Documentation Swiss literatures

In Cooperation with the platform swissliterature.ch.

[ book tip by Literatur Schweiz ] The Art Brut artist Hans Krüsi (1920-1995) was a rarity. Michael Stauffer drew his inspiration for three audio plays from his shambolic estate, in which Krüsi rearranges the tumultuous tangle according to his own taste. He had become clever, Krüsi once said of himself, because everyone took him to be stupid. Does that mean one has to turn stupid to understand Krüsi, Stauffer asks. In one of the audio plays, an increasingly desperate art educator tries to penetrate the chaotic cosmos of Knüsi, to understand and to organize it. In the background the artist mischievously cries «Hello! Hello!» from a tape recorder.
With a good sense for his hero, Stauffer paints a picture of Krüsi’s life and work without robbing it of its fierceness. The quirky artist lived alone and secluded. But his art grew increasingly successful, so that he left behind a fortune of a million Swiss francs. Stauffer’s Krüsi stories and Krüsi ideas are subtly accompanied by music by Hanspeter Pfammater, in which the polyphony of Krüsi’s spirit resonates. Michael Stauffer – who himself has a disposition to the weird – succeeds in giving an insight into a colourful personality in an atmospherically dense way. His audio plays send out signals from an unimaginable universe.

(Beat Mazenauer, translation by Simon Froehling)

[ Favourite quote ] «Gott ist die Milch direkt aus dem Euter. Und die Kirche ist die Milch im Tetrapack.»

[ book info ] Stauffer, Michael: Stauffer an Krüsi antworten. Drei Hörspiele. (original language: German) Stauffer to Krüsi Come in. Three Audio Plays. Kunstmuseum Thurgau / Der gesunde Menschenversand, Luzern, 2008 . ISBN: 978-3-905825-05-3.