Gunda Förster

In the Desert

I was lucky: Apart from two snorkelers there were also six divers on board. We carried on out on the sea to a reef, which shimmered just below the surface of the intensely turquoise sea. Jump—head under water—and then head up again. I had never seen a reef in the open sea before: colourful corals. and brightly coloured fish which swam around me—as though I were in an auqarium. I just could not believe that this really existed—with me now in the middle. Since then, I have understood how one can become addicted. But I wanted to go to Cairo. Hours on the bus across flat terrain. On the horizon a mountain chain, and between just sand, sand, sand.

Towns made up only heaps between derelict buildings. Poverty. Along the Nile, the only waterway to flow across the desert. Stop in Luxor: the Pharaohs' tombs. On one side of the Nile lived the people, and on the other there are the tombs. Through a belief in rebirth, death is not the end, but merely a stopping point. Cairo: masses of people on the streets, you see almost only men, lots of soldiers and police with machine guns held ready, collapsing houses, ruins, with people living even there and in the cemetery. Many men have scabby marks on their foreheads from the regular praying. And on the edge of the city, right behind the rubbish heaps, are the pyramids. The blocks of stone lie one on top of the other without mortar between. If, when inside, you strole your hand along the blocks, you can hardly feel the joins.

Desert: You drive and drive and drive. And when you turn of the engine, there is suddenly nothing. Your gaze gets caught up in the distance. The sand grates under your footsteps. The sun blazes. Your mouth becomes dry.
Your eyes can hardly stand the glaring, blinding light. Calm, but without stilness. You can hear and feel the wind, which keeps everything slowly moving. And although there is nothing but sand, you can feel the flow of time—
or maybe it is exactly because of this. The silence is initially very plesant. Your head becomes free, and stops clattering. Thoughts become relaxed. I forget everything else. There is nothing else, just this infinity. Only sand and sky up to the horizon. I no longer hear anything. And then I hear my heartbeat, and the blood as it flows through the veins. The desert takes me prisoner.
In the evenings, when the sun sets, the light is very gentle. The wind weakens. The desert, as one can see it now, has existed for aeons. The wind has blown the sand here and there for an eternity. Sparse. Hostile. Repelling and yet magically attractive at the same time. Perhaps I am so fascinated by this nothingness because in Europe I am continuously bombarded by thousands of stimuli. In the desert the situation is utterly compact. Things can hardly be reduced further. I am reflected back upon myself. Everything becomes relative. Constant, and steady change.

Catalogue text
orientale 1
ACC Galerie Weimar, 2001
INSIDE - OUT