AntonBruhin
Biography
Anton Bruhin (1949, Lachen, Switzerland) Since the late 1960s, Bruhin has been active as a musician, poet, and visual artist. He gained particular recognition as a virtuoso of the Jew's harp (Swiss German: Trümpi) and as a sound poet. His musical works feature experimental sounds and innovative compositions, often blending traditional Swiss folk music with avant-garde elements. In the 1980s, Bruhin focused increasingly on painting, particularly plein air landscape painting, as well as portraits of friends and acquaintances. During the 1990s, he concentrated on music and poetry, creating palindromes and experimental poetry while deepening his work with the Jew's harp. After the turn of the millennium, he returned to visual arts, exploring digital imagery and pursuing a DIY publishing strategy. Bruhin's experimental approach to sound is exemplified in his 1978 album "Rotomotor", reissued as a CD by Alga Marghen. The album covers two distinct areas of his artistic research. The track ORAX, created between 1976 and 1977, is a mysterious environmental recording, where Bruhin layered various sound sources using two cassette recorders with loudspeakers. The result is an abstract soundscape, evoking distant cosmic or abyssal spaces. The title track, Rotomotor, is a 28-minute-long poetic reading based on a unique linguistic structure: an "Idiotikon" of the Swiss-German dialect, where words are not arranged alphabetically but instead by their visual and phonetic similarities—each word differing from the previous one by just one letter. This technique reflects Bruhin’s interest in linguistic experimentation and the relationship between sound and meaning. In 2014, Bruhin was awarded the prestigious Prix Meret Oppenheim, one of Switzerland’s highest honors for artists. His extensive body of work includes numerous publications, such as the book Spiegelgedichte und weitere Palindrome 1991–2002 ("Mirror Poems and Other Palindromes 1991–2002," 2003), as well as several musical albums like Von Goldabfischer (1970) and Rotomotor (1978).
