a habit a day (126) is a spatial installation that analyzes everyday repetition and the artist‘s personal collecting behavior. The work is based on the question of repetition compulsion, habits, trauma and Freud‘s beyond the pleasure principle.
The installation is accompanied by a text positioned on a limestone. It is a short iphone note: a reflection on the process of chewing. What it is, can, does and where the repetition comes from. The text refers to the origin of the slides, which contain laminated chewing gum (126). Each slide represents a day and preserves the number of chewing gums that were chewed on the corresponding day. Arranged in archival order, they are reminiscent of ephemeral layers that unite to form a calendrical surface. The limestone refers to the tooth-like consistency, a hard material, necessary for the act of chewing. The installation thematizes absurdity and randomness, implicit and explicit obsessions and their psychoanalytical shift from neutral to personal, from inside to outside.
The work was created during a residency at the Bauhaus University Weimar and exhibited as part of the BestOff in Gmunden in cooperation with Parallel Skulpturenpark.