Celan (detail) Installation

Celan’s first book was published in 1947; it received very little critical attention. His second book, Mohn und Gedaechtnis (Poppy and Memory), however, garnered tremendous acclaim and helped to establish his reputation. Among his most well-known and often-anthologized poems from this time is “Fugue of Death.” The poem opens with the words “Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening / we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night” and it goes on to offer a stark evocation of life in the Nazi death camps. The artist wrote some lines of the „Fuge of Death“ with the typewriter on the Möbius strip. He repeated the lines in an endless loop. In this way the content oft the poem becomes illegible. The installation „Celan“indicates the problem of historical memory.