This publication documents the 2016 exhibition “One, No One and One Hundred Thousand,” which took place at Kunsthalle Wien, Karlsplatz. Curated by Luca Lo Pinto, the show took its inspiration from Oulipo, a literary strategy whose objective was to propose new “structures” for writing that were mathematical in nature.

Like a pictorial encyclopedia, Das Wunder des Lebens contains over four hundred drawings that show all that the modern world has to offer, from maps and city views to cars and airplanes. However, unlike conventional pictorial dictionaries, there is no symbolic system. Juxtapositions are normalized, and normality becomes a farce.

At a moment when narrating experiences seems more important than having them, Peter Wächtler’s writing foregrounds different narrative techniques and traditions as means of rationalizing one’s place in the world, of grappling with and giving meaning to one’s existence. Here, the social totality creeps into the picture. Come On compiles ten texts written between 2011 and 2013.