A Strange Tricky Game

Verena Thurkauf
Switzerland 1996

The little showcase represents nothing unusual in connection to museum life if it were not for the object on display missing. One becomes aware of many suggestions and clues on the object concerned.

Simple tape markings on the bottom of the case and the glass say: FRONT, BACK, ANOTHER, ONE. The signs are to be read from the inside, not from the outside, thus we can read the direction from the side from which we are just looking out the showcase. The rest of the directions remains to be read backwards. To imagine to be in the case does not stop irritation, because the pane says FRONT is not opposite of the one which says BACK. It is impossible to relate ONE-ANOTHER- BACK AND FRONT to a single central point. Wherever one is standing, in reality or in imagination, we are bound to arrange these terms in a systematic order related to the surrounding space.

This space has to be considered not only around the vanished object, that is, the inside of the showcase, but also the space all around the showcase.

A Strange Tricky Game: contradictory and meaningful.