the perpetual law of growing and decaying, that shows - in an allegedly stable copy-and-paste presence - quite plainly the impossibility of conserving, storing and copying.
For this installation I built a wheel with the negative relief of the Säntis. A wheel, fuelled by two motors – a kind of rudimentary time machine – , mills over milk powder, thus creating for an instant the Säntis mountain range.

Mountain material: wheel roller with negative relief made of wood (wheel diameter 2m, wheel width 1.4m), 2t milk powder, 2 rope winches with motors, counterbalances, lighting

Mountain range: length 7.5m, height 1.5m