Text fragments and photo sequences reflecting the trajectory that Susanne Kriemann pursued in relation to archaeology, the artefact, the image of the individual at work, and the idea of the desert as a symbol of the modern desire to create an empty slate, a tabula rasa. Material from Agatha Christie’s photographic archives is related to photographs by Kriemann of the Syrian desert and archaeological sites in Mesopotamia. This associative working method allows the artist to ‘dig towards the past’ and to disassociate ‘the idea of modernity’ from ideological connotations, and analyze the writing of recent history as a formal system of organization.