Art and Free
     by Otto Künzli

It's been a hot afternoon. The previous cool days have chased the kids out of the pools, but now the kids have come back. It's the end of July and almost autumn. Those who wanted ice cream, hurried to buy some. The chestnut trees became ill one year later. The leaves fell before the fruit. Rustling with your feet through late autumn foliage is not possible any more. Now little worms drill holes through the leaves.

But the light is good.
And the exhibition also.

The visitors stream in and are excited. The place is full, spirits high.
Strange however the picture of a man's head, bent to the hip of a laughing young man. I have not seen similar before in Munich, nor anywhere else. Not even in Japan. It is interesting what is in the pants pocket of someone.
But then do you do something like that?
To poke ones nose into the affairs of others? Yes people do that. But your eyes into the pant pockets of your fellowman? Where are we? But there is a machine for it, an apparatus, a device. Peter Bauhuis built it.
A real aid: It does not only provide me with the possibilities to look deep inside pockets, through its mere existence it gives me reason and right to do so.
(Art makes free!)
And it magnifies and enlightens the contents: coins, a lump of paper- washed several times, a bicycle key, crumbs, and/or.
Interesting.
The device employed is called "pant pocket peep show" and was for the reason of demonstration temporarily removed from the surrounded and much admired show case inside the afore mentioned exhibition. Its shape is reminiscent of a small cow's or goat's bell, is chased in silver and possesses an ocular and a red button to switch the light inside on.
Those who peep often, must change batteries often. Those who seldom peep should take the batteries out in the meantime. Those who never peep, are not curious, and actually we don't want anything to do with them.

Beautiful is the thing through in its ambivalence, in its contradictions in relation to appearance and use.
It's inner life is defined by the elegance of the technique, while it's outside is in no way well shaped, more bag-like and amorphous. Not that it intrudes to much, but there is also the memory of gonads in the air...
And what I see no one else can see, and what somebody else sees in the same pants pocket, might as well be something different as what I saw. The experience cannot be shared. This is also true for the olfactory events, your nose is always with you.

Also in "several appearances of mouth and nose" in the Bauhuisien website: www.artfree.de

And the essential connection between the nose and pants pocket is shown by the Haiku which is ascribed to the master poet Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694) from the early Edo period:

Pants pocket warm
when coins softer jingle
snow on nose falls