On first encounter with FLEXIBLE ERWARTUNGSAUFFÄLLIGKEIT [flexible conspicuousness of expectation], a particular fascination sets in for the discarded machine, which is seemingly past its peak and which we might recognize from the industrial past it has long since transcended. Whatever had once been transported on its chain carousel remains a secret. Catharina Szonn has uprooted it from its functional context, montaged it freestanding in the exhibition space and refurbished it with set pieces from our material present: all sorts of everyday plastic objects and strange, limblike figures perpetually pull, grind and tear each other apart. Furthermore, the machine has been expanded with several paper shredders and LED conveyor belts that eat up and spit out reoccurring text fragments from endless paper rolls. The machine itself still functions impeccably. But, as it revolves around itself and mercilessly grinds away, the viewer’s initial fascination becomes a painful feeling of utter uselessness and unfulfilled-ness. It remains tempting to consider the machine an analogy for our societal work and production relations – as something opposing humanness, something surmountable and exterior to it. But regardless of whether we understand ourselves to be in a post-industrial or a post-digital context, and regardless of whether we view ourselves as machine-human or human-machine, we are inseparably linked to our tools and materials which challenge us and shape our reality. And thus, I only recognize myself in this sad gestalt. It is life itself. All the things we carry around and within ourselves, that we drag along in our eternal cycle, that we gorge and spit out again, and that fall off of us again. Our motor, our literal inner drive, which leads us back and forth to roll over this world, to wage wars, to produce purpose. No matter where this great tugging may lead us, in the end we fray, we wear off, and will only have been. Actually, I just want to take it into my arms and console it. If I wasn’t in danger of being swept away by it. Life stays a laborious idiocy, in which we all continuously and vainly circulate. Whatever it is, this moving life, it stays unfulfilled. Don Quijote par excellence.