Blind Moments (Blinde Momente)

2022
Alcohol markers on multi-layered transparent paper

A sheet of paper in front of me.

I open my eyes and perceive the world and its objects. I close my eyes: for a few seconds, the afterimage of an object changes its shape and floats behind my eyelids. I watch its movement and try to grasp its form.

I open my eyes and draw the form of the afterimage from memory onto transparent paper. I close my eyes again to check the form once more. But the first form has already disappeared, and a new afterimage appears and moves. To capture this new afterimage, I try to erase the previous drawing on the sheet and draw the new one.

Again I close my eyes and check the form of the afterimage. As expected, this one has now disappeared and a new one has emerged. I erase the drawing of the previous afterimage again, since it no longer exists.

With my eyes open again, I perceive the world and its objects, and with my eyes closed, their afterimages once more. And again, with my eyes open, I draw the remembered form of the afterimage, which I then erase again immediately after.

A new sheet …

The drawing is not made from observation, but from memory. When I draw an image based on the already imprinted afterimage, the original automatically becomes invisible. Even as I desperately try to examine a present act of seeing, I cut myself off precisely from visual immediacy through this very act.

I am blind while my eyes are open. I can see while my eyes are closed. I see, remember, draw, and erase again and again, in an attempt to capture and fix indeterminate afterimages.