MONO/e Die Hasenglocke The Hare Bell

The Hare Bell

Die hasenglocke (THE HARE BELL) 2007 Bell, transmitter, hare Art en plein air, Motiers; National Land Art exhibition in the Val de Travers (CH) On the roof of the local museum in M么tiers, Haus am Gern installed a belfry with a bell tuned to the high pitched sound of a top h. At the opening of the exhibition, Haus am Gern released a hare (lepus europaeus) equipped with a sensor into the wild. Fast and rhythmical movements transmitted by the sensor triggered the ringing of the bell. Hares have become virtually extinct in Switzerland.

Photo: Raphael Heftl

THE HARE BELL or A Festival for Jean-Jacques Hares are not rabbits – even in Môtiers every child now knows this. Hares (Lepus europaeus) have longer ears and stronger haunches, and are born furry and with their eyes open not naked and blind like rabbits. Hares do not burrow, they usually live solitarily and when buck meets doe they mate and reproduce, often several times a year. The hare is a world champion of fertility.

And yet, reports the World Wildlife Fund, hares are disappearing from the landscape. Across Switzerland populations have dropped to an average of 2.7 hares per square kilometer – a drastic decline according to the WWF. In the Jura Mountains around Neuchatel, in the Val-deTravers near Môtiers, the head gamekeeper says there are many foxes but barely any hares. If a hare was released into the wild here it would not survive for long, the head gamekeeper says, mainly due to foxes, hunting and traffic. On top of this, the head gamekeeper says releasing a hare up here is just a bad idea, quite apart from being against the law. Hares are considered wildlife, the head gamekeeper says, which is why their capture and as a consequence also their release are prohibited. Only the French, says the head gamekeeper, breed hares, mainly for hunting.

But Switzerland, the head gamekeeper says, is not France.

Something similar must have crossed the mind of Jean-Jacques Rousseau when, on 9th June 1762, while his book Emile, or On Education was being torn to shreds and burned on the streets of Paris, he kissed Bernese soil after a hectic flight and exclaimed: “Heaven, the protector of virtue be praised. I am setting foot in a land of liberty”.1 But the Bernese were not prepared to tolerate the famous philosopher, so Rousseau instead moved to the principality of Neuchatel, then under Prussian sovereignty, and found shelter in the remote Val-de-Travers, in the village of Môtiers. When, after three years, the locals began casting stones at the eccentric philosopher, Rousseau left Môtiers too and moved to St. Peter’s Island in Lake Bienne, where he found his “earthly paradise” for a short six weeks: “I consider those two months the happiest time of my life (…)”.2 Rousseau spent his time on the island cultivating idleness; on long walks he collected plants or rowed the boat on the lake.

“But one of my most frequent sailings was from the large to the small island,” Rousseau writes years later in his Reveries of a Solitary Walker, “there I would debark and spend the afternoon, sometimes in very limited promenades through great round-leafed sallow, alderbuckthorn, willow weed, shrubs of everysort, and sometimes setting myself on the summit of a

sandy knoll covered with grass, common thyme, flowers, even cockscomb and clover that had most likely been sown there some time ago and were very suitable for housing rabbits which could multiply in peace there without fearing anything and without doing any harm” (p.85). The idea had barely seen the light of day when it was put into practice. Male and female rabbits were brought from Neuchatel and Rousseau settled them on the island “in great pomp”, accompanied by a few ladies: “The founding of this little colony was a festival. The pilot of the Argonauts was no prouder than I, leading the company and the rabbits in triumph from the large island to the small.” It is not recorded whether the rabbits survived past the first winter. The rabbits’ little island however was lost with the first canalisation of the Jura waterways in 1868-1891.

Be that as it may, nearly 230 years after the death of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a high, clear bell now and again tolls in the Val-de-Travers in the village of Môtiers from a small belfry on the roof of the Maison des Mascarons (where there is a small Rousseau museum next door). At the sound of the bell the inhabitants of Môtiers know that the hare buck is banging a hare doe somewhere out in the fields. Because the hare buck, bred in France and illegally released into the wild, carries a sensor that triggers the bell with every steady, rhythmic movement the hare makes. Hares, as every child in Môtiers knows, are not rabbits.

Trmasan Bruialesi 1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau The Confessions, trans. J.M. Cohen, London: Penguin 1953 (Penguin Classics Edition, 1996), p. 542

2 Jean-Jacques Rousseau Reveries of a Solitary Walker, trans. with an introduction by Peter France, London: Penguin Classics 1979, “Fifth Walk”, p.83

Trmasan Bruialesi, *1956 in Tbilissi, Georgie; studied Slavistics with a focus on ancient Slavic texts of early Christianity. Since 1989 he has been working in Berlin as a translator, author and musician.

Daniel Simon Lafond: L’embarquement des lapins (The disembarkation of the rabbits), coloured etch drawing, 1795, Collection MusÊe Schwab, property of the town of Biel-Bienne

Credits Host Art en plein air

Marie und Pierre-André Delachaux Location Musée régional du Val-de-Travers Technology Thierry Bezzola Consultants Arthur Fiechter, gamekeeper, Couvet Bell Bell-foundry Rüetschi, Aarau Belfry ruwa holzbau, Dalvazza Transport Traberproduktion, La Vraconnaz Installation Menuiserie Etienne, Môtiers Supported by Foundation Lydia Eymann Langenthal Canton Bern City of Bern City of Biel / Bienne