HEINZ BAUT - A SKYWARD-REACHING QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE

A piece of flax cord hangs from a sack lying on the ground, a clutter of 47 slender ash-wood poles lie strewn all around. In the midst of the clutter, three poles roped together with flax cord at their centres rise above the sack to form a tripod.

HEINZ climbs up the tripod and lingers a moment, squatting on the intersection where the three poles meet. Leaning down from his perch, he picks up the pole lying closest to him on the ground and tugs a piece of the flax cord from the sack. He then fixes the pole vertically to one of the tripod’s skyward pointing legs and straps another pole from the heap to it, thus connecting the tripod leg to the ground. Propped up with one pole bound steadfastly to another, a structure gradually unfolds to form a tower reaching for the sky.

HEINZ

proves to be an excellent climber as he glides up and down in his labyrinth of poles, and with dexterity and surefootedness, over and again he tests the towers’ structure and its strength as it progresses upwards from the ground. By the time the tower has reached its peak HEINZ interrupts his work to eat an apple.

Although every tower ever built may differ in form, towers not yet built and those erected in the past all obey the same enduring principle. On the day on which the ultimate tower will be built, HEINZ will go on upwards from its peak.

In the meantime, while waiting for that day to come, he patiently detaches pole from pole, leans them on the tripod and throws the cord on a pile beside the tower.

A few hours later, once HEINZ regains the ground and walks away, all that’s left is a heap of cord and a collection of ash-wood poles stacked together to form a cone.