Galerie b2

Outside a landscape flies by, always the same, the same always different. The landscape, the one out there, the one that is always there. But the landscape does not move at all, a train moves, and in the train sits a body with eyes.
The body with eyes pulls through the landscape and the trees and towers, the windmills and clouds, the rivers and the bushes flow through it, throughthe body with nerves and blood vessels. It does not obstruct the stream of associations but records it – like a shorthand typist: lines, scribbles, doodles and scratches find themselves on paper that the body with hands holds on its knees. The doodles pick up speed. Going towards or moving away from a shape, back and forth, like words that shoot through the head of the body with hands. It does not know why, it simply thinks without thinking things through. The words in the body’s head become thoughts, the thoughts turn around again half way through; back to the paper. The body reacts to its trace and traces this reaction. Re-draw! Where is it going? Impression becomes expression and expression becomes re-impression. What is it looking for? It is looking for something. It has to be nothing! In the best case, words won’t even occur: drawing, not description. The body with hands sets off on a journey. The journey is arduous. The search leads to objects. The body with spirit concentrates on the path in time and thus comes to objects, places, which it would normally pass by. Swallowing up the time and place that it crosses, the distance is reversed: the outer landscape becomes the inner and is deposited on paper. The body with shoulders presses against the windowpane as the train curves. It is important that it is here now. Thoughts and feelings travel along inside the body. It perceives the way in which they occupy space inside, perceives the body: occupying space and absorbing coffee, breathing and observing, humming and muttering. It relaxes, concentrates. Perceives itself; how it endures pressure, cannot stand how it chatters and smacks its lips, how the feet fall asleep along with the stomach, and how it, the body with feet, has a sore stomach. It, the body, that does everything and is always present, unable to be anywhere else but where it is. It is here. Persisting but open, persisting, repeating and echoing what is there. Twisting and turning that which strikes it and making visible that which has already disappeared again. It sucks up the landscape and spits it out again in lines and scribbles, splitting it into tiny pieces, deciding but not judging. The body lives and draws. Planned but without tactics, with method, in tone, possibly textual, tactile. Outside a landscape flies by.
Anna Herms