Christoph Oeschger

Memories of a Past Future

There is something that reveals itself in the repetition.
The repetition as temporal shift of then, today, and tomorrow, the variation of the always-the-same, the recurring, that which renews itself again and again.

The wind was made straight,
it was furnished with smoke particles,
which can catch the light and be laid down in the photo emulsion.
In the hope that we might thus quantify the wind, take its measure.
The image—a way to picture how the wind behaves.

The subjects, the test objects, the things being studied were to be themselves,
so they would show their true selves in the image,
and their true self would inscribe itself on the film,
so that the findings would be safeguarded for the future.

The camera was to record what was seen,
to see in places where the eye does not suffice,
to see what the naked eye has no access to.

The camera knows the magic words to open up this universe and the future of the past that emerges from a mirrored sphere.