Brandstifter

STATEMENT
My work covers performance art, sound installations, music, collages, copy art, found objects, artist’s books, poetry, literature, mail art, video and filming. However, in spite of this variety of media and the wide range of material involved, all works of art bear my very own mark: they all are very humorous in a very subtle, yet trenchant way and thereby question conventions and norms of society.

Communication and transformation are crucial elements which – honoring the very spirit of avant-garde – aims to abolish the divide between art and daily life. My works stress the responsibility and independence of all those involved and systematically oppose all hierarchy. In this aspect they represent a complex and contemporary update of artistic concepts dating back to the 1960s such as Fluxus and concept art.

When I was a dreamy child I got lost in picture books and comics. Then I grow up and the content changed during the decades but my favorite material always stayed the same. In the 80s I played in punk and new wave bands collaging our album covers in DIY- style – I still do the artwork for my numerous artists’ music releases – followed by world wide Mail Art- projects using rubber stamps and Copy Art for first Art Book Editions in the 90s.

Someone said zines are fast boats. I prefer the book in the shelf to the persistence of the picture on the wall. Open it / an intimate situation / only you & me…

BIOGRAPHY
1968 born in Bad Kreuznach, Germany
Brandstifter (Arsonist) is an interdisciplinary artist, author, musician, performer, editor of the Lost & Found Artzine Asphaltbibliotheque, the collaborative artzine ANTIPODES and the artists’ music label FLUX ON DEMAND, curator and head of the international non for profit art organization Walpoden in Mainz.

He started to study law at Johannes-Gutenberg-University in Mainz maturing into conceptual participative performance art. His most famous work Asphaltbibliotheque, a collection of lost & found sheets of paper he is picking up in public space since 1998, is loading the profane with poetry by transforming everyday life into intermedia arts. It was directed in Berlin, Bruxelles, Chicago, Graz, Vienna, Paris, Rajasthan and as the first resident artist at Flux Factory Queens with scholarship by Schloss Balmoral 2009 in New York, where he met Maddy Rosenberg and started to work with CENTRAL BOOKING.

Various scholarships, awards, concerts exhibitions, performance, projects, publications and collaborative art book releases in Germany, Europe, India, New York and Chicago (S.A.I.C.).

His Book Art is kept in private and public collections like the Library of the Museum of Modern Art New York, The Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection Chicago, the Sackner Archive for Concrete and Visual Poetry Miami as well as Weserburg Archive for Artists’ Publications Bremen and Archive Artist Publications Munich.

Brandstifter’s Website