This book contains extracts from diaries written by my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother and my great-great-grandmother, in other words, the female line of the family on my mother’s side. Following on the paths taken in the diaries, I went in search of the places, houses and landscapes described in the diaries and which played a special role in our family. Most of them are places of longing that either no longer exist, or have changed considerably. I took copies of the diary pages with me and wrote my own entries across the lines, overwriting them with my own experiences and thoughts. My wish was to touch those lines, to retrace the words, to fathom them and at the same time cover and preserve their secret. That is the origin of these four double diaries.

The current call for inclusion results not from the axioms of modern social policy or the demands of one’s own conscience, but from the very loneliness that is imposed on us – at moments when communication is interrupted or when the perspective shifts, when we want to be perceived as being excluded. This is the “uncanny” aspect (in Freud’s sense of the word) with which Barbara Hölbling and Mario Höber’s exhibition work confronts us: in the encounter with the lack of language, disease and lameness, we experience our own vulnerability, lack of language and immobility, and a mortality that can also unite us.