The title for this work, or pair of works, is Abschied, and it comes from the last line of Rilke’s Eighth Elegy (excerpted below). There is something a bit paradoxical and I think potentially quite rich in this idea of always taking leave, of repeating the task of ending. I think that one of the things that art is good at is taking ideas that we think are resolved and then unresolving them, opening closed concepts. The end of one piece becomes the beginning of another, which reflects and distorts the original work.

Und wir: Zuschauer, immer, überall,

dem allen zugewandt und nie hinaus!

Uns überfüllts. Wir ordnens. Es zerfällt.

Wir ordnens wieder und zerfallen selbst.’

Wer hat uns also umgedreht, daß wir,

was wir auch tun, in jener Haltung sind

von einem, welcher fortgeht? Wie er auf

dem letzten Hügel, der ihm ganz sein Tal

noch einmal zeigt, sich wendet, anhält, weilt—

so leben wir und nehmen immer Abschied.

And we: we are onlookers, always, everywhere.

always looking into things, and never looking out.

We are over-filled. We make order. It collapses.

We make order again, and we collapse ourselves.

Who turned us around like this, so that

no matter what we do, we are always

in the pose of someone going away? Someone,

who on the last hill that overlooks the valley,

for the last time turns, stops, lingers—

we live like this, forever taking leave.