Skip to main content

Red cards

A growing number of these cards, 21 x 10,5 cm each, belong to a long term archive called p_p (personal practice). I cut out images from printed flyers in my postal mail, which are sent to me by international aid organisations to inform me about the need to donate money.

Mounted on cards these clippings undergo a long process of dyeing, pressing and preserving. Cards turn out with fragments or even empty, others show the mould of a credit card. As a teenager I often asked my parents who had experienced the Nazi regime in Germany: ‘What did you know then?’ I intend to document what I have known (and not known) in my lifetime.

I focus on how women are shown for this. (for the last year i find mostly children and there are hardly ever men shown in these pictures)
I use cards 21x15 cm in size, which i process like fabric with red dye - the colour goes through the paper - by this i am controlling less then a painter does.
many cards show no image or fragments which show the traces of this process.
And while drying them again i mold sometimes the shape of a money card into the cardboard.

I have produced about 200 cards by now, they are more an object like a card in old library/archives used to be referring to a real book, they are not ment as a grafic product to put in a frame.
There are still more cards to come.

This "archive" is part of my work called "personal practise" by which i generate answers for the question i expect to come: "what have i known at the time?"

I started to develop containers for about 50 cards which are made out of textile material and flexible when empty.

Since i am interested to show work in places which are not necessarily art institutions as such i try to imply nomadic, flexible strategies:
the cards can be touched, they can be displayed on a wooden strip leaning against the wall lined up in eye level ,
the amount of cards to be shown can vary depending on the intention and situation, location
They have no citation, no signature. I can vary the atmosphere by selecting what cards i put together.