The Japanese who had bought The Maja’s Men made those two pictures available for the exhibition. The Polaroid plates, the screens, cables and computer were packed into wooden crates in Eschburg’s Linienstrasse studio and collected by a haulage firm. A week later Eschburg flew to Rome. He boarded an airport bus on the runway. Hundreds of starlings were circling the air traffic control tower. Later, his taxi driver told him that Rome was using hawks to try driving those birds out of the city, but the tactic wasn’t working. The gallery had hired the first-floor rooms of a restored seventeenth-century palazzo. Over the next few days, Eschburg made preparations for the exhibition. He hung eighteen photographs along each of the longer walls of the main hall. The Plexiglas plates were lit from behind, showing the women’s bodies in a soft, sepia tone. There was a video screen at the end of the hall. The installation was programmed so that a beamer projected one of the Polaroids on to the screen first.
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