In my youth, when I was about 19 years old, I visited the Kunsthalle in Kiel. Since I grew up on the edge of Europe (i.e. in Dithmarschen) and therefore almost exactly on the opposite side of Schleswig-Holstein -geographically, at least from the perspective of Kielers- and since the Kunsthalle was the most extraordinary place for contemporary art in Schleswig-Holstein, I hoped that a visit would broaden my irrationally remote, rural perspective. My goal was to see a comprehensive presentation of curated individual Pop Art positions, but it could also have been an Andy Warhol exhibition - if I remember correctly. Immediately after entering the exhibition and in great expectation of seeing originals, however, all my attention culminated in an arrangement of different buckets loosely distributed on the floor of the large exhibition space. They were placed in this arrangement to catch the rainwater dripping through the ceiling, but I only realized this later. Initially, the scenario in my perception was by no means determined by a damaged roof and the intervention of a janitor, but by the auratic moment of the museum context and the sound. For me, this was an extraordinary situation that captivated me, and the accidental diversity of the buckets in their designs was further proof of the acceptance of an artistic intervention. In addition, there was the extremely entertaining acoustic event of the dripping ceiling, the play of falling drops from a great height. It was raining cats and dogs outside and the kind of audible permeability of the roof produced a concert of acoustic impulses of different speeds and a wide range of resonating buckets in various pitches and rhythms, which was enchanting to my ears. Never before had I experienced such a concertante moment, so close to reality in the substance of a building. I understood the whole thing as an ingenious staging of architectural material sounds, here determined by the situation under the conditions of the architecture, the museum space and the life of the liquid, and the water, with its acoustic aggregate states. My enthusiasm was great. However, when I asked the supervisory staff who emptied the full buckets whether the whole thing was based on a composed sequence of events, it quickly and clearly became obvious that only the roof of the Kunsthalle was defective and that the buckets limited the water damage.

Today, almost 40 years later, I have students who make art with this strategy - and for that I am greatly reassured.

Norderheistedt, February 2011