An installation featuring a selection of treats: DDR Narva multicoloured party lights, a cleaning trolley, picnic blankets, cleaning buckets, a broom and various food. To mark the latest exhibition at Offspace 1zwei3 in Vienna
“The last one turns off the light” originally dates back to the era of the GDR. Even before the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989, many people fled from the GDR to the West. In the summer and autumn of 1989 alone, some 15,000 to 20,000 GDR citizens managed to escape to Austria and other Western countries via the West German Embassy in Budapest.
Is it time to go?
To let go now, leave the familiar behind and move on.
Farewell.
What remains are the memories.
Supposedly wrapped in tissue paper, boxes and cartons.
But how should one pack them away? Preserve them?
Of course, they change, fading more and more; almost silently.
Their edges gradually dissolve. They remain as shadowy, silent companions.
Yet they wait for us. Lurking in ambush, unannounced. Just like the moment when one steps into the void.
And everything is there again.
A smell. A taste. Things that seemed lost. It wasn’t really that one taste, that one smell, but the feeling it once triggered.
Today, right here, coming together one last time.
Farewell.
And one day, remembering again.
