Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen ass... (Who never ate his bread with tears...)

The title for this 3-part installation is taken from Goethe’s famous poem Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen ass (“Who never ate his bread with tears”), which appears in Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. The verse speaks of exile, of suffering, and of the bittersweet experience of life’s trials. It evokes the loneliness of those who must leave home, the tears shed over bread eaten far from home, and the longing for connection and belonging. The poem reflects on the fundamental human experience of being vulnerable, of seeking a place in the world, and of finding meaning in the midst of hardship.

Video projection Variations I and IV, sound, each approx. 8 minutes; two versions are shown at each location
Slide projection Behausung (Dwelling
Embroidery Handarbeit (Handmade)

The video work is structured like a score in four variations: winter, spring, summer, autumn—each reflecting day and night in turn. It is an essayistic attempt to interweave inner and outer worlds. A documentation of the everyday that scatters traces of fiction. Migrare—migrating, wandering—also forms an essayistic core. It is an attempt to sense out stories. Data, too, must migrate across media landscapes to survive. Migration is a question of mediality. The three-part installation moves between the digital and the analog. The mechanical clicking of the slide projector becomes a clock, marking another, inescapable time.

The three components of the installation—video, slide projection, embroidery—engage in dialogue with each other, linking the four exhibition spaces in Sursee, Zofingen, Schüpfheim, and Willisau. Visitors encounter two variations of the video work at each location, which are repeated in different combinations. Thus, the same thing is never the same…

Two voices embody letters—letters that seek closeness across distance, that attempt to reach a beloved in thought. Being at home, no longer being at home, dreaming of home, restoring home: balconies, dwellings, a napkin. The three-part installation is not intended as a social study, but rather as a poetic exploration of the human condition—in its fragility, its resistance, its vulnerability.

With the napkin, the daily bread of the wanderer appears. Onto it, I hand-embroidered Goethe’s words from Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years (Chapter 32):

Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen ass,
Wer nie die kummervollen Nächte
Auf seinem Bette weinend sass,
Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Mächte.
Ihr führt ins Leben uns hinein,
Ihr lasst den Armen schuldig werden,
Dann überlasst ihr ihn der Pein;
Denn alle Schuld rächt sich auf Erden.