»trail« harks back to a path that Natascha Sadr Haghighian laid out at the Auehang in Kassel in 2012 as part of dOCUMENTA (13).

The trail was located next to a memorial to the fallen German soldiers of the two World Wars and »accompanied« by onomatopoeic sounds. In the process of laying out the path, Haghighian discovered that the entire slope consisted of rubble from the Second World War. In the book she follows the 'trail' of this debris together with Pola Sieverding and Jasper Kettner and ends up with the Kassel-based armaments industry, with stories of migration and forced labour, with military vehicles named after animals, and with flowers that only grow in rubble. Via an exchange of letters with Anselm Franke, Avery Gordon, Ayşe Guelec, and a number of other correspondents, the findings are linked and examined together, revealing a view of historical continuities, loops, and ruptures, resembling the layering of the debris itself.

Co-published with the documenta archiv.

With contributions from Michael Boßdorf, Herr Düsterdieck, Anselm Franke, Avery Gordon, Ayse Güle, Reza Haeri, Tom Keenan, Volker Lange,Helmut Weich, Allen S. Weiss

Language: English