‘Dongxi’ - Ordinary Chinese Objects – work in progress

Series of colour photographs, 2010

‘Dongxi’ points to a poor present/past and shows the people’s ability to make life a bit more convenient despite lack of big money. Most of the objects are hand-made or, if produced on industrial scale, unbranded and sold almost solely on the Chinese market.

This series is aimed to add to a more diverse representation of contemporary China and the Chinese way of living.

The objects are pared off from any context, depicted as separate entities to emphasize their inherent attributes. The colourful backgrounds highlight the objects visual appearance and the Chinese’s love for strong colours. 

Selfaktor – ‘Spinning machine’ (Tuchfabrik Müller, Euskirchen, Germany)

Videoloop, Dokufiction, 5 min.

This 3-channel video installation has been produced for the Rhineland Museum of the Industry to demonstrate the use and ingenuity of one of the first semi-automatic spinning machines.

The machine has been put back into use for a short time after many years of being laid idle, to make these video sequences possible. The sequences are distributed among 7 monitors that are installed along the machine.

Coachella Valley, Gebilde I-III, 10/16

All rights reserved.

Increasing salinisation and heavy pollution from intensive agriculture in the Coachella Valley are causing the ecosystem of California's largest inland lake to collapse. The recreational area of the ‘California Riviera’ has turned into a stinking ecological nightmare. What remains are fish bones, abandoned trailers, drug production sites and an unbearable stench.

Hotel 17 – a visual research on rooms and people

Series of 16 colour photographs, 1989

A small hotel in New York City predominantly inhabited by permanent guests – a microcosm that mirrors the social reality of low-income residents in Manhattan end of the 1980’s.

Annäherung und Verlust - Imagined Geography

Group of 8 B/W triptychs, 100 x 210 cm, 1991

On the one hand, the work tries to deconstruct the Eurocentric view on Africa that has been formed by the media (especially colonial photography), and on the other hand it deals with basic themes of human life that are substantiated in universally valid archetypes.

The texts underneath the images are excerpts of poems written by contemporary African writers.

MIDGARD

 Mixed media installation, 1995 (Sound, 13 colour transparencies 130 x 260 cm), 2 videoprojections)

 This installation was specially built for the belltower of Trinitatis Church in Cologne. The tower has five levels and level two to five each has 4 big windows that I used as lighboxes for my photographs (huge transparencies) and for the videoprojections.

The tower as a way to get closer to the light, the sky and the cosmos is connected to the human enquiry into one’s own position within the universe and the bigger powers that direct and challenge us.