Don´t be careless – be careful!

After hearing the news that “Japan is going to dump nuclear waste water into the Pacific Ocean”, I believe everyone’s mood and expression in the world are just like this poster, dazed and anxious… This expression has been integrated with the spread of nuclear waste water in the Pacific Ocean, so as to warn the whole mankind to resolutely oppose this behavior.

45 years ago, a bitter revolution unfolded in Iran, leading to the rise of religious radicals who seized control of the government. As a result, the country’s name was changed from Iran to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Throughout all these years, they have consistently stood against the will of the Iranian people, relentlessly propagating their ideology and ruling the country with a brutal dictatorship.

Peace talks with adversaries like Vladimir Putin are like playing Russian roulette.

There is so much doping in sports and the olympic games, the iconic rings really needed a truthful redesign.

The explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power station was the worst industrial accident of any kind in history. Tens of thousands of people have died, and there is more death to come.. Nuclear power’s waste is deadly, causes cancer and genetic mutations, and there is no known way to permanently contain, dispose or neutralize it. Building more reactors simply means death.

Flourishing of social media has led to the global shift in how we perceive privacy. Being normalized in everyday life, constant violations of confidentiality make us wonder where is the boundary which separates private from public. In this whirlpool of doubt and caution, everywhere and all the time we feel persistent presence of someone else. Someone who is watching.

„Love your neighbor“ seems to have another meaning

It is so comfortable to be dependent. Laziness and cowardice let people follow others’ opinions and aims. Governments or companies can use us for their benefits. The more we keep silent, the more others raise their voices. It is so uncomfortable to have an own opinion. The shame is liberated; the thoughts are covered by leaves: The poster shows the change of censorship in our society.

*»Kein Blatt vor den Mund nehmen«(literally: Not putting a leaf in front of your mouth.) means to speak out liberate, directly and shameless.

When you are working in the creative industry for example, you probably love what you do. Being busy with your work all the time seems almost natural. The Poster is a little reminder that there are still other worlds you can enter.

One of Yoko Ono’s tips for self-care: Look at a screen and record its feelings. Stop working when the earth or the laptop gets too hot.

Quality has it’s price. “The cheaper the better” devalues work, talent and good quality products. Food for a few cents, a shirt for 5 and a logo design for 20 Euros – predatory pricing, price dumping (and connected to that wage dumping) kills quality and businesses.

Breasts don’t care if they belong to a woman or a man. In spite of this they are omnipresent in the sexualization of the female body. Even in the year 2017 it has not yet become common knowledge that all people have the right to self-determination and independence. And this applies to women and their breasts just as well. Equality means women have the right to make decisions over their own bodies. Feminism means women can choose – to show their breasts, or not.

Die Katastrophe für Mensch und Natur in Japan ist nur wenige Monate alt, aber medial weitestgehend schon wieder vergessen. Das Plakat soll uns das Schicksal und die noch ungeklärten folgen für Mensch und Natur wieder ins gedächtniss rufen. Zugleich weißt das Plakat auch darauf hin, das die atomare Katastrophe in fukushima nicht behoben quasi nicht “abgeschaltet” ist.

Faster! When do we finally arrive?

Die Idee für mein Plakat entstand während der Präsidentschaftskandidatur Sepp Blatters für eine vierte Amtszeit als FIFA-Präsident.

Die FIFA stellt sich gerne als völkerverbindender, die Kulturen einender, Global Player dar. Was hinter verschlossenen Türen geschieht, hat allerdings nichts mit einem weltoffenen Unternehmen zu tun. Skurrile Entscheidungen werden von einem erlesenen Kreis von Funktionären getroffen: Die WM-Vergabe an Katar oder der Bau riesiger Stadien ohne nachhaltigen Nutzen für die Bevölkerung Südafrikas sind Beispiele dafür. Hier scheint es nur um das schnelle Geschäft und um maximalen Profit zu gehen. Die Korruptionsvorwürfe wollen nicht verstummen. Doch Kritik wird nicht geduldet, das System um jeden Preis erhalten.

Die Idee des globalen FAIR PLAY wird zum leeren Marketingversprechen. FUCK OFF ist meine Antwort darauf. Sie steht gleichzeitig für die Haltung der FIFA ihrem eigenem Claim gegenüber: Blatter hat ihn zu einer zynischen Worthülse degradiert.

The capitalistic exploitation logic steers us increasingly destructive to the abyss of self-destruction. Modern human beings remain in an attitude of passive endurance and seemingly comfortable self-deception, when the alternative would be a necessary revolution. We remain calm as Hindu cows and operate business as usual.

Three-quarters of all suicides are committed by men. This poster references the symbol of Mars—a circle with an arrow pointing diagonally upwards, used to represent masculinity. Here, the arrow also marks the entry point of a bullet.

Digitalisation has changed our lives – and the way we communicate with each other. In some moments, it seems as if our mobile phones are making life really difficult for us. Then it’s just a matter of: heads up and smartphones down.

Life in cities has become a question of financial status over recent years. Rent and property prices have increased way faster than wages have. At the same time new spaces are only scarcely created. More and more people are struggling to find an adequate place to live and this fact is further creating social divide. This is a real problem of our times.

Donald Trump darkens the truth by misusing it, piece by piece. In the end, even the shadows lie.

The poster turns our traditional role models of men and women upside down by showing Olive Oyl, not Popeye, smoking a pipe and flexing her muscles.
The supposedly masculine attributes on Olivia seem rather silly and show how much clichéd role models have manifested themselves in our minds.

This poster shows the dependence of teens and young adults to social media. Services such as Facebook, Twitter und Co. have become an addiction, and seem to be increasingly seen as a requirement to live our lives.

The symbol of the cycle is omnipresent on todays products and packagings. To the consumer this can be misleading, constantly suggesting the waste will be reused. This way of recycling often is just a disposal via detours. Wrongly disposed or problematic materials are burnt or exported, statistically counting as recycled. While the total amount of waste produced is going up, the real challenge of reducing waste is neglected.

Guilt is always the others. Here you can see the four most influential countries in the world (China, the United States of America, Germany and Russia) and how they deal with climate change.

The use of national symbols — a tradition in need for improvement.

Pacifists face a complex dilemma in dramatic situations like the war in Ukraine. Si vis pacem, para bellum (“if you want peace get ready for war”) or Si vis pacem para pacem?

Action und Panik haben sich im Nachrichtengeschäft schon immer am besten verkauft, ganz nach dem Motto “If it bleeds, it leads”. Was mich enorm stört, ist dabei jedoch die immer aktivere Rolle der Nachrichtensender, die sich längst nicht mehr auf die reine Berichterstattung beschränken. Statt nur zu beobachten, betätigen sie oftmals sozusagen selbst den Abzug – ohne Rücksicht auf Verluste.

My poster is a diversion of the famous paint “Pollice Verso” or “Thumb-down” from French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme created in 1872. The controversy on the reality of the thumb_down during gladiator time doesn’t matter because the public still have the right to save or kill a life…

What is important to me, is how the public, anonymous persons, can have the right on penalty death on an unknown person trying to save his life. How can people make their own opinion on a situation and decide how it will end or continue? Gladiatorial is a combat but before everything an entertainment. Gladiators are looking for opportunities and self-promotion. Public make them famous or not.

How weird is our time which, through social media, seems to replicate the same entertainments with the brutalities. Is human being changed in two thousand years?

We observe exactly the same mechanism on social media. In one hand few people make incredible things trying to get famous, earn money and in a way promote themselves. In the other hand, unknown people, debate, talk, judge, observe, look and decide with the thumb (or common social media language) to like or dislike any content, any post, any page… any person.

We’s have seen how far can people go on social media and the power of the public on it.

Is social media the new arena for modern gladiatorial?

Do you really want to live in a surveillance state, giving up your privacy and freedom for pretended temporary security?