My life so far has unfolded across different geographical regions and cultural environments. From the age of thirteen, my youth was shaped above all by acting; at sixteen, contemporary music became part of it. Within the structures of state socialism, I was drawn early on to exploring spaces of freedom—places where something of one’s own could develop, even when external conditions were restrictive.

I was 23 when the Berlin Wall fell. By then, I had finished school, trained as an electrician, completed my military service, left acting school, and pursued composition studies without completing them. Above all, I wanted to get out of little Weimar and experience more of the world. I could not have imagined how profoundly my first year of study in the Netherlands would change me and open my eyes and ears.

The Netherlands was followed by almost ten years in France, doctoral studies in England, and eventually 23 years in the United States. Throughout those years, I travelled extensively without ever severing the umbilical cord connecting me to Weimar. The Ensemble für Intuitive Musik, the Tage Neuer Musik festival, and my family gave me good reasons to return several times a year.

I witnessed the great changes following the fall of the Wall at intervals. I marvelled at them—much as one does with nieces and nephews seen only every few months, who have grown a little each time. Weimar became more beautiful, more international, and engaged more fully with its past. Its view of history became less politicized. In 1999, when Weimar was European Capital of Culture, the city seemed polished to a shine and full of discoveries and surprises. Since then, much of this has become part of everyday life.

My search for spaces of freedom, however, has continued. Every social system and every country reveals its cultural and bureaucratic constraints when one lives there long enough. We live with them, grow accustomed to them, find ways around them, or push back against them. My artistic work often grows out of a fascination with bringing the familiar and the unfamiliar together: merging them, placing them in dialogue, or simply letting them stand side by side in contrast. These works are invitations to enter such spaces of freedom and take one’s time—in a world where seemingly every millisecond must be saved.