Straight from a butterfly’s wing, a shimmering scale just landed on my skin. Its sun-reflecting surface: intoxicating. Captured by its beauty, I stare. Rushing images. Landscapes form and dissolve again until the vision of a forest solidifies. First moving above the treetops, the scene now enters deeper and deeper into the dense web of twigs and branches. Wooden claws reach out, trying to scratch my skin. As the claws sink into my flesh, blood begins to flow. I follow its traces until they mix with the air at the border of my fingertips. For a moment, my sight disappears along with the dark teardrops into the muddy underground.
The dead wood lying on the forest floor, now stained red, whispers as it decays of possible spreads of species yet to come. Humming voices emerge from within the broken-off branches. Long, shimmering silvery bodies—neither snakes nor lizards—appear, slowly winding their way along the deadwood’s arms. The illusion of the natural is vanishing in the image of the squirming blindworms, singing of their cultural adaptation:
“Stones, holes in the ground, tree roots, stacks of firewood, moss cushions, lying wood, plastic foil or sheet metal, compost and piles of leaves, rock crevices.
Have you realized how artificial everything has become ever since the giant gardeners of the world have been hunted down?
‘Take your head out of the clouds and don’t mess with the weather,’ they used to say. Because these adorable cottony creatures can easily turn into roaring thunderstorms if you don’t treat them kindly.
By the way, have you noticed the stunning wild roses growing at the front door? They keep a secret. Follow the chatter of their thorns, and you might learn that blindworms are anything but sightless.”
Vom Leben in schillernden Wäldern, Text zur Installation, 2022
