Michael Rutkowsky "Der Aktive Apfel. Orientierung mit Schrift und Plastik"

May 6: lecture and presentation; May 6-13: exhibition ‘Who doesn’t recall from schoolbooks that people used to think that the sun rotated around the earth, that people thought 'geocentrically'. Thus, the people in their upside-down world would indicate the sun's orbit by making a simple circular movement with their arms. Heaven and hell fitted exactly into this image - a ponderous fact. When the revolutionary insight was made that the matter was completely different, and precisely the reverse, a shoe emerged which appeared to fit the many. They stood up on their hind legs and left the church (still an important place for sculpture) and the village behind them. In short, the six-day race came into fashion. Like being continuously on the far left curve, day and night. Stayer races make the most of man and material. When daylight fails, there is neon on the cheap nighttime rates and the pacemaker (now fitted out with monitor and computer) who keeps the toiling cyclist posted on his heartbeat, his muscletone, the wear and tear of tyres and chain and on his position in the battle. Either the sun rotates around the earth or the earth rotates around the sun. Either you fly like an eagle or you scratch amongst the chickens. Either the West looks out over the East or the East over the West. With the process of writing, plastic givens and the building of the stand, it’s taken time before I came in my work to the following simple insight: The strongest, most commonplace cosmic power (which also has the most influence on life on earth) is independent of the Copernican question and is based on the phenomenon that the earth rotates around itself. Current standards determine that.’ ((Michael Rutkowsky, ‘Neon at nightrate’, Newsletter De Appel, 1 (1986) 1. Fragment from: 'Front der irdischen Fahrt - was soll das?', a lecture by Michael Rutkowsky at the Kunsthaus Zurich, 16 February 1986.)