By Rolf Thiele
When there was still enough time left, and something already existed I replied when asked that the work was almost finished. A permanently recurring experience, a kind of déjà-vu, geared to the future, which quite evidently belongs to the realm of the absurd. Previously, when there was still a lot of time I let it mature – too early and then too late – never on time. There was this unease connected with it, a feeling of alienation towards the task taken on and which describes a distancing from the same. But the assumed task does exist, it is real, and things happen in real time – but the individual time, which gives rise to the lack of production does not correspond with the elapsed time. You are either too early or too late.
Alienation seizes space, creates a means of expressing something that is separated from yourself. It was only in this space that I could begin to understand what I intended to do. According to Antonio Tabucchi too late means the longing for what we will never be again, and for what we might have become but have never been. The productive moment, triggered by lack is the negative moment in the aesthetic experience. Much of what we could have done was put off, sometimes a work planned in youth and put off until old age.