Within the scope of the interviews, I collected some anecdotes about the search for space in Munich. Here are a few examples of statements about the hurdles involved in finding good, affordable spaces for creative use.

“One guy wanted to rent out the studio he actually lives in. That means I could only have worked in the studio during the day. And if he had been ill or on vacation, I wouldn't have been able to go into the studio.”

—

“I used to have a great room, but we had to leave the windows open in winter because of the risk of mold. So sometimes I would be at the drum kit and the steam from my breath would settle over the cymbals.”

—

“As a woman who often works alone, I often felt really unsafe in winding cellar vaults.”

—

“We were housed for 2 years in a dark room, underground, under the current HP8. A mouse lived with us and, to be honest, nobody really knew who was actually paying for our electricity.”

Munich, 2023-2024

A special cultural venue in Munich in 2024 is the “Fat Cat”. For a limited time, an interim use under this name has moved into Europe's largest cultural center, the Gasteig.

Until the building is completely renovated, it is available to a large number of remarkably heterogeneous people from the local art and culture scene.

The 200 tenants include creatives from every musical genre, visual arts, photography, dance, acting, literature, crafts, comedy and fashion. Social organizations and a repair café are also located in the building.
The Fat Cat also serves as a place for concerts, theater, ballet, raves, conferences and trade fairs.

With the “People of Fat Cat” project, I set myself the mission of documenting this special place and portraying many of the personalities from the Fat Cat and their spaces.
To this end, I did one year of regular photo shoots, during which time I photographed over 80 people and numerous rooms.

The project is strictly conceptual and follows a clearly defined visual language. All the rooms are photographed with a wide-angle lens from the same, total, central perspective in order to show a large amount of space and thus enable comparability.
The protagonists are positioned in the middle of the rooms they occupy and, according to the local conditions, take up more or less of the image area.

In a second series of pictures, the people are brought even more into focus. For this series, I took black and white portraits of all the protagonists in my photo studio, which is also located on site. I always chose the same framing. In this way, the faces of the people are at the core, while the visual language reduces the differences between them to a minimum. All of them are the “People of Fat Cat”, regardless of their level of fame or the activity they pursue.

In addition to the photos, I am also interested in the influence of affordable and appropriately equipped space on creative work and the impact of the Fat Cat community on the individual people. To this end, I conducted interviews and learned numerous anecdotes about the difficult search for space in an expensive city like Munich.

The collected material from this project will be presented in the large exhibition “People of Fat Cat” at the end of 2024.

Within the scope of the interviews, I collected some anecdotes about the search for space in Munich. Here are a few examples of statements about the hurdles involved in finding good, affordable spaces for creative use.

“One guy wanted to rent out the studio he actually lives in. That means I could only have worked in the studio during the day. And if he had been ill or on vacation, I wouldn't have been able to go into the studio.”

—

“I used to have a great room, but we had to leave the windows open in winter because of the risk of mold. So sometimes I would be at the drum kit and the steam from my breath would settle over the cymbals.”

—

“As a woman who often works alone, I often felt really unsafe in winding cellar vaults.”

—

“We were housed for 2 years in a dark room, underground, under the current HP8. A mouse lived with us and, to be honest, nobody really knew who was actually paying for our electricity.”

Munich, 2023-2024