The material for the exhibition refers to figures that have assumed the roles of examples in various academic works, but where the use of them as examples at the same time make the actual object fade into oblivion. When Martin Heidegger speaks of a hammer to exemplify the difference between Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit, the actual hammer is entirely irrelevant. However, I want to know why he speaks of a hammer and not a shovel? And what hammer, exactly? How did it look? – And how did poor Martin manage to break his hammer?

As such, the use of things as examples is a way of depleting their individual significance in the same way that archaeology uses objects for the sake of establishing types and typologies, which, eventually, end up distorting the specific objects which then fade into oblivion.