Desire drives the seeker forward
installation
2025
I remember a wooden stick covered with a layer of old Chinese newspaper, dipped in wax. Back in the early 2000s, if you bought torches at German supermarkets, they were often made in China. I found one on my walks through the garden. If the fire stops before the last layer is reached, the newspaper is exposed and looks like an old treasure map. I took it off and put it in my box of valuable things, hidden in the secret gang headquarters we had made for ourselves. I’ve read this sentence somewhere_Desire drives the seeker forward. Lately, I think about it often, and it seems like all the things surrounding me contain a trace of it. Fragments lie scattered like ancient ruins of my time. As a teenager, I once accidentally watched a documentary about Maria Theresia, Queen of Austria. I was hanging around on the family sofa, trying hard to push away my undone homework. I ate pudding while the docus voice and images trickled down on me. I swallowed a spoonful of pudding and remember that, out of the blue, the realization hit me for the first time in my life that this person really existed. Understanding that her body, on this same earthly ground where this couch somehow stands, carried out sixteen children while making political decisions. In the past, when winter froze the world outside, people began to build miniature worlds inside, bringing outer stories back into their restricted spaces.