Seitenwechsel

 

The project "Seitenwechsel" was created as an artistic master thesis in 2018. The guiding question of the work is: Does the identity of a person change when he/she moves his/her center of vital interest to another country? And if so, to what extent? The product of the artistic work and engagement with this question are the posters that you see on the left. The starting point and working material were conversations with the people portrayed, who came to Basel from another country and can still remember the process of changing countries and its possible effects on their identity.The posters are portraits of the individuals. They visually summarize their experiences and sensations. The audios are, on the one hand, excerpts from these very conversations and, on the other hand, a specific examination of the question of how one's own identity has changed as a result of the change of country. The posters were hung up in various public places in Basel with the aim that passers-by would become aware of them and take a moment to look at them more closely.The idea behind it refers to the feeling of "us" and "the others" that is more or less anchored in all of us. Again and again, one positions oneself in relation to a group of "others", one demarcates oneself, develops a sense of community and becomes a "we". In the current social context, this demarcation towards "foreigners" is particularly strong. The posters want to show that these "others" are also normal people with wishes, hobbies, quirks, humor, ambitions, etc.. The posters are an offer to dissolve the division into "us" and "them".