While growing up, the town was just fine for me. As a kid, you could wander around, ride your bicycle, and go skating in a vivid skateboarding scene. But there was no question that I would leave the town after finishing school, because there were no opportunities to study or do anything whatsoever.

When I came back to explore the town through an artistic approach, I realized its political potential. Since the town was shrinking significantly due to a lack of jobs, economic decline, and so on, it suddenly became a metaphor for transformation. Social housing blocks were abandoned or torn down. Whole districts lost their identity, leaving only their streets like bloodless veins.

In this environment, I started to articulate my artistic language.

I think it is still photography since I still build on it and use it both as artwork and as a sketch for other mediums.

The past of my family.

It is a problem for me. The “fatherland,” to me, represents a society in which men and masculinity are still trying to dominate, and especially in Germany, it brings up the dark past.

Interestingly, Vaterland is a German term referring to one’s home country. Almost every other country uses the term “motherland.”

I guess I try to speak the same language and create a situation on equal footing. In terms of my portrait work (Vaterland), I had several meetings before showing my work. The men could relate strongly to the architecture and materials I used because they are all from that area.

When it comes to art mediation, I find it really important not to exclude people through language. Rather, it is most important to me to find simple words for complex topics.

It's hard to grasp utopian moments in the present.

If I'm thinking of the freedom and fun in the 90s and Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" thesis, definitely necessary!

This one.

I would, and did, show them my monograph FF. Often, there is so much beauty in destruction...

...dust

To me, dialogue is important, and I also like the surprising moment for the viewer to make a discovery and draw his or her own connections. So both are relevant, and one adds to the other.

I think this question leads to the general question: what is art for? To me, my approach is to understand certain problems in the past and present and to work around them. First, to understand them for myself, and then to think about them as an artwork. This is, of course, a natural process... my hope is that people might get a better understanding of this surrounding. But yeah, in the end I might feel responsible because I also feel a lot of love, and I'm often terrified by how things develop.