New York 1 May – 9 July 2010

My participation in Basbaum’s project started with Tobi Maier coming into my shop on 19 Essex Street. Somehow Tobi figured out that I was German probably because of the soccer flag in my window: Schalke 04, and he told me that he is Werder Bremen fan. So he introduced himself and asked me if I would be interested to participate. The whole thing seemed very interesting to me, well I am usually interested in everything, so I said yes. Then when Tobi started bugging me, ‘Now let’s do it’ and stuff, I was not really prepared but he kept calling me and coming in my shop until I said ‘Alright let’s do it’.

When I then saw this piece, which looked almost like a bath top, I actually was a little disappointed. I had planned to use it as a basin and put in crawfish, fish, water lilies and such and place accordions around it. On second thought, I felt ‘Well that’s fun but it seems obvious’. It looked like a basin, why use a basin as a basin, or an aquarium as an aquarium. So after the piece was here I really spent some time thinking about how to use it. Before I had more important things to do but when it was in my shop, all of a sudden I was confronted and really started to think about it ‘big time’. I started asking people ‘What would you do with it?’ – my accordion students, my landlady and friends. Everyone had great ideas, and finally I decided to use the piece as a peeping device to look through the window, through that middle hole of this piece of art onto a gorgeous looking bandonéon, which was placed on black velvet and had a spotlight on top. We installed it the day of the reception, it was towards the evening, and the instrument looked ‘super’ attractive and beautiful when looking through this hole. It was just a gorgeous looking object. I placed another instrument, a concertina in the front of Basbaum’s piece. So it had several functions, to host that German concertina and then to look through that hole onto an even more beautiful blue and purple, a blue bandonéon with purple bellows, also a German instrument.
During the time the piece was in my shop window people stopped, came in and wanted to hear what it is all about. I felt like an art sponsor or something.

It was definitely a very positive experience. Only later I looked up on the Internet where the piece had been already and what people did with it before. I was glad that I hadn’t just used it as an aquarium but as a piece of art and people recognized it as a piece of art. I am really glad and proud that I participated in this project, in which people participated already at so many different places in the world and being the first one who used this piece in New York. The project really grew on me.

I was so happy with the whole thing, I was nearly sad when it was picked up again after three month. At the start we ‘schlepped’ it over in a taxi. It was a huge deal but the taxi ride itself was already fun. The taxi driver wanted to know what that was. He was some old hippie guy and commented on the piece and told us about his own art and what he is doing. So the whole thing was really interesting, it was uplifting and brought people together. People would stop in and had no idea what an accordion is but wanted to know what that piece was.

I am open minded to art, I was always interested and I am member of the Museum of Modern Art here in New York. So I thought I catch two birds with one stone have a piece of art in my window and can help to promote this project which Tobi asked me to because he thought it would be an interesting thing to have that in an accordion shop. I mean there aren’t any accordion shops, there are only two in New York, so it’s different than having that in an accordion shop than in a cell phone store.

Walter Kühr
New York, October 2010