Stories about migration - then and now

The publication Material für einen Prozess is the final part of a six year long artistic investigation of my own emigration history. It contains my video works as well as my artistic research and literary writing.

You can see a reportage about this work here in German: MDR Nächste Generation

An uncanny revelation during my research was the continuity between communist era propaganda and the populist stance of most current Eastern European states: the border has to be closed off at any cost in order to prevent the collapse of society. The "imperialist capitalists" have simply been replaced by the "islamists."

Family Fiction

In the video performance "Since we are strangers. There as well" my brother reads out his emigration history. He comes across as a classic stereotype of a young immigrant gang member. But is the story authentic? This type of ambivalence between fiction and documentation is at the core of my artistic work. It corresponds with the unreliability of memory and identity itself.

The many contradictory statements of my family members about our past have led me into examining my father's military service in former Czechoslovakia. He claimed to have been a border guard at the Czechoslovak-Austrian border at the end of the 70s where he supposedly witnessed the violent deaths of a man and two children trying illegally to cross the border. His stories led me to research trips to the archives of the StB, the former secret service of Czechoslovakia. I was interested in seeing how the border was guarded and how it was depicted in propaganda films during communist rule.

Artistic Research

I have collected a large amount of footage produced by the Czechoslovak Military Film. The institution was founded during World War I and was granted extraordinary resources as a mouthpiece for the communist party during the 50s. Paradoxically many of the filmmakers who worked there later went on to become prominent members of the Czechoslovak New Wave, experimenting with form and criticising Soviet rule.
Experimental cutting, dissonant soundtracks and vulnerable protagonists was not at all what I had expectes to find in social realist era propaganda! My publication will contain several prose miniatures that I have written based on these films. An interview with Vladimír Cabálka, a film cutter who worked for the military for 17 years, will provide additional insights into the history of the institution.

My goal is to weaken the hardline "for or against" positions that are polarising Western politics by asking questions instead of claiming to have the answers. The book combines the personal and the public, present and past. If you are interested in the subject matters of migration, history and art, this book is for you.

Because you want to read this book ;-)

The book print will cost approximately 4 500 €. The cultural office of the city of Leipzig is supporting the printing costs with a grant of 2 000 €. The book designers need a 3 500 € honorarium for their work. In case I would exceed my funding goals, I would put the additional money into a honorarium for the editor and for paying the publisher fees.