Creative Position

My creative work explores the tension between self-image and other image. With very few exceptions, I do not seek appreciation of biographical works as artwork because they serve self-knowledge and presence.

Heritage

I was born into a family of refugees in West Germany; my father and grandfather were career soldiers at times. Their paths shaped me, while my questions were met with silence and a wounded pride. I became an activist, portraying myself as a rebel against the very totalitarian ideology I myself espoused. Then history put an end to my performance, and I became a student and junior researcher whose exemplary commitment came along with his equally persistent search for their teachers professional missteps.

That's how I became self-sufficient, in changing communities of other creatives.

Biographical works

The facts of a person's way of living are in tension with their self-image. The self-image is consciously thought and expressed. Its credibility cannot be confirmed by its originator, but only by others. The way of living, on the other hand, can be recorded using the simplest means. If that is done contemporaneously, such notes obtain evidential value.

Biographical works written by the individual themselves are their self-image. Changes in personality become apparent when compared with previous biographical works. To ensure credibility, the author avoids any fiction.

Ambitions

Looking back, two goals and time periods become apparent. From 1994 to 1996 and from 2006 to 2011, I only strove for greater presence. From 2015 to 2022, I tried to permanently obtain what I had felt as presence for a fleeting moment on a summer day in 2014. Back then without any effort on my part.

Turning Point

The sudden realization was that I had adopted a fictional personality. This became evident, among other things, in the fact that I left half a glass of wine untouched at lunchtime the following day, knowing that I would no longer drink alcohol. Not because I didn't want to drink anymore, but because I knew all of a sudden, this routine had nothing to do with me.

Feeling my fictionality was shattering and liberating. It was nothing but a feeling, albeit an overwhelming one. I only had a hunch as to how this autofiction came about and why it was so important for so long. A few months later I decided to pursue understanding it, without considering the consequences. I described my assumption using a series of unflattering biographical events that I believed captured my autofiction. I assumed it would be possible, and worthwhile for others, to decipher them.

Outcome

I have demonstrated that a person can understand their personality for decades and develop it. ›Personality‹ can be a creative ambition.

Interest

Totalitarian ideologies and religions consider the education of humankind by their dignitaries necessary for the creation of paradise on earth. I oppose this with a trans humane perspective on life and existence.

Some constitutions grant citizens the right to protection of their ›bodily integrity‹. This right includes protection from violence and injury. The counterpart is the right to be creative with oneself.

»I exploit the richness of my presence. I am guided by the idea that ›everything that comes from thought exists‹.^[6] How could that exclude my body?«

A person can take itself as subject of their creative work. Like other creative endeavors, it cannot be elevated to the status of a work by its creator. Artists too cannot label their work as artwork. They would lack credibility because they lack sufficient distance. In the case of personality as a work, it would be doubly ridiculous^[4] to call oneself an ›artist of oneself‹.

An artist's position does not have to be described any furher, because their artworks show it already. In the case of personality as work, the person itself is their position.

Further discussion in the whitepaper »The Self and its I«, v260618r1, 3200 words, 5 tables, 5 diagrams, 2 interactive visuals.