Friedenskinder, 2024
Forgotten Doctrine ( 2025)
https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/12511915-forgotten-doctrine
"Someone who is taking a deep breath will experience the world differently from someone who is being throttled."—Reiner Kunze, 1981
As a young teacher in the mid-1980s, I was unexpectedly summoned to the district council. I faced a panel of officials, including my headmaster and the parents of a student who had applied to become a professional officer at the age of fourteen. I was criticised for not promoting him as a role model and questioned about my non-membership in the FDJ. Overwhelmed, I broke down. The experience stayed with me.
Years later, I rediscovered a notebook containing stories by the East German writer Reiner Kunze. His work, a friend copied by hand and circulated privately, had been important to me. One of the stories, Friedenskinder, became the starting point for this work. The title refers to the contradiction between the language of peace and the military structures that surrounded everyday life in the GDR.
For Friedenskinder, I cut and roll copies of the hand-typed text until they fit inside used 5 cm rifle shell casings. The words are still there, but their original form has been changed. What could be read as a continuous text becomes a series of tightly contained fragments.
There are 28 pieces, corresponding to the 28 years that the Berlin Wall stood. Each casing is approximately 15 cm high and positioned on a shelf in front of a mirror. The mirror introduces another surface into the installation. The objects are physically present while their reflections extend the arrangement beyond the objects themselves.
The shell casings retain their original material identity, while the text has been transformed to fit inside them. Neither element is erased. Instead, two very different forms of material are brought together, creating a tension between language, containment and the physical residue of violence.
Two photographs, 44 × 88 cm, accompany the installation.
The work continues my interest in transforming existing material without destroying it. The text remains inside the object, but it can no longer be encountered in the way it was originally written. It has become something that is preserved through being physically altered.
https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/12511915-forgotten-doctrine
"Someone who is taking a deep breath will experience the world differently from someone who is being throttled."—Reiner Kunze, 1981
As a young teacher in the mid-1980s, I was unexpectedly summoned to the district council. I faced a panel of officials, including my headmaster and the parents of a student who had applied to become a professional officer at the age of fourteen. I was criticised for not promoting him as a role model and questioned about my non-membership in the FDJ. Overwhelmed, I broke down. The experience stayed with me.
Years later, I rediscovered a notebook containing stories by the East German writer Reiner Kunze. His work, a friend copied by hand and circulated privately, had been important to me. One of the stories, Friedenskinder, became the starting point for this work. The title refers to the contradiction between the language of peace and the military structures that surrounded everyday life in the GDR.
For Friedenskinder, I cut and roll copies of the hand-typed text until they fit inside used 5 cm rifle shell casings. The words are still there, but their original form has been changed. What could be read as a continuous text becomes a series of tightly contained fragments.
There are 28 pieces, corresponding to the 28 years that the Berlin Wall stood. Each casing is approximately 15 cm high and positioned on a shelf in front of a mirror. The mirror introduces another surface into the installation. The objects are physically present while their reflections extend the arrangement beyond the objects themselves.
The shell casings retain their original material identity, while the text has been transformed to fit inside them. Neither element is erased. Instead, two very different forms of material are brought together, creating a tension between language, containment and the physical residue of violence.
Two photographs, 44 × 88 cm, accompany the installation.
The work continues my interest in transforming existing material without destroying it. The text remains inside the object, but it can no longer be encountered in the way it was originally written. It has become something that is preserved through being physically altered.