Daniela Comani

Ich war’s. Tagebuch 1900–1999
Installation, Digital print on Net Vinyl, 300 × 600 cm, 2007; Audio-CD, 66 min., German, 2002

As the work’s title already suggests, Ich war’s. Tagebuch 1900–1999 (It was me. Diary 1900–1999) is a diary – albeit a very special one. Written in the first person, it reports on important events of the twentieth century in its 365 entries. For example, the fictional narrator (which in the Italian version is feminine) signs the treaty dissolving the Warsaw Pact on 31st March, is killed on 2nd June by police bullets during a demonstration in West Berlin, blocks the path of an army tank on Tiananmen Square, Beijing, two days later, only to attack a Vietnamese street-vendor in Hoyerswerda, Germany, on the 17th of September.

Daniela Comani has written a diary of the twentieth century as though all the events actually happened to her. From one day to the next, from one report to the next, she is a passive witness, then an activist, then victim, then perpetrator. In this way she is seemingly the initiator of these twentieth-century historical events. As in her other works (for example, A Happy Marriage, photographic series, 2003–2007), here Daniela Comani’s command of role-playing is masterful.

The events in Ich war’s are not in chronological order, nor does the selection follow the criteria of official historiography. “Through of the personally motivated selection of facts, a kind of vortex of events develops. Names and places change, actions repeat themselves: Discoveries, inventions, elections, changes of government, wars, assassinations, new-born babies, kidnappings, etc. … The first-person narrator runs breathlessly – as perpetrator and victim – through the history of a century, her century.” (1)

Inke Arns

(1) Editorial note in: Daniela Comani, Ich war’s. Tagebuch 1900–1999, Revolver – Archiv für aktuelle Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, 2005

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