There, where I should have been yesterday. I am here today. (Dort, wo ich gestern hätte sein sollen. Ich bin heute hier.)

In the spring of 2007, within the framework of a test set-up designed for this purpose, Petra Köhle and Nicolas Vermot traveled separately for 21 days to Palermo where they recorded their respective routes and activities in detail, given that they had to be able to verify later where they were located at every moment of their stay. Supplied with GPS and dictaphone, with camera and note pad, the two of them wandered through the Sicilian city with the goal of determining if two people who want to encounter each other actually meet somewhere, sometime in a metropolitan setting with an area of 22’000 soccer fields – even if the rules of the game forbid the systematic search for the other person. A wealth of documents consequently accumulated (diary entries, photographs, recordings, videos), which collectively yield a portrait of the city of Palermo contrasting sharply to a tourist’s view. At the same time they also document the moods and thoughts of the two protagonists moving around in this foreign city alone, but always having in mind a possible encounter with the other. Consequently the soberly established rules produce a situation where they both have to come to terms with their foreignness, loneliness and longing; a situation that provokes inner monologues about accidental or fateful encounters, about searching and hunting, about rules and the breaking of them. The lecture is subject to a framework of rules in which the reading of parts of our protocols overlap with the projection of slides and the replaying of recorded texts. Both of us have their voice and a device to communicate. Since it is not a completely organized choreography but a setting in which the protagonists have choices the lecture is different each time.