"...Ich kletterte wieder hinunter, zog den Schuhbändel aus meinem Schnürstiefel, stieg wieder hinauf, knüpfte den Schuhbändel zu einer Schlinge, und als der große Zeiger über dem kleinen Mitternacht anzeigte, oder Mittag, legte ich den beiden die Schlinge um und zog zu. Nach einem Weilchen spannte, stöhnte und rasselte es in der elektrischen Uhr, der Mechanismus versuchte noch einmal, die Fessel zu sprengen und die Zeiger zu befreien, doch schließlich gab die Zeit auf, in der Uhr wimmerte, krächzte es, endlich herrschte Stille."
(Bohumil Hrabal "Die schöne Julinka")

"...I climbed down again, pulled the shoelace out of my boot, climbed back up, tied the shoelace into a loop, and as the big hand covered the small hand at midnight or at noon, I put the loop over both of them and pulled it tight. After a short time, there was a tension, groaning and rattling in the electric clock, the mechanism tried again to break the constraint and free the hands, but time eventually gave up, whimpered in the clock, creaked, and silence finally prevailed."
(Bohumil Hrabal "The Legend of Beautiful Julinka")

When Martin Gostner brings together things from our time - and yet not entirely from our time that have lost their original function and meaning in his hands, so that they may write their own story and be charged with new meaning; when things step out of historical time and the rational light of day, in order to reconvene in a polyvocal, bizarre conversation in a different, melancholy light and a different time - then it seems to me that (...) Martin Gostner has placed a loop around the hands of the clock, tipped time into the vertical, in order to focus on the historical moment as the convergence of past,present and future.
(Renate Wiehager)