Harburg Sand,

1988

Six reproductions of a black-and-white picture postcard align in a numbered grid; the picture shows a street scene in the Harburg district of Hamburg, not far from the family home where Darboven lived and worked from 1968 until her death in 2009. Printed in red on the first postcard is the condensed narration of a domestic scene in which Darboven watches television while her mother leafs through a catalog. The remaining five postcards present calculations and musical phrases derived from dates in June 1988. Each calculation begins with the phrase arbeit: harburg: heute, or "work: harburg: today," foregrounding the activity of making the artwork itself as well as the place and time of its making.