»A Sea of Being« is a print publication on Butoh, an avant-garde performance art in postwar Japan and the result of an artistic collaboration with the dancer Mirjam Morad and the print designer Agnes Steiner, Büro AgS. Visual artist and writer Nourit Masson-Sékiné provided the foreword.

Mirjam Morad and I searched for ways of re-living, re-embodying memory that is within our boundaries of perception. We explored the outer landscape with all our senses and yearned for modes to connect with the inner self.

Her work was closely connected to and inspired by nature and the understanding of the world as one single, breathing entity. Very unexpectedly, Mirjam Morad passed away in March 2020. I feel grateful for having had the opportunity to learn about her as a blessed story-teller and to call her a friend.

Bi-lingual English Japanese Edition 2015 | Softcover 80 Pages | 34 × 24 cm | 90 Photos in B|W and Color ISBN 978-3-200-04371-8

»A Sea of Being« is an exhibition series taken from the same-titled print publication on Butoh with the dancer Mirjam Morad. Butoh was inspired by the German Ausdruckstanz of the 1930s and given shape in postwar Japan.

Mirjam Morad often accompanied the opening of an exhibition with a dance performance and individually designed her dresses, allowing the spectator to follow the journey and exploration behind the photographic work.

Images taken from »A Sea of Being« were on display or featured at Life Magazine Shanghai, CN, Tanz Magazin Berlin, DE, Art Habens Berlin, DE, Vizualizator Festival Belgrade, RS, Gallery Andrea Jünger Vienna, AT, Photo Book Festival Vienna, AT, Photon Gallery Vienna, AT and MAK Museum of Applied Arts Vienna, AT.

Fine art prints, limited edition 2012 - 2015

The photo series »Closeness« examines ways we are connected with each other, approach or leave one another, in what way ties exist, just discovered or experienced for years - qualities that are primarily visible to the inner eye.

The artist Rivka Rinn stated in that regard: »That what the eye doesn't know, it sees.«

I use an upright picture format and a single lighting source with two protagonists sitting in front of a black curtain. »Closeness« allows the exploration of touch from a rather physical quality to one felt from the inside. Layers of interaction create an ever changing mode of conduct that I accompany as a silent witness.

The photographic images hold art historical references and may open the floor for a discussion on physis, socio-political perceptions and a spirituality that has been anchored and maintained in the applied arts over centuries.

Barriers, physically present or just in people's minds can be overcome through our individual connectedness or closeness. I understand »Closeness« as a valuable lens through which to look at the fundamental changes in our society, an open space to ruminate over human interaction and its value to our very own existence.

»Closeness« was presented at Hong Kong Arts Center | Goethe Gallery & Black Box Studio, Wan Chai, HK and Künstlerhaus Vienna, AT.

C4 photo prints, mounted in shadow frames, limited edition 2016 - 2018

»I extract my feelings and words from my absolute night.« Clarice Lispector

»Die Erinnerung an meine Kindheit« is a story about transformation and healing, a very personal journey to my own heart and to a self worthy of love and life. The publication was created in collaboration with the designer Clemens Schedler | Büro für konkrete Gestaltung and provides an insight into the autobiographical analysis of traumatic experiences of childhood abuse.

It was only decades later, while experiencing growing signs of depression and isolation, that I was able to engage with the painful recollections of these events. Through daily therapeutic practices, I captured memories in paintings, drawings, text and photography in order to give the unspeakable a name and a form.

My biography is not an isolated case. As their lone companion, shame separates the victims from a good, self-determined life, even after years of suffering. I hope that »Die Erinnerung an meine Kindheit« can show the level of suffering — through abuse and especially ritual abuse — in our society and that this collective silence becomes an open dialogue.

Manfred Nowak, co-founder of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights, Secretary General of the Global Campus of Human Rights and Head of the UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty wrote the afterword. Distribution and Marketing by VfmK Verlag für moderne Kunst.

German Edition 2020 | Swiss Brochure 96 Pages | 25,2 × 18 cm | 48 Illustrations in Color ISBN 978-3-903320-76-5

The publication received generous support by a number of institutions, amongst them the Federal Chancellery of Austria, RD Foundation Vienna, Bildrecht GmbH and KJA Kinder- und Jugendanwaltschaft Wien.

»Die Erinnerung an meine Kindheit« was presented at Ö1 Austrian Broadcasting and Gallery Andrea Jünger Vienna, AT.

Vienna based performer and choreographer Georg Blaschke invited me to participate in a series of space occupations on different sites, addressing questions of oscillation and stand-still, dizziness and balance, transitoriness and the conceivableness of movement in time.

»Gras« is the first part of this series and composed of twelve larger-than-life images of the performer, situated in an on-going installation. Georg exposes his body to the photographer's eye in several series of Aktionen. The process takes place in different sessions during which the collaborative practice enables further steps into understanding the intrinsic logic of the total work.

The body becomes the underlying ground for serial choreographic arrangements and superimpositions of organic substances, which provoke formal bodily extensions in the images, perceived as inner and outer landscapes.

This setting allows a sensual experience on the borderline of perception and results in an interplay between image, choreography and action, an intimate dance on the horizon of focus and haziness. The aim is not to display individual sceneries on the surface level but to see the unseen, to inquire what meets the eye underneath the obvious and familiar. »Gras« was accompanied by a brochure and a fine art postcard edition. Print design by Agnes Steiner, Büro AgS.

»One of the greatest challenges in today’s culture, urgently necessary from a political point of view, is how to bring analytical skills to bear on the perceptual physiological language of the image, an event and not an object — constantly changing, living and growing.« Bill Viola, Unseen Images, 1992

»Gras« was presented at Vizualizator Festival Belgrade, RS, Gallery Andrea Jünger Vienna, AT, Kunsthaus Muerz Mürzzuschlag, AT, Odaada Gallery Vienna, AT, Impulstanz Festival Vienna, AT, Tanz Ist Dornbirn, AT and Tanztage Burgenland, AT. Many thanks to Andrea Jünger, Liz King, Karl Regensburger, Marija Ilkic, Isben Onen and Günter Marinelli for the generous support.

C4 photo prints, mounted, fine art prints, limited edition 2013

Ko Murobushi was an acclaimed Butoh artist, who taught and performed worldwide. Butoh, influenced by European expressionism, shifted Japanese traditional dance to the artistic avant-garde of the 20th century postwar period. The founders were Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, who fought conventions with the desire to reveal the truth of the human being in life and death. Over the years they developed their individual style of Butoh.

Hijikata explored the transmutation of the human body into other forms, such as those of animals. He also developed a poetic and surreal choreographic language to help the dancer transform into other states of being. Ohno is described as the soul of Butoh. He once commented on his work: »The best thing someone can say is that while watching my performance they begin to cry. It is not important to understand what I am doing; perhaps it is better if they don't understand, but just respond to the dance.« Martin Childs, Kazuo Ohno, 2010

Butoh can involve playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, unusual environments, and is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow controlled motion. I met Ko Murobushi in the late 90s and had the opportunity to attend his workshops as a dancer. Eventually I began photographing several creations in Europe and Japan, feeling touched and deeply moved by his performative art.

A selection of work was presented or featured at Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina Venezia, IT, Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum Waseda University Tokyo, JP, Gallery Combaz 7 Crans Montana, CH, Doc! Photo Magazine Warsaw, PL, Edition Autrement Paris, FR and Anzenberger Agency Vienna, AT.

Acclaimed Japanese Butoh artist Ko Murobushi passed away in June 2015. The Impulstanz festival in Vienna, Austria gave me the opportunity to build an installation for a memorial night at Odeon theatre. I have for years been drawn to Ko’s storytelling, his ability to create images that seem larger than life and very real, yet at the same time permeable like air, ever changing and free of a distinct shape.

The installation consists of light gray stones, taken from a river bed in Upper Austria. I selected stones with an organic touch as a reminder of natural forces and modes of transformation.

The stones were positioned on the floor as a single structure and mounted up in the air on thin cotton strings, mirroring in number and shape its counterpart. Bright natural fabrics covered the stones and the surrounding environment, referring to a Japanese rock or zen garden. Such structures aim at imitating the intimate essence of nature, not its actual appearance. My intention was to provide a space for visitors to hold in for a moment and touch an elevated space, to perceive gravity and a very physical reality as well as the supernatural, unexplainable that surpasses the known.

The installation was funded by Impulstanz Festival Vienna, AT. Many thanks to Roos van Berkel, Karin Haas, Gudrun Lenk-Wane and Kimiko Watanabe for the generous support.

Flower petals and fallen leaves, fabrics and colored glass open doors while others close, touch upon an ever changing sensual landscape. The dancer Maartje Pasman moves in a dimly lit space while traces of light illuminate her skin, marking the perimeters of her inner universe, reaffirming a sense of self and forging recognition in a world beyond boundaries.

»Traces« follows the dots between photography and painting, estranged and hidden spaces, implicit in both types of media. Old-fashioned slide projectors paint multi-layered structures, the images taken are process-based, sudden appearances on the horizon of our senses.

One of the visual layers on display consists of a painting of the dancer, done by the painter Lucia Riccelli and photographed on color slide film. »Traces« is a journey through flickering light. We search for an open field, an unknown place that we touch with our imaginative hands.

»Traces« was on display at Gallery Felix Höller Vienna, AT.

Fine art prints, mounted in shadow frames, limited edition 2017 - 2019

Memory and its implications on our lives have always been of interest to me. »#whatremains« is an attempt to tell a personal story about Margarete, my grandmother who passed away in 2017.

She lived in the same apartment in Vienna, Austria since the 1950s, most of the time by herself, facing a growing dementia and loss of touch with the world outside. Over the years she created her own universe of fabrics, wooden toys and masks, covered in light and gradually, in dust.

During summer I began to document her refuge with the aim to share an inner image, an inner logic that lied underneath what seemed to be a randomness of forgotten property. The final images show the apartment empty, an appearance so new to me and almost a shock. It felt as if these walls could speak, silent witnesses of a period of time that no longer is.

»#whatremains« was featured at Ö1 Austrian Broadcasting. A selection of work is on display at Anzenberger Agency Vienna, AT.

Fine art prints, limited edition 2017