The photo series was created during the video screening of a performance in which I myself took part. The photos emerge from a reality that has been performed, recorded, and archived. They represent a multi-layered, sedimented interpretation of the real, an echo of an echo.

The work asks what happens when human experience is structured by algorithms and interpretation of the world is outsourced to non-human systems, to echoes of echoes. The logic of data accumulation contains layers meant to remain hidden. 

The descent into these layers is not metaphorical but political: It leads to places where architectures of algorithmic power are negotiated. Spaces that have become opaque and difficult to contest. It leads to sedimented zones of storage, control, and archiving, where power concentrates and where technological infrastructures quietly reshape social life. The deposits at the bottom of these layers often evade public accountability, even as they transform entire societies. 

Nestled bodies propose an alternative form of sedimentation: They suggest that human connection can generate spaces where algorithmic control cannot fully take hold. Yet such intimacy remains a fragile interstice. 

The four diptychs approach AI not through direct depiction, but through absence, resonance, and linguistic play. The word fragments “information” and “no/on” function as conceptual hinges: in their combination they point to the ambivalence of knowledge production in the age of artificial intelligence, oscillating between affirmation and negation, presence and absence, control and loss of control.

By focusing on these minimal linguistic shifts, the series addresses the instability of meaning itself. Language becomes a site where expectations and anxieties surrounding AI condense—what we want from it, what we fear it might do, and what remains beyond its reach. The diptychs stage this tension visually, turning the viewer’s attention to the fragility of interpretation and the power dynamics embedded in how knowledge is generated, distributed, and withheld.

The absence of AI imagery is deliberate: instead of representing the technology, the works reflect on its social and cultural implications. They point to AI’s paradoxical condition—shaping reality while remaining largely invisible, integrated into infrastructures and processes that escape direct perception. In this sense, the series highlights the ways in which AI alters not only what we know, but also how we know, how we interpret, and how we imagine the boundaries of knowledge itself.

 

Die Bilder sind Teil einer Serie von 4 Werken. Sie stehen in Verbindung mit einem Artikel von mir: An Emancipatory Topology of Desire (2020); World Futures, 2020, 76 (5-7), pp 420-433. In diesem Artikel beschreibe ich unterschiedliche Formen emanzipatorischen Begehrens (desire). Die Bilder imaginieren unterschiedlicher Begehrensqualitäten aus einer queeren, nicht-binären Perspektive. Diese wollen zu entsprechenden Handlungsstrategien anregen, nämlich zu spielerischer Profanierung gesellschaftlicher Fetische, zu mutiger Abweichung von gesellschaftlichen Normen, und zu radikalem Ent-Werden (Unbecoming) von den Rollen, die uns zugeschrieben werden. Welche Grenzen in unseren Köpfen und Lebensrealitäten ließen sich verschieben, wenn wir diesen Begehrensqualitäten Raum in uns geben? Welche Möglichkeitsräume könnten dadurch entstehen? 

The paintings are part of a series of 4 works. They are related to an article of mine: An Emancipatory Topology of Desire (2020); World Futures, 2020, 76 (5-7), pp 420-433. In this article I describe different forms of emancipatory desire. The paintings imagine different qualities of desire from a queer, non-binary perspective. They aim to inspire appropriate strategies for action, namely the playful profanation of social fetishes, courageous deviation from social norms, and radical unbecoming from the roles ascribed to us. What boundaries in our heads and life realities could be shifted if we gave these qualities of desire space within us? What spaces of possibility could arise as a result? 

The world we live in is increasingly a world of tensions and fractures. Familiar and established orders that give us a certain degree of security and predictability are vanishing, while new patterns, connections and dependencies are emerging. We are living in a world that is simultaneously dissolving and evolving.

The photo series follows the lyrical narrative form of paired verses and explores the tension that arises from the pairing of contrasting images. The series contrasts detailed perspectives of the disappearing world with inhospitable, sometimes surreal surface details of other planets in our solar system from the NASA archives.

Through their symbolism, the selected image excerpts convey varying degrees of emotional and cultural charge, inspiring associations and stories. The deliberately composed image pairs create an elegiac mood that makes the threat of dissolution and the unpredictability of the new tangible. 

The cover or front page of a magazine, in this case the business magazine Forbes known for its lists of wealth, power, and influence, is interpreted as a frame that brings a certain worldview to the fore. When I pick up this magazine, I am confirming my own worldview. My expectations regarding the content match what I am being served. I have no need to step outside my comfort zone, because I am looking into a world I know.

The series explores what happens when the content presented no longer matches the expected content. The frame is turned upside down, so to speak.

The three richest men on the 2021 edition of the richest human list, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bernard Arnault, who together have a fortune of 664 billion dollars, are portrayed on coverpages that are modeled after 2022-Forbes-Covers.

However, the portraits of the three men are placed in a context that questions precisely this fetishisation of success and money and thus the frame that would be expected by a Forbes magazine. The structure of the collages follows a delicate balance between striking statements and questions that invite reflection. The synthetic word ethicassos, which I invented, may be remotely reminiscent of a compound of the words ethic and assholes.
 

Tagebucheinträge aus dem Tagebuch einer nicht-binären Persönlichkeit. In den Einträgen zeigen sich unterschiedliche Erlebnisse und Erfahrungen des nicht-binären Daseins. Dysphorische, ängstlich-bedrückte oder traurig-gereizte Stimmungslagen prägen diese Erfahrungen oftmals. Die öffentliche Debatte zu Nicht-Binarität ist gerne geprägt von Voreingenommenheit, Unverständnis und Nichtwissen. Wer sich beispielsweise nicht nachvollziehbar und wie erwartet als Frau oder Mann benimmt, spürt sofort die Konsequenzen. Geschlechtliche Identität ist jedoch nicht abhängig von oder ablesbar an Äußerlichkeiten, Vorlieben oder Verhaltensmustern. Die Posen der Figuren sind inspiriert von epischen Posen der Kunstgeschichte. 

Diary entries from the diary of a non-binary personality. The entries reflect different moments and experiences of non-binary existence. Dysphoric, anxious and depressed or sad and irritated moods often colour these experiences. The public debate on non-binarity is still often characterised by bias, a lack of understanding and ignorance. For example, anyone who does not behave as a woman or man in a comprehensible and expected way immediately feels the consequences. However, gender identity is not dependent on or readable from outward appearances, preferences or behavioural patterns. The poses of the characters are inspired by epic poses from art history. 

Vier Miniaturen, die um verblendeten Größenwahn kreisen. Einzelne sind es, die sich wichtig machen und aufblähen, auf Kosten Vieler, die dabei unter die Räder kommen. Und was lässt sich nicht alles größer und besser machen: Luftschlösser, künstliche Intelligenzen, Egos, Unternehmen, Staaten. Wachstum bis zum Platzen. Gerne wird dabei auf bereits geplatzte Seifenblasen referenziert. Der vergangene, zerplatzte Glanz soll wieder neu strahlen, noch schöner, noch schillernder. Bis zum neuerlichen Platzen. 

Four miniatures that revolve around deluded megalomania. It is individuals who make themselves feel important and inflate themselves, at the expense of many who fall by the wayside. And what can't be made bigger and better? Castles in the air, artificial intelligence, egos, companies, states. Growth until the bubbles burst. One also likes to refer to bubbles that have already burst. The past, burst splendour should shine again, even more magnificently, even more dazzlingly. Until it bursts again. 

Today, the debate about identity and belonging is a complex and per se open matter. Nevertheless, or perhaps precisely because of this, simple attributions and polar categories are often used to radically limit and exclude this very openness. However, moving in such a diverse field requires the necessary courage and the ability to endure contradictions and contradictory aspects and to deal with them in a constructive manner. It takes the courage to keep things in limbo, in the unknown and unresolved. The photos in the series, all self-portraits, show the fears and pain of this confrontation. Wandering between worlds takes energy. Being displaced, be it concrete physical displacement or identity-related dislocation, is a tough undertaking, exhausting and a challenge both physically and mentally. The photos of the series show tense moments of being in-between and traces the tension and irritation that arises in spaces of transition and is often overlooked or swept under the carpet as society likes us to be strong, especially in phases of transition. The series is made up of 6 photos. 12c pigment print. Numbered series of 1 to 10 prints. 30x40 cm.  

The photo of a plexiglass pedestal in an attic serves as input for spherical projection algorithms, which map a 2D texture back onto the photo. Projections created in ArtMatic Designer 1.7.

 

The 7 photos of the series examine the aesthetic appearance of a staircase. Straight lines, but also triangles, play the main role and lead to a specific, technoid and distanced aesthetic of the functional structure. The twilight and reflective glass surfaces that predominate in this staircase, as in many staircases, contribute to a somewhat cool atmosphere that contrasts strangely with the warm colours of the photos taken without flash.

The three photos of the series take a horse in front of a strawberry moon as starting point and present three allegorical visions of artificial intelligence as constellations of possible futures. Each image centers around a different relationship between the organic, the technological, and the mythical, inviting viewers to imagine AI as a field of plural potential rather than linear inevitability. Together, the photos form a utopian framework grounded in creative speculation.

The dystopian horse reflects a future in which AI merges with the body in unsettling ways. In this future intelligence becomes a mask and an instrument of control. This path questions how power, identity, and autonomy might be reshaped when technology enters the intimate realm of the self.

The surreal chimera horse envisions AI as transformation itself. Boundaries dissolve; the familiar becomes strange and open-ended. In this future, intelligence is not fixed or functional, it is fluid, creative, dream-like. This path embraces uncertainty as fertile ground for invention, suggesting that AI could expand our aesthetic vocabularies and unlock new modes of perception.

The robot unicorn imagines AI as a mythical companion rather than a tool or threat. This future offers a vision of AI as a kind of magical infrastructure: artificial yet soulful, engineered yet aspirational. It proposes that technology can amplify our capacity for hope, empathy, and enchantment.

Rather than choosing between these visions, the series holds them in dialogue. The futures of AI may be dystopian, transformative, or radiant—or unfold in ways that combine all three. The Horse, the Chimera, the Unicorn invite us to approach AI not with fear or blind optimism, but with imagination, responsibility, and openness. In embracing multiplicity, we move toward a utopian understanding of intelligence: not as a singular machine, but as a shared act of world-building. 
The three photos are accompagnied by a haikuian dialogue between me and AI.