**100 copies** In hardbound embossed special package (like previous edition in this series), numbered & signed, with an original work by Hartmut Andryczuk, signed and numbered. 52 pages with a foreword by Hartmut Geerken and 38 applicants for the Goethe Institute in Kabul in the 1970s. With Audio CD. To do justice to the dark irreparable situation afghanistan, bombed far back by the west, is in today, i am juxtaposing 38 passport photos of afghan people, in original format & still from the time of the kingdom of afghanistan, with two original afghan musical instruments. the photos are partly bleached & damaged, without any function, detached from all officiality & nobody knows who of those photographed happens to be alive. also picture & names are torn apart & no longer assignable. – when enrolling for german courses at the goethe institute in kabul in the 1970s, for whatever reason, a number of passport photos were left over. since there is a human being behind every photo, it was not possible for me to dispose of these photos, but i took them & rediscovered them almost fifty years later in a plastic bag.
The instruments: one, fur-covered, stringed instrument found only in afghanistan, is a rubab. the other, a decorated wooden body covered with residual strings, is a jatga, one of the oldest pentatonic stringed instruments from mongolia, known since the sixth century before our time. i found it in kabul, but in the seven years i have been on a first-name basis with afghanistan, i have never seen a similar instrument in the indo afghan region. both instruments are irreparably damaged, & only sounds & noises can be elicited by my touching them with hands & fingernails, which may still suggest an original sound far away. (Hartmut Geerken, Mai 2021)
