"Der Bilderstürmer Jochen Gerz ist auch ein Wortzertrümmerer. Er mißtraut nicht nur der Sichtbarkeit herkömmlicher Kunst, sondern dem kulturellen Verweissystem schlechthin. Dahinter steht freilich keine besondere künstlerische Bescheidenheit, sondern das glatte Gegenteil: Durch den Nebel der kulturellen Muster hindurch soll der einzelne zum Kern des Schreckens vordringen können, wo es keine Worte oder Bilder mehr gibt. Das Eigentliche hat seinen Sitz im Kopf, im Bewußtsein dessen, was einmal geschah und seither gegenwärtig ist und nur noch abgerufen zu werden braucht."

Mark Siemons 1998

"The iconoclast Jochen Gerz is also a word smasher. He distrusts not only the visibility of conventional art, but the cultural system of references per se. Of course, there is no particular artistic modesty behind this, but rather the complete opposite: the individual should be able to penetrate through the fog of cultural patterns to the core of horror, where there are no more words or images. The real has its seat in the head, in the consciousness of what once happened and has since been present and only needs to be recalled."

Mark Siemons 1998

Gerz sees the danger that the Auschwitz trial mainly serves to produce innocence – i.e. victims of all kind; the perpetrator transfers himself into the victim. To avoid this, Gerz wants to employ fiction in a way "that it resists the audience’s disappearance into grief." A game is being attempted: the crowd’s desire to disappear (whether it be by hiding behind rules, power structures or innocence) competes against one’s joy of playing, the pride of doing, of being present. The audience is seen as an actor - a perpetrator in the theatre, the reader is seen as an informant in the newspaper. Victims change back into perpetrators, persons responsible. "I was there" (in the theatre) opposed to "I was not there" (at the ramp).

Christoph Rüter 2005. Translated by e_CR editors

Ultimately a strong insecurity could be felt everywhere, as no one who touched on the text could safely pretend, "I would have acted differently back then." However, in the moment of accepting that, the feeling of impotence changed into a feeling of power that showed all participants to what extent every state and society relies on every individual’s vigilance and vigour. That is why the sentence "I don’t participate in this", cannot be found in the text of Die Ermittlung, i.e. cannot be found in our past and which one participating woman had to urgently scream into a microphone on stage – otherwise she would have probably suffocated – is one of the motifs that runs through. What happened has been performed already, but has to be performed again and again by – for example – making perpetrators victims of a game that voluntarily forces them to go through the hell of this text and to make an experience, which is sensual and makes an impact precisely for that reason.

Christoph Rüter 2005. Translated by e_CR editors