My practice departs from mask and puppet play: An object is animated and gains its very own agency in the process. The border between subject and object is blurred until they become indistinguishable. Nevertheless the emerging body is not a newly founded subject in the sense of a singular entity. It is more-than-human, pluralistic and never one with itself. 

With my shift to fine art performances and installation skin became my specific side of interest. This is led by a traumatic period of disease- a radical openness of my own body, which came with a sensitivity to all kinds of environmental and internal conditions. It shaped my interest in sensoric interaction between bodies as a liminal space of symbiotic and parasitic intrusion. However it also made me question the very separation between the mental and the physical, the living and the dead, a body and its surroundings. 

The violent or subversive overcoming of body boundaries by parasites is commonly associated with pain and illness. With “social parasites” the term  relates metaphorically to the social and state body. The word parasitos however derives from the Greek and means something like guest or table companion. A person who takes without giving, but does not necessarily with a negative connotation. 

Skin as a sensual, yet resistant organ, shapes what one might call an individual body. I attempt to challenge this idea of a body limited by its skin and lean towards a rhizomatic understanding of the self. From this perspective the queer and the biologically shared body appear as a common subject to me. Focusing on haptic- interaction and imagery is my strategy to escape representation and therefore becomes a critical gaze on bio political governance and a reflective tool to think of once own entanglement with these power structures.

Appearing as decentralized skin-entities Kombucha and Jellyfish have been the lead in my research. One as an internalized human symbiont, the other as a parasitic indicator of global warming and chemical pollution. Simultaneously they have been my key inspiration to fold three dimensional objects, costumes and puppets from two dimensional, skin-like casts. The animated objects I create from latex, Kombucha and algae based bioplastic may be seen as body extensions.
This methodology of crafting is closely related to the field of bio design and the research in “new” material. Working rather speculative than functional I find myself mediating between intended craftsmanship and organic material expression.

The emerging body of speculative artwork and writing is symbiotic, shared and infected. Its borders are fluid and permeable- a habitat for Kritter of all kinds and a common ground for their dialogue.