Three-part interdisciplinary project in collaboration with writers, based on David Bowie’s 1977 album “Heroes”, recorded in West Berlin and deeply connected to the historical and political reality of a divided Germany. The project explores how the musical ideas of 1977 can be translated into contemporary artistic and literary contexts.
Part I: The Secret Life of Arabia (Rework) — in collaboration with Mara Genschel (Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, 2015)
Part II: Blackout (Rework) — in collaboration with Dorothee Elmiger (Literaturverein im Mousonturm, Frankfurt, 2017)
Part III: Heroes (Rework) — in collaboration with Martina Hefter (cancelled due to lack of funding)
The first part focuses on the song “The Secret Life of Arabia.” Over the course of one week, I filmed in various public spaces throughout Berlin, capturing everyday movements, urban atmospheres, and the rhythms of the city. At the same time, the writer Mara Genschel reinterpreted the song’s lyrics by interweaving them with words, phrases, and headlines drawn from Berlin’s daily newspapers published during that same week.
Our collaboration resulted in a multi-channel video and sound installation in which five of her literary texts enter into dialogue with five of my video works. The installation creates an open field of associations where image and language intersect, offering viewers a broad spectrum of interpretation—from political immediacy and urban observation to reflections on the role of pop music in shaping cultural memory and collective identity.
Text: Mara Genschel
Photos: Private
Year: 2015
Blackout (Rework)
The second part focuses on the song “Blackout” and was developed in collaboration with Dorothee Elmiger for a live reading at the Literaturverein im Mousonturm in Frankfurt. The video shown during the reading presents the reaction of a single, anonymous person to footage of the New York City blackout of July 1977, displayed in the form of a video call. The viewer’s identity is deliberately left unclear, emphasizing anonymity and the unknowable inner life of the individual. Their response is highly emotional, including visible tears, yet the feeling cannot be fully transmitted to the audience.
This creates a strange, tangible gap between the historical event, the anonymous viewer, and those watching the reading. The audience witnesses both the footage and the emotional reaction, but cannot bridge the distance completely—they are left outside, observing without entering. The work draws attention to this space of mediation, where presence and perception are separated, and where anonymity allows the emotional intensity to exist without fully revealing itself.
By highlighting this gap, the piece explores not only historical memory and personal experience, but also the fragile, mediated connections between people, technology, and time. The distance becomes part of the meaning: the audience senses the emotion, yet it remains partially inaccessible, creating a tension between intimacy and estrangement, visibility and concealment.