Heaven can't wait

The work is located in an old fortress above the Strait of Messina and consists of an old wooden rowing boat that we have dug into the ground, some poppies, various stones (some white from Messina and some black from Pantelleria) with words painted on them and two small temple bells (one in a cave in Pantelleria, the other in Messina) that ring when the wind blows.

A few years ago, a young man born in Sicily disappeared on the island of Pantelleria. The circumstances of his disappearance are still a mystery. Shortly after arriving on the island, he hired a canoe and never returned from his boat trip. After a thorough search, only his boat, shoes, rucksack and lifejacket were found in a remote spot on the coast, where there is a cave above the rocky shore. We hung a temple bell in this cave, which is difficult to access, and placed another bell in Messina. We found the rowing boat we used at the exact spot where the young man had hired the boat.

The work connects Pantelleria with Sicily and liberates the lost.

The young man posted the first lines of Rainer Maria Rilke's Ninth Elegy on his social media account the day before he travelled to Pantelleria and disappeared.

These are the words we have painted on the stones.

Warum, wenn es angeht, also die Frist des Daseins
hinzubringen, als Lorbeer, ein wenig dunkler als alles
andere Grün, mit kleinen Wellen an jedem
Blattrand (wie eines Windes Lächeln) - : warum dann
Menschliches müssen - und, Schicksal vermeidend,
sich sehnen nach Schicksal?...

Oh, nicht, weil Glück ist,
dieser voreilige Vorteil eines nahen Verlusts.
Nicht aus Neugier, oder zur Übung des Herzens,
das auch im Lorbeer wäre.....

(Why—when we might have been laurel trees,
a little darker than all the other greens,
with tiny curves at the edge of every leaf
(like the smiles of a wind)—why, then,
did we have to be made human, so that
denying our destiny, we still long for it?

Certainly not because happiness really exists,
that quick gain of an approaching loss.
Not to experience wonder or to exercise the heart.
The laurel tree could have done all that.)