FREMDE FEDERN, 2020

book, 33x24,8cm, 192 pages
HD Video, 50:40min Loop, colour, sound, size variable

Animals are loved, feared, tortured, explored, humanized, and objectified. They are at once relatives, strangers, food, sacred beings, monsters, companions, enemies, trophies, and more. Above all, they serve as a mirror in which we try to fathom what makes us human.

The project Fremde Federn shows the absurdity and comedy of this contradictory navel-gazing. At the same time, the project reveals the brutality with which ideas and beliefs become actions here - for example, at the sight of an elephant's foot cruelly transformed into a spittoon. The sexualized gaze with which women are depicted as either

attractive wildcats or man-eating praying mantises shows that in this pictorial world not only animals are turned into objects. Whether in relation to the human self-image or ideas about gender roles, the relationship to animals projects into an astonishing number of areas of human life.

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In keeping with the categories of the image collection, both the book and the video are organized into loosely interwoven chapters. Through the layering and juxtaposition of the images in the book and the slow cross-fades in the video, the form reiterates the principles of transference and intermixing that also form the central themes of the collection.