After forty-two days of house arrest, Xavier de Maistre wrote: "They forbade me to walk through the city and the suburbs, but they left me the whole world." During these 42 days, de Maistre's view of things in his own house changed. Is it possible that these things could become OUR world for him? To become - ALL OUR world - without us?.. How do we feel when Things get such power? Confusion? Jealousy? But who gives power to things? We? Only 42 days, and the view of the usual changes radically?
And if we assume that all the first years of our lives are also short permanent arrests that we spent in children's rooms, if our parents forbade us to "walk around the city and suburbs" just when we wanted to? And if there was no children's room? The corner is enough to feel the same as Xavier de Maistre...
Although you may have to "grow up" to Xavier de Maistre to feel the same.
Then what number can you count these first years? Tobias Rosenberger offers the number "20" - the first twenty years... This number is as abstract as the number "42" - the forty-two days of de Maistre's house arrest. Numbers do not give an answer to the question of what things mean to us - things from the past, beautiful, expensive, imported, Soviet, damaged, donated, new, issued from abroad, stolen, bought with the last money, things from childhood, things... Numbers only indicate that there is time between Things and us – measured in hours, days, years...
To look at the Thing from the first twenty years of its life, Tobias Rosenberger uses 4 surveillance cameras, 9 monitors and other modern media. Xavier de Maistre once used the Word. But times are changing.
The artist's belongings were kept by his parents in Aschaffenburg. Now they are part of the media installation "The First Twenty Years".