In his book Der Rand der Mitte (The Edge of the Centre), Karl-Markus Gauß writes that the nation state, this obsessive idea of a state within whose borders a nationally homogeneous population lives, is completely inappropriate in the European East. As a Swiss – a Central European – this argument has preoccupied me time and again on my travels through Eastern Europe, especially during visits to the countries of the former Yugoslavia – Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia – and Kosovo. In these countries I sensed that on this territory population groups between Eastern and Central Europe, Slavs, Europeans, Muslims, Christians live side by side, also have to live side by side, because older historical structures have drawn the borders differently than people often wished.

My stay at the NEC is intended to provide time for cultural research, once again about the countries and regions in Eastern Europe, especially in Romania, in Bucharest. I will search in the cultural institutions of the city, but also on the streets and in the cafés of neighborhoods, close to the gestures of the people.

One of my favorite authors – Herta Müller – has composed poems as poetic collages with words she found in magazines and journals. She arranges the cut-out words into poem pictures; sometimes light-footed and humorous, sometimes heavy with thought. Through the most diverse lettering alone, the concepts take on a tonality of their own and awaken a new perception. In this sense, I would like to create a collage about the cultural life in the city of Bucharest and in Romania, giving my research as a cultural historian a transdisciplinary and aesthetic openness.