"Building blocks of authoritarian regimes" is a look at the various methods of authoritarian architecture in Bucharest, including their retrofitted cooling, heating and "life support" systems.
After the First World War, Romania had grown by 8.5 million people. The increase in ethnic diversity brought about a nationalistic attitude in the rest of the population, in effect leading to up to Ceausescus Regime. Romania as a state was subject to three different dictatorships. The Nazis, Ceausescu and in 1938 under Carl II.
This project aims to shed light on the urban, architectural changes that took place at this time. Because, just like fascist architecture in Italy and Germany, this architecture was also intended to "build" the propagandistic visions of the establishment and to force the population into subjugation.
The multitude of definitions of the cyborg blur its specific characteristics. What remains is the vague image of a seemingly anthropomorphic being that is closely, physically or mentally connected to one or more technologies. A nature-culture, the fusion of the biological and the socio-technically, the realisation that much of what we call natural or given by nature, really is cultivated, or at least subject to an interdependence. We need to realise that being human carries with it a responsibility that has been neglected for too long on the simple grounds that its irreparable actions are in its nature. Humanism is responsible for all humanitarian crises. Transhumanism is needed, not to bring us closer to some gods, but because we need to rise above ourselves, to leave our imperfections behind. The cyborg is not the better human, the cyborg is, as Donna Haraway claims, our ontology. Being human means being cyborg.
50 Pages
Transit is the movement of people or goods, or really anything, from one place to another. Organics are living plants or animals or humans, or the substances of which they or we are made. Organics in transit is the literal meat that is being transported all over the world. Furthermore, Organics in Transit means all the ways we've built our Transit systems for the transportation of organic matter, both inspired by nature and on the destruction of Nature. Lastly, organics in transit are the correlations between human-made transit systems and humans. Regarding the nature of this project, I approached it from an angle I'd call “Form Following Data”. Photography based on data and systems. An Idea that extended to the Process of my Photography itself.
35 Pages
“Männerfantasien” was part of the Group project “Gender+Photography”. The photographers are gendering photography and thus revealing what has always been there anyway. Gender + Photography means: photography is gendered. Everything we do, see and feel is gendered and with this realization, the creators are questioning the cosmology of our actions and, according to Judith Butler, of our being. It is about all of our being and therefore “gender” is not a topic that only one person can talk about, because the idea of hierarchical, practices like sole authorship have long been outdated. When looking at the works, any distance to the subject disappears and the concept permeates our own biographies and views, both socially and artistically. The photographers worked together on this process. The aim was to bring together their own impulses, and this resulted in an exhibition that not only asks the viewer for personal localization in social space but that encourages all creators to reorient their own position as image makers.
I still like to wander the streets with my camera on my own as I used to, but today I no longer look for situational motifs, but try to adapt my sequence of images to certain systems. In Split, London andBukarest, for example, I was fascinated by the architecture that seemed to be growing over the heads of the city's inhabitants. To visualise this feeling, I digitally altered the construction of the buildings afterwards, enlarging or stacking them to create new, even bigger constructs.
15 Pages
"
BLUT-ORANGEN" is the story of two siblings. The film shows their connection, fears, and hopes in three chapters. Alex and Marie are siblings. Together they struggle with their parents' lack of understanding. In the course of the film, we learn that Marie not only has to deal with the construct of the family in which she finds herself, but that she also encounters her own lack of understanding when her sister has panic attacks. Ultimately, we get a glimpse of the desire for togetherness within the family, accompanied by the perhaps naïve assumption that things will sort themselves out.
For "Der Diskriminator" 163 people were portrayed, their eyes, mouths, and noses digitally categorized and then assembled by hand on one head. This resulted in 163 faces that do not really exist and yet have a connection to reality.
All the faces were printed on a 5 cm wide and 10 m long strip using a thermal printer and could be set in motion by viewers using a self-built projector.
These faces sliding into each other form a presentation of the diversity of all people, whose only limit is our imagination.
In 2022 I Had the chance to go on a 10-day Fieldtrip to Split. After my arrival, I was greeted by new people, we spent days and nights wandering the streets of the Croatian harbour city.
That's where I met Stella, a film student and dancer, with whom I worked together on a photo series and video work about traditional dances and the connection that young people feel to the to the culture they were born into.
Splitski Ples however is about stella and the days we spend.
