As for the carrier bag, the container: this is surely the Kunsthalle itself. "Archival Ramblings", the exhibition which runs alongside and even around "Body machine location", gives a special weight to this idea that the space, the building, the institution itself is the net in which Karuti's works are gathered and displayed. Herding sticks in the gallery. Wood collected from the hills in Bern. That river - the ochre red bed in one of Karuti's videos, which never flows (even though the elephants, who never forget anything, still expect to find fresh water there and are drawn to their deaths by this memory), perched high and dry above the stone green Aare, which always flows (although always is a long time, and last summer there were rivers in the mountain which ran dry, and thousands of fish, more forgetful than elephants, died).
It's another world, says a visitor, looking here and there, from one sandstone to the other.
But that's not quite the case. Nothing is the same, it's true, but there are plenty of resonances, patterns, continuities. Not only the rivers, the hills, the stone. Also the crows, the owls, the roads, the animals with antlers, the herders with their sticks. Yes, even they are here: their cows are bigger, and the summer pastures are higher, but they too move with the seasons. Here is a sign (of a sign) in the Jura.
The Maasai believe themselves to be custodians of all the cattle in the world: from cows come not only their nourishment and wealth, but also a host of mythological elements, songs, dances, images, soundscapes. The calls of their herders, the clangs of their bells.
"Initiative zur Rettung des Glockenklangs ist lanciert – wie geht es in Lyss weiter?" asked Stephan Künzi in the Bieler Tagblatt earlier this week (22.5.23)
Bimmelnde Kühe sorgten erst im letzten Herbst wieder landesweit für dicke Schlagzeilen: In Lyss zog ein Ehepaar alle juristischen Register, um die Tiere von der nahen Weide zu verbannen.
Die Gemeinde schützte den betroffenen Bauern zuerst, weil die beklagten Glocken nicht übermässig laut seien und Immissionen nun mal zur Landwirtschaft gehörten. Auf Weisung des Kantons musste sie aber über die Bücher gehen: «In der Nacht führt der Kuhglockenlärm zu Aufwachreaktionen und ist deshalb unzulässig», schrieben die Juristen in Bern.
Eine Lärmmessung zeigte in der Folge, dass Kuhglocken in einer Ecke der Weide tatsächlich zu laut sind. Allerdings nur bei offenem Fenster, wo doch, wie der Landwirt süffisant feststellte, das Paar in einem Minergiegebäude wohne und gar nicht über längere Zeit lüften dürfe.