A garden, fenced in and carefully tended, can be both a retreat and a border. In a village on the March, where the Iron Curtain ran until 1989, border experiences shaped everyday life according to stories – and yet often became invisible. The death strip on the other side of the river, the silent knowledge of those shot and those trying to escape, mostly disappeared behind the embankment and into collective silence. Idyllic village life, well-tended gardens and the need for undisturbed stability were visible.

Based on this tense relationship, a long-term photographic observation was created: eight rose plants were documented at irregular intervals over the course of a year and arranged graphically with the help of a grid according to the duration between the photographs.
The grid between the snapshots visualizes an economy of attention – it marks the waning of attention – when the change in the plants is barely perceptible over a long period of time.

The installation revolves around questions of visibility and repression, political landscape and subjective perception. It deals with the economy of attention that shapes social and private realities. What we do not (or no longer) see loses significance – even if it continues to exist.

In its material translation between photography and drawing, the work refers to processes of abstraction in which original information is not only transformed, but also selectively suppressed. Visibility, it turns out, is not a neutral fact, but a result of social, temporal and material conditions.