Text from 25/09/2025 :
I don’t know where these experiments take me, I just know they feel right. They form points of intersections, knots in the fabric of what I have been doing. Graduating with a project that culminates in the perfect synthesis of my personal practice is a hoax I do not want to fall for. Like weaving a fabric or knotting a net, this will be a procedural step. Another link in the material tying together inexplicable experience and intuition.
To identify the part of me that is within my work I want to first honestly lay bare what I am. Who, where, what and why I have been.
This sounds dramatic and trust me it also feels that way.
I have a story to share and a lens that I want people to look through. (Manifesting here more than stating something with conviction.) I am aware of my lens’ fallacies, its imperfections. And I am painfully aware of the exclusion and blind spots that I am committing to through my lens, but frankly I don’t see another way. I cannot see another way.
To set out into this world - in a way - is to fail already. It seems the general compass for a “right” direction was tapped. Or - through my lens - there never was a right direction, that is just what I wished to believe for better or for worse. Any step forward leads somewhere, not forward or backwards, not onto solid ground or sinking sand. Just somewhere else. Whether this elsewhere was a place that offered good tidings or not can - if ever - only be seen in hindsight.
Hindsight. Another concept that tries really hard to put things into linearity.
Causality is to be questioned. Most of my actions feel causal, but if my sensibilities cannot be objective how could any causal conclusion be reached? Everyone is within their own eye of the storm.
Any action, no matter how informed, might in the end just land on a spectrum of how well it fits into a made up narrative. Imaginaries are everywhere and sometimes they clash, sometimes they align.
I don’t align, really. Well. I mean I align within the system I have placed myself in. Deliberately. In order to align more. I align when I move about my friends and the places we inhabit and the spaces we interact with and sometimes it feels I align so much so, that I start questioning my initial non-alignment. Maybe I was being dramatic, thinking that I would not align.
But then I am blatantly misaligned when I sit on a bench and a passerby calls me a faggot. Or when I trip over aligning lines running from a person trying to beat me up for the way I walk. I don't walk along the lines I suppose. And then the lines become trip wires.
I think my lens has melancholic tendencies. I think of my life in chapters, which is made easier by frequent moves. Every new place is a new chapter. The physical space around us is shaped by us and shapes us, the direction of this flow of energies is not clear to me. It feels like it depends on the space and my motivation and state of mind.
In Vienna I feel the space shapes me. Ironically, I have shaped my space here the most. The only place I ever lived in, where the furniture is actually mine. Where belonging was not reduced to my clothes on hangers, and a few pieces of memorabilia strewn about to keep up a façade of possession of a space. In places where being home is an act of make-believe, my actions feel more like home. More like me.
Here things are mine but my actions feel predetermined.
She was 12, found all her siblings in the decades that followed - they dispersed while fleeing.
I guess in a way I feel like a swindler. I keep obsessing over these things - technology, media theory, the occult, tarot, bread, non-linearity, memory, spaces, identity. And with all of them I do not know if they are truly my interests. Or things I think I want to be interested in. Maybe that is why I am returning to myself. Trying to find objectivity in the only constant through this - that is my perception even though it is inherently flawed.
Machinic precision. Imagine you would do everything with machinic precision. Think every thought with machinic precision. Wouldn't it be beautiful to live a life of machinic precision. Like Corbusier's designs, the domestic as a machine. The constant fight to ward off sticky reality.
I sweat a lot when I lose my aura of machinic precision. I go hot and red and a general mess. I become awfully human the moment I think my machinic facade is failing.
I don’t like being reminded of my body. Seeing medical footage of bodies beneath the surface creeps me out. I do not want to be reduced to slimy, gooey, red, yellow and blue matter, beating, pulsing forever fighting to keep doing so but ultimately doomed to fail at some point in time, sooner or later.
If I was just that, flesh, then I could argue for objective truth because my fibres are the same as anybody elses’ fibres, right?
One of my professors once said about my work that it was all about memory. And I cannot let it go. Anytime I stray from strictly memory related topics in my work I now think I am losing myself. I love a diagnosis. I love an easy answer. I want to stick to it so bad. I just love when people tell me what something is. I ingest that thought for it seems I grant everyone but myself the right to objective perception.
They diagnosed me with memory, the most subjective of them all and to this diagnosis I want to stay true with utmost objectivity.
What difference does it make if something is actually my interest or an illusion of what I think I want to be interested in? Is there a difference in quality? Are there any interests that are true to an individual? Ursprünglich? The only interests that are objective are those in breathing and eating, maybe sex.
All others are accumulated through prior experience, thoughts and patterns, systemic in their origin, not original. So maybe the more important question is back to their quality.
What is the quality of the narratives we construct? Despite them being beneficial or exploitative, inclusive or polarising, how can we tell their quality? Quantity of believers surely is a bad metric. Other bad metrics might be aesthetics or linguistic quality. (Maybe they are a bit valid though?) Personal conviction might also not be a good metric but definitely is the one that counts. If one is sure of their cause, committed, they are out for a jolly good time.
If it wasn’t clear by now, my own conviction towards my narrative is standing on very wobbly legs. One could say it is slouching or struggling.
This is a snippet of me eating a tarot card I baked from bread. I felt I had to eat them. There was 3 of them, inspired by three tarot cards I pulled the day of baking them, September 23rd 2025.
0 - The Fool
... is the original free spirit, unbothered, open-hearted, and standing on the edge of a cliff like it’s a fashion runway. This card says, “Leap first. You’ll figure it out later.” There’s risk, yes, but there’s also magic in not knowing how the story ends. Trust the adventure.
... is the art of balance -- not just between extremes, but within your own contradictions. This card is a reminder that you don’t have to rush or control the outcome. Integrate. Be patient. Sip, don’t chug.
... is all about potential made real. When this card shows up, it’s your cue to stop manifesting in theory, living in the land of “maybe,” and start creating in the real world. You’ve got what it takes -- now take the first step.
I feel a strong personal connection to the fool. Always have. Something about their inherent naivitë, their openness to things is inspiring. I am usually drawn to wimsy. People who seem to act freely, without conviction, organically navigating spaces and situations with a lightness - that to me communicates inherent acceptance of themselves. Wimsy seen like this can speak of comfort, of freedom, something I think I am longing for.
This next part is from my journal on the 4th of October 2025:
It wasn’t.
The jump-skipping fool might turn the narrative around, bright-eyed, spontaneous, true to an inner inkling of doubt but turning to action immediately, no overthinking. It seems I have ingested the spoiled aspects of the fool. The common foolishness. Stubborn persistance on procedures, ideals - i kept filming, with doubt on my mind.
It’s archetypal for a reason.
This marks the official beginning of a project that has been shaping itself for a while now.
These tryouts are very spontaneous and lighthearted. They all emerged prior to the official proposal that gathered my thoughts in a digestible manner.
Coming up with the proposal from the first text you read as an intorduction into this post was a lot of back and forth. From hiding behind theoretical research to hiding behind nailing down an illusive methodology to finally commiting to something even if it might seem arbitrary to begin with (bread). Bread is inherently a part of what I always do. I care for my sourdough starters, they tie into my history of moving around and broader history of growing up with a grandmother who baked bread and parents whose life is devoted to hospitality. Similarly it is a material that is usually shaped or molded.
I want to investigate the powers shaping my identity - as a queer person, as an online person but also just as a human. To do this I feel the need to break out of theoretical considerations and work with a hands-on approach. Thus I want to create a method that foregrounds iteration and reflection. In order to have a practice like that I need material to iterate and reflect upon. I chose bread for now. This might change, but for now it is bread.
Here are a few thoughts on the method or philosophy I have been wrangling with:
To some degree - queer or not; online or not - we are all made to fit molds.
Through my diploma work I want to excavate a sense of self that feels internal. I want to set out on a path towards “truth” (which probably does not exist), and I want to fail and reflect along the way.
I chose an honest path.
I examine my intentions regularly.
I do not fall into the trap of pretexting my decisions due to outside pressures like time or validation.
I embrace simplicity.
I embrace failure, and accept it as such - not as a negative thing, but a neutral situation to be examined and appreciated in different ways.
I reflect on my work rigorously.
I trust that when all intention is laid bare, there is no space for shame anymore.
I trust that honesty and reflection lead to a sense of truth in my work that is unshakable.
I know this will ask of me determination and discomfort.
I have the highest respect for my work. I treat it that way.