Angkor Vat, the perfect replica of the universe, is submerged in the jungle of Cambodia. Faces carved in stone with frozen, ice-cold smiles look back on centuries in which they remained undiscovered. Lost in the jungle, then the cruel civil war of the Khmer Rouge with destruction and death. These faces have experienced what no one can tell or dares to tell. With their pupils wide open, they look into space, somewhere into the immeasurable depths beyond human existence. You are and will remain silent. They are silently overgrown by the jungle, the stranglehold of the mighty roots grabs them, holds them tight, ready for eternity.
Change of location Burma. Persecution, oppression, but also hope are reflected in people’s faces. In the distance you can hear the soft melancholy of Burmese liberation songs. This is it: the peculiar and deep longing for the distant lands at the end of the world. “La fièvre jaune” – “The yellow fever” is what the colonial rulers called this feeling a long time ago. Was it the certainty that they would never be able to regard the other as home, or was it ultimately the illness of their soul through which they never learned to understand the contradictions with all the intoxicating exoticism? I have no answer to that.
