Paperback, 11.5 x 18cm, 64 pages, English edition
Edition of 150 German and 150 English copies
Text by Pravu Mazumdar, calligraphy by Mirei Takeuchi, illustrations by Ulrike Steinke.
Texts, pictures, collages, sketches, drawings and flies by Peter Bauhuis
"Wherever people live, so live flies. Our relationship to them is always ambivalent: they irritate, contaminate, fascinate, oscillate.
The poet Hinrich Brockes, at the beginning of the Enlightenment, saw the small fly as a sign of divine beauty, and Frans van der Mijn painted it as a reminder of a tender touch. In ancient Egypt it meant military distinction, and the haikus of Kobajashi Issa are full of flies. In medicine, the maggots of the green bottle fly are used to clean wounds. Geneticists consider Drosophilia Melanogaster to be their favourite fly. Artists, sculptors and engineers marvel at flies' flight - they are so mobile, they can change gears. Goethe turned flies into poetry and Wittgenstein shows it the way out...
Inspired by a drawing from the 18th century, I have created a small swarm of flies that will now rise from my studio, into the world."
Peter Bauhuis
