Spiritus Caeli
Intervento minimo

2007

[...] In June 2007 Gerhard Lang worked in Fideris, a village situated in the Alpine Prättigau valley in the Grisons canton of Switzerland. His walk entitled Spiritus Caeli. Intervento minimo was part of the Ospiti (hospitality) programme initiated by the dieHasena institute located in the same valley. Some of his reflections were concerned with finding an appropriate minimal intervention that would allow him to help visitors discern the landscape more the way Lang does himself.


Before travelling to Fideris on June 16th, Lang carried out the first part of the work in his home village of Schloss-Nauses (Otzberg, Germany), by sucking a sample of the local air into a little flask called a gas mouse (Ill. I).


Once in Fideris, Lang’s first step was to draw Fideriser Heuberge (The Hay Mountains of Fideris) - an outline (Ill. II) of the mountains’ contours above the village. On June 28th, the organist Rolf Rauber transformed the drawing into music in the Fideris village church of St. Gallus (Ill. III). Improvising on the church organ, Rauber thus created an acoustic view of the landscape.


After hearing the landscape, Lang led the audience up into the mountains [...] After a 50-minutes stroll along at times enchanting paths above Fideris, in a hay meadow in Plattis, the sample of air from Schloss-Nauses was released into the magnificent Prättigau valley (Ill. IV a / IV b). Although Gerhard Lang’s action was barely discernible, for all those witnessing this intervento minimo the landscape had been subtly changed.


[C.N., Excerpt from the special publication (Separatum): Spiritus Caeli. Intervento minimo, 2007]


Photos: Edith Lang, Karin Schnyder, Anna Maria Thöni-Luck



I.


II.



III. / IV a.



IV b.

Gerhard Lang © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn