Public Art
Alexander Rüdiger Titz
Umlauf (Circulation), 2002
Aluminium, audio feed, ca. 100 × Ø 640 cm 
Everyday objects and sounds are what Titz uses to take away the viewer’s trust in what is normal. A basic aspect of his artistic works is creating new connections of meaning, and awakening the understanding that places and objects encompass more than those intentions and functions with which they are normally attributed. Distinguished with the German Sound-Art Award in 2002, "Umlauf" is a work typified by one thing: modification as a way of displacing expectation and formal-material perception. The abandoned Kneipp water-treading basin becomes a reminder. What the observer sees and hears suggests a mystic cultic-astral experience at a place which now proves to be a ritually meaningful site. The aluminium discs, like planetary satellites fixed to the handrails and paraphrasing the surface of Marl’s City Lake, and in addition, a recording of sounds and noises which resulted when the metal fence was struck, form a bridge to the spiritual. The holistic claim of the concentric layout of the Kneipp basin has been logically fulfilled in its quality of cosmic mystery.