The book can be read as an inventory of the trajectory that Susanne Kriemann pursued in relation to archaeology, to the artefact, to the image of the individual at work and the idea of the desert as a symbol of the modern desire to create an empty slate, a tabula rasa. Material from Agatha Christies photographic archives is related to photographs that Kriemann produced of the Syrian desert and archaeological sites in Mesopotamia. This associative working method allows the artist to dig towards the past and to disassociate the idea of modernity from all ideological connotations, and in this way analyze the writing of recent history as a formal system of organization. With texts by Dieter Roelstraete, Wim Waelput, Axel John Wieder. Design: Christopher Jung and Tobias Wenig, Berlin.