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English: “One of the ways we Turkmen people prepare our fish is by preserving it. Back in the days, everybody had fish. Everybody had fish and caviar. Fish was our main source of food. But today, all fish are gone and the people started disappearing as well.“

Preservation is a video- portrait of Aman Beschareti explaining how to preserve fish in his mother tongue, a Turkmen dialect spoken in Turkmen Sahra, Iran. Aman lives in exile and has not seen Turkmen Sahra for almost forty years. However, he was able to preserve his mother tongue while incorporating some Russian and German vocabulary. The video consists of three parts presented one after the other: The first part takes place in Turkmen Sahra showing a video recording by Marieh Skehki for her husband Aman. “Say Hello to daddy!“, she says while capturing their child. The second part of the video takes place in Germany, where Aman shows digital images that depict family members from Turkmen Sahra preparing fish to his daughter. “One of the ways we Turkmen people prepare our fish is by preserving it. Back in the days, everybody had fish and caviar. But today, all fish are gone and the people started disappearing as well.“

In the third part, Aman shows his daughter how to prepare fish in Germany. This process leads to the development of self- preservation.