June 2025, Leipzig

It’s 9:45 on a Thursday morning. I’m moving through the hallways of the Academy of Fine Arts. As per usual, the only sign of life between the graffiti- and sticker-overwhelmed walls is the sound of my own boots stomping on the ground. I’m a bit early for a meeting in My Professor’s office, which is good, cause it’s a meeting that requires my utmost professionalism: a talk with the antagonists of The Unsafe Event, moderated by My Professor and her East German accountability. “Ronja, you and your project are certainly keeping me busy,” she’d told me on the phone a few days ago. “I’m getting bombarded with emails and messages regarding The Unsafe Event at the moment,” she added. I’d felt a strange mix of ego-satisfaction and invalidation. “How come the concerned parties don’t just reach out to me directly? I’m the initiator behind this whole thing,” I’d said. “I think people are afraid they’ll end up in one of your Instagram stories or something,” My Professor had answered, and thus replaced my feeling of non-recognition with a sense of potency. 

“I’m dying to know who the anonymous students behind the letter are,” Sinon said to me during a phone call last night. I’d finally gotten access to the, according to My Professor, “very well-researched paper” concerning Horror House and their much-hyped arrival at The Academy of Fine Arts for The Unsafe Event. Apparently a group of anonymous students had expressed their concerns through that letter containing a bunch of screenshots of Horror House’s, Sinon’s, and my own Instagram content. “A problem has occurred,” Connie Cox had told me as I consulted her again to try and talk her into hosting The Unsafe Event at the academy’s gallery. This time I’d brought my ally Quirky Cool Boy along as good cop. “Gundula Schneider has gotten an anonymous letter from a group of students. They feel uncomfortable with what you’ve posted online. They don’t want The Unsafe Event to happen at our university,” Connie Cox had dryly informed us, while effortlessly vaping away.

I enter My Professor’s office. “Good morning, Ronja,” she says, standing by the yellow coffee maker, carefully pouring coffee grounds into the filter. “Hello My, you’re making coffee, great,” I say and sit down on a chair. On the table in front of me, I place my laptop. I’m wearing my tank top saying ART WHORE in screaming pink letters and on the Apple logo of my laptop, a Horror House sticker shines. It depicts a giant octopus breaking out of The White House. “We chose the octopus as our logo, cause we all feel like octopuses, like we all have eight arms and perform multiple things at the same time,” Isobel had told me smiling, making octopus movements with her arms, as we were hanging out at Horror House’s headquarters one evening a few weeks ago. Today I’m amused by my own subtle irony, deliberately choosing to parade these symbols on this specific occasion. The letter of the anonymous students is all about their research on Horror House’s use of symbols which, to the anonymous students, all unmask their hidden alliance with the Dark Enlightenment movement. And how this very movement uses irony as a tool to aestheticize and normalise fascism.

Up until yesterday, it had only been My Professor and the head of the administration board of the academy, Gundula Schneider, who’d received the letter. “I can’t reveal that document to you. The students behind it have expressed their crucial wish to stay anonymous and I have to respect that,” Gundula Schneider told me on the phone. I’d called her to ask what the hell was going on. “Well, then please tell me what it is they’re trying to do with their sneaking around, surveilling me and my colleagues, spending their time creating PDFs and secretively delivering them to your door? As if they have nothing better to do than make attempts to sabotage my work?!” I’d said. “Nobody’s trying to sabotage your work, Ronja,” Gundula Schneider said in a tired tone, and I instantly regretted that I hadn’t been quick enough to record our conversation. “The students in question are simply feeling uncomfortable with your project. They have the feeling that you and Horror House might want to threaten their safer space.” I felt a satisfying shot of dopamine blasting through my inner world of chaos. Cause while “threaten” isn’t the precise goal here, my collaboration with Horror House is meant to challenge the stale, fun-hostile culture that dominates our environment. “I think this is all just water to your mill,” Quirky Cool Boy reflected as we smoked a cigarette together post-Connie Cox reveal. “Up until now, I’d thought that you were a bit too late with The Unsafe Event, that cancel culture and all of that aren’t really a thing anymore. Seems I was wrong,” he stated. “Yeah, that insight truly is bittersweet as fuck,” I’d said, still all warm in my face, coming down from the anger rush. 

The clock hits 10:00 and My Professor comes to sit down at the table next to me. “How are you feeling?” she asks as she pours me a cup of fresh coffee. “How am I feeling.." I taste the words and take a sip. At the moment, it’s a question that, whenever someone asks me, hits me like a razor blade slicing into my chest so incisively that I don’t notice it before everything has turned red. This realization alone leaves me more curious about how I’m feeling than the question itself. The truth is that I don’t pay much attention to my emotional life these days. I also don’t really write about it anymore. It seems my inner world is currently drowning in external influences. I’m so obsessively caught up in the intensity of everything that I’m apparently somewhat disconnected from my emotions. I shrug my shoulders and look My Professor straight into her eyes: “Today I’m doing fine, I think.”

After having insisted hard on the necessity for me to read the anonymous letter prior to the upcoming meeting with the people who wrote it, My Professor had finally forwarded me the seven-page-long PDF. I’d read it eating ice cream in bed. The document didn’t contain the infamous screenshots, which doesn’t really matter; I can imagine what recent Insta content didn’t go down well. Though it would have been nice to have a few colourful illustrations to accompany the letter in question. Cause there it was: the dead-serious, theory-based research paper. The desert-dry attempt to suck out every drop of excitement, playfulness, passion, and desire from, to me, a solely artistic endeavour. A meticulously well-argued suspicion tainting my colourful madhouse of a group show. A potentially fatal vampire bite, a weapon against my well-meaning urge for a celebratory spectacle. Black on white, footnotes, a list of sources, the whole shebang. Written by unknown, though still fellow students of the Academy of Political Activism, a.k.a. the Academy of Fine Arts. “I think they’re just authoritarian communists,” Mephisto had texted me after I’d shared the document with my allies in Amsterdam. “But these people do seem to know a lot and I don’t feel well-equipped to discuss these heavy political theories they’re bringing forth,” I’d answered, equally dreading and anticipating the upcoming conversation with the minds behind the worry-dripping words. “Ask them if you can film the meeting,” Mephisto suggested. “It took them a week to chill out enough to share their still completely anonymous letter with me. I don’t suppose they’ll be up for being recorded in any way,” I’d almost laughed. “Couldn’t hurt to ask,” Mephisto argued. “Don’t forget: The most powerful position you can have is the one where you don’t have any position at all. You can allow yourself to be mad.”

The door opens and two people who I’ve never seen before walk in. I smile. “Hello, hello,” My Professor says and gets up to shake their hands. I follow suit. “Hello, I’m Ronja,” I say. The two now not-so-anonymous students introduce themselves as Anonas and Anonzi and sit down at the table. Neither of them is smiling. Anonas reads as a completely ordinary dude. His attitude seems casual and somewhat relaxed, with just a hint of restrained eagerness. Anonzi reads more eccentric and queer. As opposed to Anonas, they seem a bit tense, more withheld and on guard. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” I say. “Coffee?” My Professor asks. Anonas nods his head while Anonzi makes a polite gesture with their hand to decline. “My associate Reinhilde was supposed to be here too,” My Professor says and hands Anonas his cup. “I guess she’s late, so let’s just start?” “Yes!” I say enthusiastically. With Reinhilde not being here, it’s one less sharply tuned voice of reason I have to listen to today. 

“Acting anonymously is a form of intimidation,” I remember Mephisto telling me back in Amsterdam. “And here I thought of it as cowardice,” I’d said. “No, acting anonymously is a way of having an impact without taking responsibility,” he said. “Wouldn’t that be cowardice?” I intervened. “No, cause taking action, anonymously or not, is courageous. But one chooses to perform anonymously when also wanting to intimidate. Anonymity is a power move,” Mephisto argued. I took a moment to think it through. We were sitting at the Horror House headquarters having a cigarette-induced table talk. “It’s interesting, cause on the one hand, we now live in a world where people are obsessed with being seen. On the other hand, I feel like everyone around me is obsessed with anonymity. I think people are afraid of being seen in a certain way, by certain people. Rumours spread like whirlwinds and unpopularity is contagious,” I reflected. Mephisto inhaled his cigarette and looked at me with his hypnotic gaze. “The idea of evil being contagious is what lies at the very base of fascism,” he began, before he went off into different dimensions and took me with him. 

“Would it be okay if I record this meeting with my phone? Just as audio?” I ask. Anonas and Anonzi look at each other, then look at My Professor. It seems they’re not surprised at all that I’d ask this question. But why would they be? They’ve been keeping an eye on me and The Project for a while, haven’t they? They probably know how I operate these days. Anonas and Anonzi shake their heads quietly. “No, we’ve decided we don’t want you to record the meeting,” Anonas says in a mild, quiet tone. “Alright, then I’ll take notes instead,” I say and open up my laptop. “So, I’ve read your letter,” I begin. “Thanks for sharing it with me, by the way, but can I ask why you decided to stay anonymous? You could’ve just reached out to me directly, couldn’t you?” I ask. “We’ve been political activists for a while. It can get dangerous for us if right-wingers find out who we are. We’ve been physically attacked before by Neo-Nazis,” Anonzi tells me in a low voice while Anonas nods along solemnly. “Wow, that’s fucked up, I’m sorry to hear that”, I say. “But who exactly do you fear will be attacking you, like in the context of my collaboration with Horror House?” I ask. “Horror House’s ironic aesthetic might be de-politicized, but that doesn’t make it harmless at all. Especially not considering their connection to Guy Bug!” Anonas says at a sudden high decibel. “We don’t want to be sucked into their line of sight, cause with Guy Bug as their groupie, there’s sure to be Nazis cheering them on somewhere,” Anonas’s voice rises further, and he leans his elbows on the table. He’s sitting across from me on the other end of the table, while Anonzi and My Professor are sitting on either side, quietly observing. “You know that I’m not directly affiliated with Guy Bug, right? He’s not a part of The Unsafe Event. This might be important to clarify. I didn’t invite Guy Bug, I’ve invited Horror House,” I say calmly and take a sip of my coffee. “No, but we believe that Horror House, with their “ironic” use of fascist aesthetics and their bro-ship with Guy Bug, is a danger to our institution. The invitation to this platform is part of a larger cultural context in which right-wing, anti-democratic and neo-fascistoid thought patterns are increasingly finding their way into aesthetic and academic spaces. That’s what we want to prevent by all means,” Anonas says quick and loud and slams his fist into the table. I smile and type “Radical leftist impulsively speaking hyper-masculine, authoritarian body-language, uncontrollably so” on my up until-now empty document. 

“You’re getting cancelled, Ronja, congratulations!” Sinon had said on the phone a few days ago. I could hear Isobel in the background cheering him on. I’d called them to unload my anxiety. Sinon and Isobel were together at Horror House’s headquarters in Amsterdam, I was home alone in my bed in Leipzig. Earlier, parallel to the whole anonymous letter reveal, I’d been getting messages from a few people from a very specific bubble within our university: The militant neurotics. One person sent me a message on Instagram telling me they did not want to be a part of my movie. Apparently, they’d randomly passed by me as I was walking around the university building with a video camera the other day. “Don’t worry, if you appear in my footage even for the slightest second, I’ll make sure to cut you out,” I’d responded. A few minutes later, I got another message from a photographer who used to document my performances: “Hi, someone just sent me a screenshot of your new text on Feltenink. I can see that you credited me on the photo credit in the article. I’d prefer that you delete my name there.” The text the photographer referred to is the last text I’d published, the one called Let the Artists Be Artists. In this piece, I expose personal conflicts and openly attack what I perceive as the moral dogmas of my art bubble. I was aware that the text is already circulating, but I hadn’t been prepared for how much of a disturbance it was already causing. It began to look like I’d managed to trigger the very cancel mechanics I critique. “That seems to me a bit neurotic, honestly,” I’d replied to the photographer. “I’d like to know first of all why you don’t want me to credit you for your own work?” “I do not support what you’ve written in that text, and I do not want to be associated with it in any way,” the photographer replied.

“I think it’s important to clarify that this meeting is not aimed at deciding whether The Unsafe Event will happen or not. The Unsafe Event will happen. This meeting is for you to understand each other’s points of view,” My Professor says in her Saxon accent. Her tone is, as always, calm and sober. “Yes, so let me try to explain to you my point of view,” I say to Anonas and Anonzi. “It’s obvious that you two are much more informed about political theory than I am. Your letter was an interesting read for me, cause I learned something about Guy Bug and his Dark Enlightenment movement that I didn’t know before. I myself am a bit baffled and confused about what I should think about Horror House’s relationship with Guy Bug. Up until recently, I thought they were just friends, and I generally don’t mind friendships happening across differences of political opinions, in fact, I encourage them. I grew up in a household full of ideological tension. I’m used to political clashes, and I think differences of opinions are important in order for us to maintain flexible minds. But I’ve never met Guy Bug and I’m honestly not that interested in him. I can only speak for myself and my own perception of Horror House, and my own idea for The Unsafe Event at this meeting. And, of course, listen to what you have to say.” 

Mephisto and Beth are currently in Basel with Guy Bug. They’re visiting the art fair together. I’d been trying to get Mephisto to call me over the past few days, as I wanted to talk to him about the anonymous letter in preparation for the meeting. In the letter, I’m only mentioned once as “the inviting artist.” The rest consists solely of allegations against Horror House, their use of symbols and their connection to Guy Bug. But all I’d gotten were a few messages from Mephisto here and there. Apparently, my East German art school drama is much less important to him than sipping wine with a famous, neo-reactionary, polarizing figure at one of the world’s biggest art fairs. What Mephisto, Beth and Guy Bug are doing there exactly, besides looking at art, I suppose, is unclear to me. “They’re networking and making plans to conquer the art world. Mephisto is in seventh heaven!” Sinon had told me on the phone. 

“We just want you to be aware of who it is that you’re engaging with here,” Anonzi says, looking at me with a gaze that’s hard to interpret. Care? Fear? Worry? Protectiveness? “Don’t underestimate me!” I think, feeling both patronised and respected at the same time, an inner dynamic I’ve been experiencing on a regular basis since I began working on The Project. I look at Anonzi. Their gaze remains cautious, their posture stiff. “I just got back from Amsterdam a week ago,” I say. “I spent a week there at Horror House’s studio, getting to know these people personally. I’ve seen how they operate on an everyday basis. I’ve spoken to them for hours. Provocation certainly is one of their favourite tools, but I can assure you that I wouldn’t want to work with them, if I thought they were anything other than an artist collective,” I say. “But the aesthetic decisions of Horror House are not just neutral signs. They convey concrete political meanings, and they cannot be justified as artistic provocation or theoretical ambivalence,” Anonas says, again slamming his fist into the table. It’s beginning to turn comical. Anonzi are side-eyeing their colleague. It’s obvious that they know this side of Anonas way too well. “I think you have to look at the context in which different symbols are being used,” I say. “When Jonathan Meese does the Hitler salute during a theatrical performance, it means something completely different than when Elon Musk does it at an AfD rally. It has a different meaning, thus a different impact. When Isobel and Beth put on Soviet militant uniforms at their exhibition, the context of that very exhibition and them functioning as artists in this context, might just be a subversion of the very meaning of those symbols,” I say. “Irony does not protect against ideological impact,” Anonas says, sounding like thunder. My Professor looks at him with furrowed eyebrows. “But both Horror House and myself like to play with confusion as a part of our artistic practices. Nothing is resolved or carved in stone, nothing is factual, everything is complex, everything is questionable. You can’t just reduce Horror House’s artistry to being a political program, at least not without deepening your research on them further. Your research is as thorough as it is superficial. It seems to be solely based on impressions from the internet. But I can quote Mephisto directly: “We like to play with unsolvable paradoxes that create forms of distress." And quite frankly, it does seem to be working,” I say and smile. 

“They’ve picked the weakest link. They’re bullying you,” Sinon said, and it was direct poison to my sense of self-worth. “But this is what you wanted, Ronja. You wanted to get cancelled,” he continued. I felt a cold chill. It seemed even my own allies were misunderstanding me by now. “Is it really what I wanted, though?” I said. “Cause if it is, the most important thing is how I deal with it now. Shying away and silently accepting it would just be absolutely pathetic. How to fight cancel culture when you’ve been cancelled?” “Let’s talk strategies,” Isobel said. “Make a fuss!” Sinon encouraged. “You don’t think I have enough fuss as it is?” I asked. “No, make even more of a fuss. Fuss is fun!” Sinon declared. We hung up and I let myself drown in dreams. I had to get my eight hours of sleep before the next battle in the morning.

“There’s nothing paradoxical about Horror House’s work. What they’re producing is authoritarian content in a postmodern disguise. We have to warn you and our community here at the academy about this before they storm the building,” Anonas roars. He’s now all red in the face. I’m equally amused and repulsed by his attitude. “But we also have to trust the minds at this institution to be able to think for themselves,” My Professor intervenes. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that, especially not when looking at who else is on Ronja’s guest list for The Unsafe Event,” Anonas passive-aggressively pokes. I’m absolutely sure he’s referring to B and Theis Tooty, the two jacks-in-the-box on my team. “Can we take a small break? I really have to pee,” I say, and everyone nods.

As I make my way to the toilet, I’m caught in an inner conflict. Up until I met them, I had been thinking of Anonas and Anonzi as plain antagonists. But there’s something about their gravity and passion concerning my partners in Amsterdam that turn my binary narrative upside down. Who are my allies? And who are the antagonists? I recall my friend Lutz suggesting that I befriend the people behind the research paper and start acting as a double agent between the moralists in Leipzig and the rebels in Amsterdam, between the woke and the anti-woke. The thought alone was frightening to me, though also intriguing. Imagining myself as a spy - in what world? I’m way too emotional to be able to play that game. No, I’ve got my own game. The rules might be those of infinite chaos. But that’s the way I like it.

I enter My Professor’s office again. I realise that a discussion, seemingly having nothing to do with the matter at hand, has broken out in the meantime. “It’s good that you’re telling me, no, thank you, I have to be made aware of my own body language!” Anonas says, almost jumping on his chair, and I realise that My Professor has brought up Anonas’ dramatic expressions while I was on the toilet. “Yes, cause it might make Ronja feel uncomfortable. The way you express yourself can be intimidating,” My Professor says and I giggle as I sit down on my chair again. Doesn’t that woman know me at all? “Don’t you worry about that, I’ve seen way worse male-coded behaviour,” I say, thinking about the men in my life and their subtle, yet still ridiculously obvious, masculine traits. But Anonas turns towards me and looks at me straight from across the table: “Ronja, I’d like to apologise to you for acting this way. I just get so caught up in my own speech and I can’t help myself. But I don’t want to be that kind of toxic male, and I’m really trying to get rid of this habit. So, thank you My Professor for the reprimand, and please excuse me Ronja for being this aggressive. I’ll be crossing my arms from now on.” I lean back in my chair and cross my legs. Anonzi seems to be quietly cringing. By the look on their face, it seems it’s not the first time their partner in crime’s stereotypical maleness has been the topic of conversation. I smile. “Anonas, you never have to apologise to me for being passionate. I’ve read your behaviour as proof of your authentic interest in this topic at hand. I’d be the first one to tell you to slam that fist into that table even harder! Be passionate, make all the gestures you want. It’s good. Passion is good!” I say. Anonas looks at me with bewilderment. My Professor laughs her kind little laugh. She does know me, after all. 

For the rest of the meeting, Anonas appears trapped in his own self-consciousness, his cross-armed position functioning as a straightjacket made of flesh. I recommend that Anonas and Anonzi watch some of PASTINAK’s movies to gain a better understanding of Mephisto’s character. I assure them that, Russian Federation emblems and Soviet uniforms aside, Horror House is indeed not pro-Russia. I tell them that I myself am disoriented when it comes to Guy Bug, but that I try to embrace this disorientation instead of running away from it. Anonzi doesn’t say much, while Anonas is bravely fighting his own impulses. “We want to publish our research paper internally at our academy as soon as possible,” Anonas says, “We will of course rewrite it based on this meeting prior to making it public,” he assures. “Sure, go for it!” I say, hoping they’ll mention my name in it this time around.

“We will burn the LGBTQ flag!” Mephisto said during one of our very first calls. I was out walking in the sun with my new Him. I’d pitched the idea of coming to Leipzig to Mephisto and Beth. “No you won’t,” I’d immediately thought, I didn’t say it out loud, though. We’ll sort it out in post-production. “Connie Cox wants you to send her a portfolio of your works. Could you do that? It would help the process of landing the gallery at the academy,” I said while Him took my hand and let me through a park. “No, we’re not applying for anything,” Mephisto said. “But it’s just that it’s quite hard to find documentation of your work online,” I tried. “First of all, that’s not true, and second of all, you’re the one who wants us to come, so you’re the one who’s responsible for getting us a platform,” Mephisto said, and my already elevated pulse rose further. “What do you like about our work?” Beth asked me, and an inner solar eclipse suddenly blocked my mind entirely.

“I sadly have to go now. I’ve got a Man Disorder photoshoot to do downstairs in the photo studio,” I say in the end as I’m already fifteen minutes past my schedule. I was kind of hoping we could finish off on a light note, maybe even with a collective giggle, with the Man Disorder element bringing the meeting to a close. But everyone just looks at me silently, like they don’t understand what I’m saying. “Okay, let’s wrap it up,” My Professor says, as the door opens and her associate, Reinhilde, comes through the door all sweaty and breathless. “Excuse me, for some reason I thought the meeting would begin at 11 o’clock!” she says, moving through the small room with a bike helmet and a big backpack underneath her arms. I’m thrilled she’s so late. “We’re actually just ending the meeting now, but I’ll give you a recap later,” My Professor says. Reinhilde sits down next to My Professor and takes a deep breath. I look at the faces around the table. “I’d just like to say as a final statement that the Unsafe Event is meant to create a disruption in the shape of an exhibition. I want to disrupt the mainstream ruling our academy, by creating a stage for a different group of artists to enter. The “unsafe” in the Unsafe Event is not a political program, it’s an antidote to anti-fun. It’s a group show in which boundaries will be pushed by the invited artists, including Horror House. And I’m the curator of the show, so I’ll make sure Guy Bug doesn’t walk in the door and turns everything into a Dark Enlightenment rally. Let’s keep in touch!” I say and raise from my chair. Reinhilde suddenly looks like she’s been sitting at the table since 10:00 o’clock like everyone else. “But I still don’t understand what it is that you want your criticism to lead to, concretely? What is the goal exactly? Maybe that would be a good hint for you to take with you, here at the end,” she says in her monotonous, precise manner. I roll my eyes internally. Didn’t I just answer that question? And also, what is this idea that an artistic investigation needs a clear goal? It’s not a scientific experiment in a lab or a political agenda, it’s fucking art. Art should lead to more questions, not answers. At least in my practice. As artists, can’t we just feel like we’re onto something, without knowing why and what it is exactly? 

As I’m about to close my laptop with a still very empty document of notes, Anonas finally breaks free from his cross-armed position and leans over the table towards me. He squints his eyes as he fixes his gaze on the back of my laptop. “What is that motif there on your computer?” he asks, and everyone turns their heads. “Oh, it’s a Horror House sticker. They threw a party on the American election night last year and made these stickers for it. Cool, right?” I say, smiling. “But it’s an octopus!” Anonas states and gets all wild on his chair again. I’m confused. “Yes?” I ask, “The octopus is an antisemitic symbol” Anonzi says dryly, looking at me with eyes full of worry. So much for my finishing-on-a-light-note plan. Standing in the doorway with my laptop underneath my arm, I wave goodbye to everyone. “To be continued!” I smile and leave My Professor’s office. I shake my head, laughing, as I roam through the empty halls again. I have a bunch of dudes and a sack of ART WHORE speedos awaiting me at the photo studio downstairs. The show must go on. I’m just not really sure whose show it is anymore. 

Winter writes the story, 2026, digitised 35 mm negative, photographer: Tatjana Hub.

September 2025, Copenhagen

Anya undresses and jumps in the water with a big smile on her face. I’m watching from my muted spot on the quay, while the last warm sun rays of the year stroke my pale skin. I’m in my bikini too, licking a soft-ice with liquorice sprinkles, the vanilla ice cream goes black as I’m painting it with my tongue. While I taste the salty-sweet composition, I passively observe how Anya’s dog Shiva is anxiously awaiting Anya to appear out of the water again. Shiva’s nervously moving on the very edge of the platform, wiggling her tail, looking back and forth between the crime scene of Anya’s disappearance and my own idle presence. My mind moves in slow-motion as I turn my gaze from one bathing suit-wearing sunshine-celebrator to the other. They’re shifting on their towels, making gestures with their arms as they tell each other things, they light up cigarettes and smile at themselves as they take selfies with their phones. They sit in self-aware poses, cause they’re almost naked. They get up and walk away, they come back minutes later with fresh, cold drinks and salty snacks. They laugh. They read books. They look at their phones. They call someone. They lie down and close their eyes. They hide behind sunglasses. They look beautiful there in the sun under the blue sky. Under the way too blue sky. I see this typical, joyful atmosphere that Copenhagen is brimming with on a warm summer day. People go to jump in the harbour all over the city, they want to enjoy the sun while it’s still here and the centre of Copenhagen basically turns into one, big, buzzing beach party on days like these.

Shiva begins to jump up and down by the sight of Anya reappearing from the ladder on the quay. I watch her rise up and step back onto the platform I’m sitting on, she’s all soaked in freshness and cold water. “You don’t want to go in? I think it’d be really good for you,” she says and grabs her towel next to me. I shake my head lazily and put on my sunglasses. Anya pads herself dry. She’s wearing a black bikini and looks strong, lean and shiny, brimming with confidence and vitality. I stroke Shiva on her golden fur as she comes to lie down next to me, calmly. Anya is back, the world is good again, everyone can now relax. I look at the shimmering, sparkling water right there in front of me. It does look tempting, but it’s too far away, and even if I made it in, I’m afraid I’d plunge straight to the bottom and never return. Anya sits down next to me and lights up a cigarette. “Do you want to come with me to a rave later? My friends will pick me up in a boat and we’ll do MDMA and drink champagne while we sail to the party. It’s on the Refshale Island, I can get you in for free,” she says and pulls Shiva in between her long, toned legs so she can cuddle her soft bestie to bliss. I shake my head. “That sounds like the kind of situation that requires… serotonin,” I say and picture myself on that boat, surrounded by ecstatic, champagne-sipping, hot people, sailing off into the sunset, while all I can think is “Art Whore overboard.” I giggle lovelessly and look at Anya with appreciation. “Thanks for the invitation though.”

My phone buzzes somewhere around me, I locate it underneath my towel, it’s my mum calling me. “Are you okay? Are you with Anya?” she asks. “Yes, it’s nice, we’re at the harbour in the sun,” “Okay, I just wanted to tell you that Bella got the job in Bali, she’s going in a few weeks, then her room will be free for two months. So you can stay here if you’d like, you don’t have to go back to Leipzig anytime soon. Think about it, okay?” mum says. I nod my head, “Okay, see you at home later,” I say and we hang up. Anya looks at me with her sincere, caring gaze, “All good?” she asks. I move closer to her and lean my head on her tanned shoulder. I close my eyes. “Not at all. But I can stay with my parents until the end of the year if I want to. I’d even have my own room, for free, my sister is going to Bali. Can I have a cigarette?” I ask and Anya pulls one out of her package, lights it up and puts it between my lips. I inhale. “Really? What will she be doing there?” Anya asks. “She’ll be working. She got a contract with a model agency, I guess she’ll be modelling bathing suits on bounty beaches,” “Wow, she’s so lucky” Anya says. “So will you stay in Copenhagen for a while? With me?” “I don’t know,” I say. “Any decision I’d have to make right now seems endlessly exhausting.” I exhale and take Anya’s hand, squeeze softly. She turns my hand around in hers and begins stroking my palm with her finger. I can almost feel it.

Later, in the early evening, after having sent Anya off into her upcoming boat-rave-adventure, after having walked the heaviest steps I’ve ever walked back to my parent’s apartment on Strandgade, after having climbed the crooked stairs that felt like they multiplied by every step, I finally enter my current residence. I’m met with the sound of my father in the kitchen: the radio is on, he’s whistling when he’s not listening to whatever the news reporter is saying, he’s happily immersed in the preparation of a meal for my mother and I. “Hello Duds,” I say as I step through the kitchen door. He’s concentrating on looking into a pot on the stove, stirring it’s content with a wooden spoon. It smells like spices and rice. “Hi Mille,” he says and smiles at me, “How was your time with Anya?” “It was nice. What’s for dinner?” “I’m making us a lamb korma!” my dad says and dries his hands in his apron while looking enthusiastically at the simmering stew on the stove. “Oh wow, looks great Duds,” I say monotonously and move further into my parents’ home. I enter the living room where I’ve been sleeping for the past few nights. My mother is sitting on the couch knitting, “Hi darling, how are you, tell me about your day,” she says without looking away from the fast paced creation between her fingers. “I don’t think I can speak right now,” I say with a growing lump in my throat and lie down on my little madras in the corner. I close my eyes and listen to the soothing sounds of my parents in the midst of their activities.

“Girls, dinner is ready,” I hear my dad calling out to my mum and I from the dining room. I open my eyes, my mum puts her knitting project aside and gets off the couch, “Are you coming, Mille?” she asks. “Yes, yes,” I slowly sit up on the small madras and get up on my feet. At the dinner table, my father meticulously serves my mother and I the steaming hot lamb korma. My mum immediately begins eating as the food lands on her plate. My dad serves himself with the same care and precision he performed for my mum and I. He sits down across from me, straight back, looks at me smiling, then looks at my mum who’s almost already halfway through her meal. “So, enjoy,” my dad says, and I fork a piece of meat and let it fall apart in my mouth. It tastes kind and familiar. My dad often made this dish during my childhood. While my mum has always been the social matriarch of our family, my dad has had his domaine in the kitchen. He’s actually an architect, but he loves cooking and he’s good at it. He took an interest in the Indian kitchen, cause my mum is half Indian. Apart from that fact and regular Indian food on the dinner table, I don’t have much access to my Indian heritage, neither have my two smaller siblings, Bella and August. “How is Anya doing?” my dad asks me. “I think she’s doing really good. She seems content with herself at the moment,” I say. “That’s good!” my dad says and sprinkles some fresh coriander on top of his korma. I side eye the empty bowl and chair next to me, “Where’s Bella?” I ask, “I think she’s at the gym, she’ll be home later,” my mum says. Bella is 9 years younger than me and has a thriving model-career with her perfectly symmetrical, intricate beauty. She has 20.000 followers on Instagram and travels all over the world while designers are messaging her daily, desperate for her to promote their brands. She still lives with my parents out of convenience, she comes and goes as she pleases, always walking in and out on sunshine while I’m mostly crashing at my parent’s, cause I’ve again managed to crush myself.

“Mille, I’ve been thinking,” my dad begins with his mouth full of curry. “Once you feel better and you start working on The Project again, there’s an important question that I think you’d need to ask yourself,” my mum and I lock eyes for a second. “It’s okay,” I tell her without words. Mum releases a loud exhale of silent frustration. My dad looks at my mum and I, back and forth, smiling, a bit confused, I fixate my gaze on the plate in front of me and begin to divide my portion up in small bites with the edge of my knife. Dad continues: “I don’t think it’s been quite clear whether The Project is supposed to be an artistic rebellion against political correctness and social control. Or whether it’s simply “turning my life into an artwork” that’s the main headline? I see the former as an offshoot of the latter, but if the latter is The Project itself, then it takes on a bit of an “anything goes – as long as it’s noisy enough” - character. And that risks muddying it’s messages. The danger is that nothing really stands out. But perhaps it is a question of The Project’s final editing, which needs to cut to the points, maybe in the shape of chapters?” it goes silent at the dinner table, only the sound of my dad’s fork and knife on the porcelain. I’ve begun placing the coriander leafs on top of each little tower-bite I’ve created on my plate during my dad’s reflection. I feel dizzy and so utterly tired. “I don’t want to talk about The Project right now,” I say. “Oh sorry, I just wanted to share my current thoughts on it with you, but maybe it was insensitive of me,” my dad says looking at me, nervously, my mum looks at him with a critical gaze. “No, it’s fine dad, it’s just that I don’t have so many words left in me today,” I say at an almost glacial pace. My mum looks at me with serious worry. She’s now leaned back on her chair, plate empty, crossed arms. “Mille, I don’t know how much more of your self-destructive life-style I can take. It’s your second clinical burnout in four years, and it’s always us who have to pick you up..” My pulse starts to raise and I feel a shake spreading through my apathetic body. “Not now, mum,” I say with rare determination, and everyone goes quiet.

Later in the evening, I’m lying on my small madras in the corner again. It’s dark in the living room, my parents have hugged me goodnight a few hours ago, I’m now on my third Breaking Bad episode of the evening. My phone buzzes next to me, a message from my friend Noam. “So you started a fight with Horror House?” he texts me. My heart immediately begins to pound and I feel suddenly nauseous. “I wouldn’t formulate it that way. How do you know?” I answer, and 30 seconds that feel like 30 minutes go by before I receive a picture from Noam. It’s a screenshot of Sinon’s latest Instagram story: “WILL RONJA BRAINSTORM PROVE SHE’S THE UNSTOPPABLE BADASS SHE SAYS SHE IS, OR WILL SHE CRUMBLE, DROP TO HER KNEES, AND SURRENDER TO THE WOKE LEIPZIG MOB? WHAT IS YOUR PROPHECY? WATCH OUR EXPERIMENT AND SEND US YOUR OPINIONS,” underneath mentions of The Academy of Fine Arts, Horror House and myself. “Okay. If anything else like this comes up, I don’t want to know. It’s fine if you take screenshots of these fucked up things, and safe them for me for later. I might be able to use them. But as of now I’m deeply affected by the current situation and I don’t want to know anything of what these lunatics are doing anymore.” I text Noam back with shaking hands and tears running down my face. I turn off my phone and return to watch as Walter White strangles a drug dealer to death in a basement.

I spend the next day on the madras. My parents both went to work while I was sleeping, and I’m continuing to binge the fictional misery on Netflix. I keep the time in mind, my mum will be home at 4 pm, I can’t let her see me like this, need to at least have showered before she comes back. I hear the door open and close, it must be Bella coming home. I get up and close the doors to the living room. I can’t face all of her youth, vitality and success right now. I still have two hours before my mum comes home and I aim to spend them in the healing presence of the story of someone who fucks up even more than I have. Fiction or not, it doesn’t fucking matter, cause it works. “At least I didn’t start cooking meth and murder people,” I’ll think to myself from my corner of doom.

At 3.45 pm, it takes me a mountain of effort to get off the madras and make my way to the bathroom to finally take that shower. Mother will be home in 15 minutes, gotta look somewhat presentable. There’s a limit to how much of a disappointment I want myself to look these days. Seems I do have a small ray of dignity left in me, after all.

“Can I borrow your grey sweat pants?” I ask my sister post-shower. She’s sitting on her bed putting on makeup in front of a little, round, LED-lighted mirror. I’m standing in the doorframe with a towel wrapped around me. She turns her gaze towards me, “Sure, they’re on the chair,” she points. I fetch the sweat pants out from underneath a messy pile of garments. I find a hooded sweatshirt as well, also grey, perfect. I put it on and lay down next to Bella on her bed. “Where are you going?” I ask her, “I have this promoter-dinner later,” she says, gaze still fixated on her long eyelashes that she’s working on making even longer. “Really? What is that?” I ask, and she giggles, “There are these club-promoters from London in town. They’re having a dinner party on a roof top in the city centre and need me to come and make it look good for Instagram,” she says and pulls out another beauty product that I have no idea what is from her make-up bag. “What the hell, that sounds terrible”, I say and Bella laughs a bit. “Well, it’s my job,” she says, and dabs something shiny onto her lips with her finger. True, and my job is not much better. Same concept, different uniform. Bella puts her make-up bag and mirror aside and leans against the wall next to me. She begins scrolling on her phone, her face looking like a human porcelain doll. “Do you want to look at my fictional shopping list on Vestiare?” I ask her from my endless greyness. Making wish-lists on various online clothing-markets has been one of my escapist obsessions, post-collapse. “Why fictional?” Bella asks and turns her incredible face towards me. “Cause I don’t have the money to actually shop any of these items,” I say and grunt.

As I scroll through my wish-list full of eccentric pieces, Bella points to a long-sleeved t-shirt. “That one’s cool,” she says. I click on it. It’s a slim fit, beige, see-through piece, on the chest it says FEEL THE FIRE in brown, gothic-style letters, a little flame icon underneath them. “It’s a good brand too,” Bella adds. I look at the item and scoff, “Yes it’s cool, but I’ve never felt less like a person who can pull off such self-asserting statements. That top is no longer for me,” I say, and we both giggle. But cynicism aside, what fire is there to feel, when it feels like all there is, is air to feel? How pathetically pretentious it would be of me to wear that top now, no, a top like that requires both self confidence and stamina. “Fake it till you make it!” Bella says and takes a selfie, no filter used, no filter needed. But faking a high self esteem also demands some kind of flame, some kind of belief that I could actually make it, make anything, if I manage to put together the strength it would take for me to fake it. No, that top is not for me. FEEL THE AIR would be a more appropriate statement for me to make these days, though also a much weaker one, more esoteric even, more ambiguous as well, obviously. But I can hardly even feel the air around me, my frazzled insides have gone cold and I am nothing but one, big, sweat-pants-wearing wreck. I’m barely breathing in the ruins of my own fire-storm, and soon I’ll be grasping at the leftovers, the polluted air, cause it’s all I have and I don’t even have it. Grasping for something that’s not really there. Trying to make something out of nothing. Like grasping at air.

Schütze, 2026, digitised 35 mm negative, photographer: Ronja Brainstorm.

May 2025, Amsterdam

“You’re not… un-fun”, Mephisto tells me on the phone. He’s called me to find out if I’ve arrived in Amsterdam already. I have, and I’m now sitting in a tram taking me from the airport to my hostel. It’s 11.30 PM and I’m tired from the travel behind me, at the same time uncontrollably excited about the adventure ahead. “So what are you doing? Are you still up and about?”, I ask Mephisto all jittery from anticipation, in the wobbly wagon full of strangers and their luggage and lifes. “We’re at the studio. Come by”, Mephisto answers, and I get even more nervous than I already am. Is this really happening? This artist who’s been in my mind, in my ears, in my eyes, for so many years, yet still always a stranger to me. Is he really about to become real, right there in front of me, will I engage with him, make art with him, is that’s what’s about to happen? How the hell did I get here?

I’ve been speaking to Mephisto on the phone quite a lot lately. To begin with, those phone calls would only happen in Sinon’s company. He’d call Mephisto up with his own phone, then film me with mine while I spoke to Mephisto, or rather, while Mephisto spoke to me. Sometimes Beth would be in the background, dropping comments here and there, intervening with a highly deliberate language wrapped in her strong, hoarse voice. I always wanted her to become more visible, to step out of the background, “What about Beth?”, I’d ask Sinon again and again whenever he’d spill the tea on Mephisto and Horror House, I’d gulp it right down, however hot it’d be. “Beth, she’s just a friendly face”, Sinon would say, and I’d feel my inner army of feminists rise to their barricades and roar. “I don’t believe you”, I’d tell Sinon, convinced that Beth is probably the glue holding the entire operation down there in Amsterdam together. “Behind every man…”?

Mephisto seems like something else besides a man though, more like a wild creature of some kind. Though he does have this hyper-masculinity about him in a way, sometimes even clichéd, but his ability to speak for so long without boring, nor irritating me, continues to impress me. He somehow always manages to steer around the macho-mansplainer-trap, impressively so, given his essential male-ness. No, Mephisto is too smart to be macho. Too self-aware. Too.. un-pretentious.

The past weeks he’s begun calling me unsolicited, independent from our mutual acquaintance. I’ve seen Mephisto’s name on the display of my phone more and more frequently, is it really him calling me, AGAIN? No matter what I’m doing or who I’m with, I pick up the phone when Mephisto calls me. Our conversations always turn out quite lengthy, I feel my brain bursting and brewing, his speech is like a lighter to the fuse of my intellectual starvation, ever so satisfying, ever so stimulating. I walk in circles wherever I am while we talk, my pulse at it’s max, and if I wouldn’t know better I’d think I’m in love. Usually we’ll speed-talk about artists we admire, about Leipzig, my work, his work, and our mutual credo: the threat of political discourse to the freedom of art. “Why is it you want to do this project with us?”, Mephisto had asked me one afternoon and my response fell promptly: “Cause I want to protect what I love about art.” “That’s a really good answer”, Mephisto had said, and I’d felt so utterly soothed by his acknowledgement.

“Alright, I’ll go to my hostel first and drop off my luggage, then I’ll come straight to you”, I say to Mephisto and Beth. “Do you want anything?”, Beth asks me from the other end of the line, “Hmmm.. Do you have a beer?”, I ask, “Yes!”, Mephisto and Beth’s joined voices confirm. I’m sensing a warm, welcoming and willing temper kissing my confidence. Am I about to meet new friends or new colleagues? Best case scenario both? “Love to see you!”, Mephisto almost sings on the other end of the line and hangs up. I taste the words “Love to see you”, another surprisingly nice phrase to send my way. Is that what they say in Dutch instead of “Can’t wait to see you”, cause I like it. I want to start saying that too when I’m about to meet someone I’m looking forward to meet.

I get off the tram at the end station. The last time I was in Amsterdam was 15 years ago, I went with some teenage friends, obsessed with finding the coffee shops to get stoned or high or anything but sober. In other words, I have no idea where I am, but I also don’t really care. All I want is to find the random hostel that’ll be my home for the next 7 days. It’s not Amsterdam I’m interested in. It’s what brought me here: art.

It’s oddly dark in the streets, the tram station is situated in the middle of a broad road. I walk down the stairs with my suitcase and exit in something that doesn’t look like any part of any city I know: Just some big, square buildings in front of me, hardly any light, any people, anything. A completely turned off industrial area, not abandoned though, just.. turned off. I look up the address of my hostel on my phone. It was the cheapest one I could find, on top of that conveniently close to Horror House’s head quarters. The hostel is supposed to be some kind of simulated, indoor camping site. I’ve booked a small camping wagon and I’m hoping it’ll be yellow on the outside, white on the inside, with a big bed full of fluffy pillows and feathery duvets. “Where will you stay?”, Mephisto had asked me once during a phone call with him and Beth, we were planning my visit together. “Oh, I’ll probably just book an AirBnB”, I’d said, well knowingly I definitely wouldn’t be able to afford it at all, in fact I was kind of hoping they’d offer me a couch somewhere to crash on. But “Good”, Mephisto had said, which made the deal pretty clear. Lucky for me, I was able to take out a small loan from the Parent Bank for that camping wagon I’m about to enter.

It’s not yellow, but baby blue. Next to it there’s a baby pink one, “Is that one already taken?”, I ask the staff member, a young, pale dude with greasy skin and curly hair. “Yes, sorry”, he says. He’s taken me through a large hall full of these tiny, kitsch, colourful little camping wagons. The floor is completely covered in fake grass, light shines through some of the small windows of the wagons, strangers inside immersed in their evening rituals. It feels isolated and out-of-time in this place, smells like plastic, wonder if I’ll be able to fall asleep here at all. The employee gives me the key to my baby blue new home, “Have a nice stay”, he says and makes his way back to the reception through the fake garden landscape. I open the small door and enter a tiny room with a big bed taking up most of the space. It’s kind of perfect, the sheets are all white, I like all white sheets. I always pictured myself in a bright bedroom, in a small apartment on the third or fourth floor of a building in Paris, the bed is messy, but clean, situated in the middle of the space, light shining through the windowed doors of a French balcony. I’m not alone in the bed, my good lover is there, we’re happy loving each other, smoking and reading out loud to each other from whatever writing occupies us in that moment. Drinking warm coffee, coming up with new words and phrases, writing them down. But that all belongs to a different fantasy, this little van is not it, it belongs to another dream that’s about to become my life. In this one, I’ll drop off my stuff, change t-shirt quickly, then run directly into the arms of the beginning of a beautiful story.

“On my way”, I text Mephisto as I’m again sitting in the tram, this time it’s taking me to his studio, Horror House’s headquarters, where everything will happen. At my stop, Horror House’s stop, I jump off the tram and do a little spin on the platform. I’m wearing my long, green corduroy coat and I’m imagining myself looking like a magician appearing out of nowhere in a place I’ve never known and that’s never known me, The Art Whore out on a brand new art-mission fuelled by passion, joy and fearlessness! I take my steps in my boots and soon find myself in another industrial area. I walk around the buildings trying to navigate with google maps, end up where the app tells me to end up. I still see no sign of anyone or anything really, I decide that I’m lost and call Mephisto. He picks up immediately, “Yes?”, “I don’t know where I am, but I think I’m here”, I say, “Coming”, Mephisto says and I’ve never felt more convinced that my life belongs to me and no-one else.

I wait on the corner of a building. Next to me a tall metal fence barricades the way to the garage doors and cars behind it. I see nothing else. I light up a cigarette, drop it on the ground immediately because my hands are now shaking from nervousness. I hear the sound of a someone moving behind me and turn around. Mephisto is standing a few meters away, looking at me there in the dark, appearing real, I see his wild eyes that I know from the movies I’ve been watching over and over and over again the past seven years. “Oh my god!” I say in a voice bursting with bubbles and run towards him. He immediately reaches his hand out towards me and initiates a formal handshake. “Hello”, he says, “Hello Mephisto”, I say and take his hand, a firm grip, good, he turns around and begins to walk, I follow him on his side. “I’m so happy to meet you!”, I say, meaning it more than ever, whereafter I throw my arms around his body that feels hard and cold. “Why?”, he asks, still walking, I quickly unleash my embrace again, “I think this is how normal people would feel if they’d meet Taylor Swift or something”, I say, but Mephisto doesn’t laugh, he just looks ahead. I look in his direction and see Beth standing at the entrance of an open garage door, lights coming out from behind her. Her arms are crossed and she’s leaning against the wall, smiling a sneaky smile at me, long legs in heels appearing from underneath a short, blue dress. I run towards her as well and we lean into each other in a sisterly hug. She’s very beautiful, even more beautiful in real life than how I’ve seen her in the digital realm. Sinon is right, she does have a “friendly face”, but it’s so much more than that. A rather perfectly mysterious face. “How was your trip?”, Beth asks, as her and Mephisto take me inside, “Exhausting, but it doesn’t matter, I’m so relieved to finally be here!”, I say and take a look around. Mephisto’s paintings are everywhere, depictions of Beth, her face, her naked body on a couch, Mephisto’s hairy face screaming behind her while she looks all.. passive. Horror House’s headquarter appears to be a large garage, high ceiling, spacious, lots of stuff to look at, a studio, yes, but it also seems to be a space for socialising, there is both a bar and a lounge area, the Horror House collective like to throw parties and I’m about to join one of them.

“Do you want your beer?”, Beth asks pulling out a small Heineken from a fridge behind the bar. “Yes please”, I take it and feel thrilled by the size of it, 33 CL, the same humble size like in Denmark, not like in Germany where the standard beer size is vulgarly giant, 50 CL. My tolerance for alcohol has increased rapidly during the past 8 years of integrating myself in the German culture. “Let us show you the editing room, that’s where we’re working right now”, Mephisto says, and I let him and Beth take me through a small door behind the bar. I follow them up a staircase, and we enter another rather large space, though this one has a much lower ceiling, the air in here is thicker, three large MacBooks on different desktops, headphones, cables, loads of professional gear everywhere. I’m surprised by the sight of Isobel sitting by one of the tables in something that looks like a gamer chair. She’s looking at her phone with much concentration and frowned eyebrows, a giant cigarette between her lips.“Oh wow, Isobel, you’re here!”, I say, and walk to her, cautiously. “Hey”, she says without looking away from her phone. “Can I say hi?”, I ask standing next to her, making a gesture with my arms initiating a hug. “Yeah man, sure”, she says and turns against me, I lean down and we embrace lightly.

Isobel is an important part of Horror House. I first got to know her from one of the early PASTINAK movies. She’s the main character in one of their critical pieces aimed towards the Rietveld Academy. Isobel is a student there and has been having a lot of trouble with the institution, cause the main focus in her work is violence, or so it used to be, which wasn’t well received among the staff and the students. At least not the way Isobel wanted to convey her very own world of violence. Now she’s sitting here, looking quite different from her virtual persona, she appears to be much taller in real life, much taller and much more vulnerable at the same time. I always found her interesting, a somewhat confusing character, she appears so authentically cool, so originally weird. Isobel founded Horror House with Mephisto and Beth after Mephisto left PASTINAK. I’m to this day still unsure what Mephistos reasons for leaving PASTINAK were, and what Isobel’s motivation was for joining forces with Mephisto instead of going on with PASTINAK. All I know is that the two collectives hardly engage with each other at all anymore, but whether it’s a peaceful separation or a cold war I cannot tell.

In the editing room, Mephisto and I both sit down on wheeled office chairs, while Beth gracefully places herself next to Mephisto on a small plastic stool. What now? I guess we’ll drink our small beers and talk. “On my way here, I got this idea”, I begin, Isobel is still looking at her phone, Beth and Mephisto’s gazes fixated on me. Mephisto looks at me with piercing eyes, seems he’s validating, estimating, analysing, all with insatiable curiosity. Beth’s gaze is harder to define, she’s more withhold, reserved, though I still locate a spark of curiosity in those enigmatic eyes. “I’ve received so much criticism lately for my engagement with men,” I say, “seems people around me are busy judging me as being dependant on them and their desire for me. But men are my muses and I don’t see what the problem is with a woman artist using men in her work the same way male artists have been doing it with their objects of desire for centuries?”, I openly reflect and take a sip of my beer that’s already almost empty. “Also, it makes so much sense for the core of The Project; turning my life into an artwork, doesn’t it? I materialise my lived experiences with my lovers. It’s not monetising, it’s materialising. There’s a difference”, I yap on nervously, roll around on my chair in restlessness while Beth and Mephisto keep looking at me. Mephisto is compulsively moving his one leg up and down, Beth seems to be picking the skin around her perfectly manicured nails with the exact same intensity. I’m kind of preoccupied by not letting my consciousness of being validated intimidate me in this moment. Hardly any capacities to be introspective, nor inquisitive right now. Letting words flow freely is my most habitual coping mechanism. Just smile and say things, and listen when someone else says something, then everything will be fine.

“Have you ever been raped?”, Mephisto asks me. Isobel lights up another cigarette, she’s now turned towards our company, still looking at her phone. “No”, I say, “But I do have an experience of sexual assault”. “Tell us about it”, Mephisto says, pulls out his phone and starts filming me. And I tell. And it's strange. For the first time in my life, I tell the story with pleasure, entirely without sadness, fear or shame, without feeling like a victim. Without any hidden agenda, like wanting to free myself from carrying the pain alone, or wanting a man to understand what it’s like to be a woman sometimes. In this moment, I tell my story for the purpose of creation. For the purpose of the ongoing investigation and exchange of ideas that I want this night with these new allies of mine to be.

I can see my performance is sparking something in Mephisto’s eyes. He’s holding his phone firmly, making sure he gets the right angle, his gaze is shifting from the screen of his phone to my face and posture, a little smile in the middle of his messy beard. Beth is watching me through her smoke rings, Isobel is side-eyeing the situation now and then from behind her phone. “Now it’s interesting!”, Mephisto declares with flames in his eyes and a manifesting smile, he looks at Beth, “Before it wasn’t really interesting, but now we’re getting somewhere”, he adds, and turns the camera towards Isobel, “What about you Isobel, have you ever been raped?”, he asks, “Not in the mood”, Isobel says and shakes her head without looking away from her phone.

Mephisto’s piercing eyes are my piercing eyes. This eager for excitement, searching for social games, yearning for true admiration towards someone else, wanting others to shine brighter than yourself, so you can swim in that very brightness, drink it, take it, love it, use it. “Give me something!”, those eyes say, “But can I trust you?”

“I don’t think you’re being very sincere, Ronja, I think you’re a liar”, Mephisto says from behind his camera, now filming me again. Isobel breaks her silence behind her phone: “He’s got a paranoid personality disorder. Don’t take it personally”, she says looking me straight into my eyes. “Now you’ll be put to a loyalty test for the next weeks, months”, I recall Sinon telling me during our last phone call before I left Leipzig. “You’re in, but don’t forget that you’re still an outsider”, he said.

“Did you want to work with PASTINAK? Did you reach out to them?” Mephisto asks me hours later, as we’re sitting in a taxi with Beth. They’re going home and dropping me off in my plastic garden on the way. Mephisto is sitting on the front seat, myself behind him, I can’t see his facial expression. Beth is sitting next to me looking out the window. I think for a minute, even though I don’t have to. But answering that specific question too quickly might activate unnecessary suspicion. “No”, I say after a non-hesitant moment of silence, and it’s the most sincere way to answer to that question in this moment.

As the car stops in front of my hostel, I lean over and kiss Mephisto on his left cheek, then lean over and kiss Beth on her right cheek to say goodbye. “Goodnight, see you tomorrow, love to see you”, I say to both of them and they smile friendly smiles as I exit the taxi. As I watch the car disappear in the night I'm burning with curiosity for knowing what they’ll be saying to eachother about me.

My phone buzzes in my pocket as I walk through the fake grass inside the building. “Love u”, Isobel messages me on Instagram. “Missus smartypants”, she adds. I react with a bunch of burning heart emojis. “Sorry I was grumpy before”, she writes. “I didn’t perceive you as grumpy”, I answer, and it’s the truth. She was sitting there, right in front of me, full of attitude and sweetness and vulnerability and intelligence. “Well I was”, Isobel writes, and I drop a broken heart emoji on her message. “Ur so cool tho”, Isobel writes. “Keep it up ronja big brains”.

Inside my new, little home, I throw myself on the fluffy bed. There’s a roof skylight on the ceiling making nothing but the ceiling of the outside hall visible to me. I lay my hand on my throbbing heart. I’m still brimming with energy, there’s no way I’ll be able to fall asleep anytime soon. Time to write. I grab my notebook and my pen and begin scribbling:

“In this moment, I feel like I should be summarising everything we’ve talked about. But I can’t, it seems far away already, like my brain has been in shock therapy or something, like my mind has been hyper activated, and now it has to turn off, and it’s hard, cause I have this urge to grasp every bit of intellectual gold that has been granted me during the past few hours. What to say? I met people I really like. I regret not having recorded Mephisto as he spoke. I even thought about it, but maybe I was just too involved in whatever we were talking about to think about the bigger picture. The intimidation I felt is otherwise irrelevant. My emotional life really does seem to interest me less and less. Unless my feelings are very strong, I don’t give them much attention anymore. It’s not that I stopped being self-obsessed. But the self I’m obsessed with is no longer my emotional self, it is the self that creates. The self that creates has to go places and be hyper observant towards the outside world. The emotional self is hyper observant towards what’s going on inside of her. It’s not interesting to the self that creates. From now on, I can only follow my impulses and never think about the past anymore. I am here. Doing this. Because I want to. They have to understand that my desires are pure. Pure art. Pure ambition. Pure vision. There’s really nothing to be afraid of. There’s really nothing to be afraid of.”

Honey, 2026, digitised 35 mm negative, photographer: Tatjana Hub.

February 2025, Leipzig

Fabienne keeps asking me if I’ll come see the group performance they're taking part in. It’s about to begin two floors down, I’m running around at my university, preparing my contributions for this year’s student’s exhibition that’s coming up in a few days. “So will you come down and see the performance?”, Fabienne texts me again while I’m occupied by the installation of my video work upstairs. “Will you?”, another indirectly demanding message. Ugh, I’m stressed out and I don’t feel like I have the time, nor the desire for that matter, to go spend an hour of my life looking at someone else’s work, much less a work I’ve already lost my interest in a long time ago. But Fabienne is my friend and they’ve been heavily engaged with a group of performance-art students all winter, creating the piece that’s about to go live downstairs. I’ve been following the process through Fabienne, they’ve been telling me about the collaboration and the different aspects of it. It’s all been giving me recurring, allergic reactions; Something about breaking with power dynamics and binary systems, something about how everyone involved can possibly feel “comfortable” and “safe” around each other at all times, something about equality, feminism and awareness. What a bore. To me it all sounds like an all-inclusive buffet of our bubble’s most trendy way of understanding the world: As a household account of power relations. I feel like I’ve seen the performance before I’ve seen it: A consensus-driven group of art students who think the same, talk the same, walk the same, who have been training for months to hold an audience hostage under their social control regime disguised as a progressive artwork. 

I press play on the screen I’ve just installed on the wall in front of me. My Baby begins to speak to me. “Here’s my bleeding heart, look at it”, she says in words made of glass shards, while blurry photos of my own naked body dances on a soaked, red mattress. Uff, is this too intimate to show to the entire academy? I might as well strip down and walk around the building crying and menstruating for the next three days. My phone buzzes in my pocket, what now, I fetch it out, Fabienne: “Girl, the performance starts soon, come down!”, “Coming”, I text back and press pause on my video. As I walk away from my Baby, thoughts swim around inside my head, blowing softly towards my hard edges:

“I am not entitled to judge something or someone. 

The right to judge is not earned until you’ve gotten to know what you think you know.

Do your research on whatever you think you already understand. 

Do the work.

See and think for yourself. 

Never judge in vain.

Judge in enlightenment.” 

The voice of a stranger joins my inner choir of self-optimisation: 

“If you’re so aware of your own assumptions, why not drop them?”

- I recall Mephisto from the PASTINAK collective saying in my very favourite movie of theirs. Yes, that’s exactly it: I am so very aware of my own assumptions regarding the performance I’m about to witness, that I by all means have to drop them for a minute to enable myself to see the world differently.

I walk down the empty staircase. The sound of my heels echoes between the cold walls, along with these phrases I keep whispering to myself: 

“The more vulnerable I dare to make myself through my work,

the deeper it will reach. 

Remember to keep a flexible mind. 

The more vulnerable I dare to make myself through my work,

the deeper it will reach. 

Remember to keep a flexible mind. 

The more vulnerable I dare to make myself through my work,

the deeper it will reach. 

Remember to keep a flexible mind.”

The sound of my heels stomping on the steps and my repetition of the phrases begin to shape a rhythm together. I fetch my phone to record this new soundscape emerging from my determined steps and encouraging mantra. 

I’m the only one on the staircase. I always feel like I’m the only person in the entire building whenever I’m here to do whatever I went here to do. The Academy of Fine Arts is, on a regular day, always bafflingly empty. The university is relatively small, only about 550 students enrolled as we speak. But still the empty horizon that yawns back at me no matter where I am in the building always makes me wonder. Even when I do stumble across another human being, the awkward silence between us reinforces the feeling of moving through a ghost town. Though one can always count on the walls to bear witness of a lively, edgy student’s body; graffiti tags with popular political messages, posters of current, upcoming and past exhibitions around the city, stickers with hip contemporary statements. All of which represents the consensual convictions that shape the mainstream of this hub of youngsters: Pro-Palestine, queer-feminism, FLINTA*-celebrations, ANTIFA, ACAB, something critical about the patriarchy, etc.. 

I get to the first floor of the building where I’m met by a big group of people, gathered in front of the room in which the performance is about to go live. The crowd is chatty and apparently consisting of both the performers and the audience, which makes sense, could be an anti-hierarchal statement, seems the performance has already begun. I take in my own waiting-for-the-show-to-begin-and-pretending-to-chill-until-then-position: Pseudo-casually leaning against the wall, while pseudo-observing my surroundings, when in fact what I really want to be observing is myself. I catch glimpses of the commission among the crowd. The commission is a part of the audience too, as this is a graduation show. It’s members are as always easy to spot among the eclectic art students, because of their low-key, slick, monolithic, quiet luxury uniforms and large, intact iPhones hanging around their necks in thick, colourful strings. I spot Fabienne running around talking to people. They’re brimming with their mesmerising charisma, skilfully luring anyone they speak to into thinking they’re flowers and Fabienne is the sun shining on them. Like the rest of the performers Fabienne is wearing a costume that looks like a zombie-formalist painting wrapped cleverly around their body. I like this costuming, an interesting start to whatever’s about to happen. I begin to think I might be positively surprised today. Do I sense the possibility of a subversion of my own beliefs ahead? Here? Really? How orgastically refreshing that would be.

I’m beginning to feel too self aware standing around alone in this swarm. Should I take out my phone and replace my solitude with digital delimitation? My irritation with Fabienne is increasing as they’re apparently too busy recruiting new fans to take a moment to come give their old one a sign of appreciation that she’s here. But that’s the thing about Fabienne: As eccentric, exciting and charismatic they can be, as self-obsessed, self-involved and narcissistic they can be too. I’m a tired pendulum in our relationship, eternally swinging back and forth between loving them deeply for who they are, the next minute feeling like I’m nothing but an addition to the praising audience they need to gather around them to be able to fulfil their own self image. 

Could this be an 1:1 description of myself as well?

I spot Connie Cox in the crowd, she’s as always looking awake and ready, her sparkling brain tuning into a moment of filtering her experience through her multidimensional inner prism. 

If I could, I’d like our minds to synchronise during the performance. 

The doors open and everyone’s sucked inside of the room. I feel like a fish in a stream, unwillingly being pulled into someone else’s world. The room is big and bright. There’s about 15 performers, all immediately beginning to walk around the room in different tempi, swinging their arms and turning their heads towards the ceiling in what I guess is supposed to look like dreamy movements. The audience, myself included, go to sit and stand up against the walls of the space. A circle of spectators, all about to witness the fruits of this group of art student’s hard work. 

What I’m witnessing during the course of the next 45 very long minutes can be summarised into this: A group of people running around in a room, rolling around on the floor, holding hands, making oral noises here and there, forming a human pyramid, whereafter they end up lying on the floor in a kind of cuddle puddle. I glance over towards the door of the room several times during the show, but it’s too far away. I should have deliberately placed myself right next to it so I could have exited after the first five minutes. But too late. I’m trapped and being forced to look at nothing for something that feels like eternity. In the end everyone claps, including myself, without being sure what I’m actually clapping at. The costumes? That it’s finally over? I notice Connie Cox clapping as well, the look on her face is hard to interpret because of it’s lack of emotion. The main initiator of the performance, the graduating student, goes to stand at the end of the room and pulls a piece of paper out of their shirt. They begin their speech by announcing that they will be speaking in English so that everyone feels included. Yes, yes, we get it. Not only did I have to watch you and your tribe roll around on the floor for 45 minutes, now my intellect has also been insulted. 

I’m now considering sticking around for the discussion round at the end. I have all of these thoughts, so much I could say about what I’ve just witnessed that I’m beginning to think the performance, however boring I found it, in it’s meaninglessness did inspire critical thinking in me. This is interesting, but credit goes to the discrepancy between my own idea of a good artwork, and the graduating student’s idea of collectivity and collaboration. I’m already getting nervous even thinking about speaking my mind in this room. Could I express my criticism here without being collectively condemned for it? Would it be accepted as a sincere contribution to a possibly vivid discussion about this work, or rather viewed as a polemic criticism of something that’s in it’s essence so well-meaning that any kind of criticism towards it will be perceived as evilry? How safe is this safe space they’ve been working on creating together, and to whom exactly?

I think about B and how he’s always brutally honest about what he thinks, in any given moment. He establishes his self confidence on his own ability to speak up and speak his mind, whereas I’m still wading around the sump of also wanting people to feel good in my company. At the same time, I deeply despise self-censorship. It’s something I feel way too often inside this institution: The self-censorship. It strangles me to the point of devastation over my own inability to fight it. And in this moment, in this room, amongst these people, I’m feeling it again, heavily muting my potentially roaring voice. 

I decide to sneak out of the room, finally. I try not to make too much noise with my heels as I slowly but securely move towards the door. It would be generous of me to contribute with my thoughts to the discussion round, but I don’t have the confidence to speak my mind in such a large group of moralists. It would be interesting for me to know what other audience members might have to say, but I don’t have the patience, nor the optimism, to stick around for another possible round of compliant monotony. 

Later at home, I’m sitting in bed with a huge bowl of cinnamon cereal, about to put on my favourite PASTINAK movie, when Fabienne calls me. “Are you still around?”, they ask, “No, I went home. How do you feel? Satisfied with the performance?”, I ask this sincerely wanting to check in if they’re coming down softly post self-objectification. “I don’t know yet, but I’m very curious to know what you think about it?”, Fabienne asks me. I take a deep breath. “Do you really want to know? I won’t sugar coat it for you”, “Eh, yes... give it to me!”, Fabienne says in a not very convincing tone. “Alright. I think that performance is a solid proof that a collective devoid of individualism is an artwork devoid of meaning. The work was successful of one thing: boring itself, which is ironically interesting. The costuming was good though. The result seems to be luke-warm discourse wrapped in a deceptively cool aesthetic”, I reflect. “What? How can you just tell me that like that?”, Fabienne says in a sudden, high-pitched voice. “You asked me what I think, and I’m telling you”, I say, as my heart begins to beat faster. “But it’s just not very supportive”, Fabienne says, “Honest criticism is also a way of supporting you”, I say. I feel the blood raising to my head and I’m trying to keep the decibel of my voice on a low. “Next time you can be a bit more sensible”, Fabienne says, and I roll my eyes.”I did, I only told you the tip of the iceberg of what I think of that intellectually lazy lump of nothingness.” Fabienne hangs up. 

Silence in my room. Noise in my mind. The blood is pumping through my veins, a thousand contradicting feelings gnawing away at my insides. As much as I like to be confrontational, as much I feel utterly discomforted by personal conflicts. I press play on my laptop with shaking hands. The PASTINAK work I want to immerse myself in now is called Stigma, a movie in which members of the collective get cancelled by the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam for blatantly criticising a South-African artist by the name of Zanele Muholi. I chew my now soggy cinnamon cereal while watching students of the Rietveld Academy having a collective meltdown because the PASTINAK artists are saying things the students want to understand as nothing besides wrong. Watching how the PASTINAK crew perform their criticism serves two different purposes for me in this moment:

1) It makes me feel less of a bitch.

2) It makes me feel encouraged and motivated to act even more of a bitch.

As I slurp the sweet cinnamon milk from my bowl, a strong urge for disruption comes over me. The feeling of a numbing conformity is dominating my spirit and it’s becoming unbearable. I close my computer rapidly and throw my bowl as far as I can through my room. It lands on the floor without breaking. I grab my pillow and try to tear it apart, unsuccesfully. My sheets wrap around me, impossibly, as I roll around my bed kicking and screaming until my throat starts to hurt. I cough. I cry. I smile.

It is happening again, 2026, digitised 35 mm negative, digital collage.

March 2025, Leipzig & Berlin

I get out of bed in the afternoon. Around 3 o’clock in the night I’d decided to turn off my alarm and thus my plan of getting a full day of work done in the studio today. I was all happy and lusty and slippery in my curly sheets, soaked in pleasure, wanting more, penetrate me until I dissolve in satisfaction! Of course there was a Him and he was there, making me forget about anything I ever wanted, cause now it was and would be only Him, at least for the rest of the night and possibly also for a few weeks ahead. He’s lean and tender, big, cautious eyes, sensitive antennas poking out of every pore of his furry skin. He’d loved me with every inch of his hopeful devotion, I’d loved him with every spark of my performative vulnerability. 

I put on my bathrobe and turn on my speaker. “There’s this album I’m currently listening to in an eternal loop, no matter where I am or what I’m doing”, I tell Him, who’s still lying in my bed, watching me with soft eyes from underneath the duvet as I move around my room. I connect my phone to the speaker and press play. “The artist created this album all isolated and heartbroken in a cabin somewhere in Wisconsin”, I tell Him while the first fragile, rusty tones fill the air between us. “He’d moved into the cabin after his girlfriend left him and left him in pieces. Around the same time his band fell apart and then so did he. He decided he had to get away from everything, maybe most of all from his own defeated self, don’t you think?”. Him nods his head. He’s looking up at my ceiling, listening to my words and the music. “I think I’m in love with this album and it’s story because I’ve been so lovesick myself this winter”, I say, as I start going through my wardrobe to find out what to wear. “But then I made a beautiful little artwork out of my misery and now I feel so happy again!”, I say and pull out a pastel green tank top with sequins on the front. “Do you think I should wear this today? My sister Katia gave it to me, I’ll see her later, maybe she’ll be delighted to see me wear it”, I yap on while unwrapping my bathrobe and letting it fall to the floor. “It’s a nice top”, Him says, looking at me, head floating on the pillow. I put on the top and a beige miniskirt, wiggle around in front of my mirror in a little dance while the third song of the album starts playing. “This song is called Skinny Love and it’s my favourite one of the entire album”, I tell Him and put on a pair of green pantyhose. I catch the eyes of Him in the mirror, then turn around and look at him directly. “What’s going on inside that dreamy head of yours?”, I ask, smiling still, but I’m beginning to feel too self conscious bathed in his wilful gaze. “You just.. look so pretty”, Him says and I decide to put on red pantyhose and a short denim skirt instead.   

A few hours later, I’m awaiting my sisters in my studio. I’ve invited them to come over for sparkling wine and a chat. I light candles everywhere and put on my new favourite album again. I dance around in front of a mirror while recording myself with my phone. I edit a little video and post it in my Insta story, caption “while waiting for my savage sisters”. They all arrive at the same time: Sister Katia, Sister Penelope, Sister Rakel, Sister Fleur, Sister Vic and Sister Juno. “I’m in love with Him!”, I declare to them, as I pour the cheap wine into old mustard glasses, “Let’s celebrate!”, and we all cheers. The night goes on. We smoke and drink, talk about boys who made us come and men who made us cry. Sister Vic is sad cause her man doesn’t love her like she wants him to. Sister Penelope is nauseous from too much love-making with different beautiful boys. Sister Rakel is angry at some Italian boy who didn’t keep his promises. Sister Juno has cut her hair short and is transitioning into becoming a political lesbian. Sister Katia is bored by her German man’s eternal devotion to her. She wants to run off into the forests and perform occult rituals to reestablish contact to her autonomous spirit. And Sister Fleur is as always observant and clarified cause she’s too smart to create any kind of drama in her stable relationship with the fantastic man she's chosen to live her life with. 

“I’m afraid of B”, I tell the group, “After the whole Baby-drama, he thinks I want to love him again. He keeps texting me, it’s creeping me out!”, “Well, you did make a movie in which you tell him you want to give birth to his baby, then exhibit it to the entire university”, Sister Juno intervenes, “I can understand his confusion”, she adds, and we all giggle. 

Once a year, there’s a big student’s exhibition at The Academy of Fine Arts, where most of the sisters and myself all study. This year, I exhibited a movie called Baby. It’s a visual diary showing photos taken during the course of B’s and mine relationship. I’m narrating over the intimate moments on display, reading out loud a letter in which I confess to B that I want to become a mother and that I want his DNA for my child. It’s a letter I wrote him after we split up for the 100th time. He’d poisoned my spirit and I was left insane again, obsessively writing one letter after the other, never sent a single one of them to him. Though the one about my desire to procreate with him made it to The Academy of Fine Arts. During the exhibition, I managed to create quite the attention around my work, and many people watched it. Including B. “I think he’s only texting you again now, cause he wants to know whether you're still in his possession”, Sister Fleur reflects and I feel a cold chill testing my newly re-established self confidence. Everyone nods. “I’d just block him if I were you”, Sister Juno advices and lights up a cigarette, “Totally, he’s so weird”, Sister Rakel confirms and I feel an urge to change the subject soon. “Ok hold the fuck on, who is this guy, I need to know what he looks like right now” Sister Katia says, whom I’ve only recently gotten to know and has therefor been spared the B-misery that has occupied my life for the past 1,5 years. Sister Katia has seen my Baby movie too, in fact it was what connected us in the first place, but on each photo in which B appears, I’ve censored him with cut-outs of a big, yellow bear. “You don’t know who he is?”, Sister Vic wonders, “I thought everyone at our university knows B”. I take out my phone and show Sister Katia a photo of B and I lying in bed together. It’s a selfie I took of the two of us with my disposable camera last summer when I was so in love with him. “What, this guy!”, Sister Katia bursts out by the sight of B’s face close to mine, “He’s that guy in my seminar who everyone hates!”, we all break out in laughter, “Yep, that’s the love of my life so far”, I say and raise my glass.

I get a notification on Instagram. It’s my new artist-acquaintance, Sinon reacting to my story: “Dude, you should be in Berlin with me!”, he writes, “I’ll be there in a few days!”, I answer, cause I will. Sinon and I have been following each other for a while on Instagram. He’s connected to an artist collective in Amsterdam whom I find very interesting. A few days ago, Sinon and I ended up chatting for a bit. We’d each reacted to each other’s stories which turned into a chat about art and love, which turned into a plan for me to visit him in Berlin for a few days. “I love your work,  let’s do something together!”, Sinon had messaged me, and I was instantly flattered and intrigued. “I’d love to! You’re a part of Horror House, right?”, I’d replied, “I work with them, yes”, “Cool, I’m a big fan of Mephisto!”, I’d texted, “Mephisto says I’m the only one who understands him”, Sinon had replied, and I booked a Flixtrain to Berlin a week ahead. 

I look around my group of girlfriends sitting around yapping away with their haircuts, their smokes and their drinks. Should I tell them about my plan for the next days? No, it won’t fly, they’d never just support me in my next possibly self-destructive endeavour of going to stay with a strange man in Berlin for three days. I’ll tell them when I’m back in Leipzig again and they see I’m still smiling.

Around 2 o’ clock in the night, I find myself freezing outside, waiting for a tram that never comes. I take a photo of myself in the reflection of a store front window and send it to Him. “Seems I’ll be walking home tonight, thank God I’m drunk”, I text him. He instantly answers, “Where are you?”, “Angerbrücke”, I write. “It’s close to mine, do you want to come over?”. 

The next day I wake up in Him’s affection. We spend the day like that, intertwined, having coffee, hugs, kisses. “I want to rip open your skin and drink your blood”, I tell him on a chair in his kitchen, “I’m so into you I might let you”, he tells me and carries me to his bed. Towards the late afternoon he breaks the spell cause duty calls. “I gotta prepare a presentation for work tomorrow”, he says, “I should get going too, I gotta pack a bag for my trip to Berlin tomorrow”, I say and get out of bed to collect my clothes that have been spread out all over his dusty room. Him gets up and moves to the end of his bed. “Really? What will you be doing there?”, he asks and takes my hand as I move by him. He pulls me to his lap and I wrap my legs around his waist. “I’m gonna go meet this artist I’ve been getting in contact with recently. Maybe we’re gonna create something beautiful together”, I tell Him and kiss his eyes. “That sounds exciting, who’s the artist?”, Him whispers, his arms wrapped tightly around my body. “Hold on, I’m gonna try and get dressed without having to move away from you”, I say and lean down towards the floor to pick up my bra. Him holds me so I don’t fall. “His name is Sinon”, I begin telling Him, kissing his face in between words. “He’s connected with this artist I really admire, Mephisto. Him and his artist collective are based in Amsterdam, they’re called Horror House. I honestly don’t know much else about Sinon.” I hook my bra behind my back while I move the tip of my tongue around the surface of Him’s warm lips. “When will you be back?”, he asks into my mouth with his eyes closed. I let my nose wander up the side of his neck until my mouth is at his ear. “In a few days. And then I’m coming straight back to you”. 

About 36 hours later, I’m brutally pulled out of a deep sleep by the sudden sound of a voice yelling “Ronja, wake up and listen to my favourite song!”, along with a strange, crackling noise coming from somewhere. I open my eyes and see the blurry shape of a man sitting next to me with a laptop in front of him. I raise my head and look around me, confused, my sight sharpens and I understand the crackling noises of some kind of music are coming from the laptop. The light from the screen is the only light in the room. It falls on the man’s face and chest, he’s sitting with his back hunched, a beer in his hand, his eyes are closed, he moves his head to the rhythm of the music, his face squinted in some kind of melancholic expression. “I love this music so much”, he says and slurps his beer. I look up and down this silhouette: Thin arms, beer belly, thick, black hair on his head. He’s wearing a t-shirt with the motive of something that looks like an octopus coming out of a building. Am I dreaming? I look down my own body. I’m lying on the messy bed the man is sitting on, apparently still wearing all of my clothes, including my boots, my head hurts and I feel dizzy. “What the hell is going on, Sinon?”, I say in a rusty voice, my mouth dry as a desert. “You were drunk and passed out on my bed”, Sinon says, still moving along to the music, he begins humming along to the lyrics. “Then what are you waking me up for?”, I ask, irritated, and sit up to take off my boots. “I wanted to sit here in my bedroom and drink and enjoy this music with you”, Sinon says, “I called Mephisto while you were asleep, we were talking for an hour and I tried waking you up, impossible”, he says and shakes his head, then abruptly gets off the bed and disappears out of the room. Ah, Mephisto.. Something is beginning to dawn on me, Horror House, Mephisto, Sinon, the octopus coming out of the White House is one of Horror House’s graphics, I know that motive. I push the laptop to the side so I can see the bottom right corner of the screen. Time says it's 04.13 AM. Sinon appears in the door of the bedroom with his phone and another beer in his hands, “Great, you’re up! Let’s call Mephisto again, he wants to talk to you!”, Sinon says very loudly and comes to the bed while scrolling on his phone. “No fuck that, I’m not talking to anyone right now, I want to sleep”, I say and close the laptop. My head is spinning and I want to find my bag so I can change to my pyjamas. Sinon jumps onto the bed and opens up the laptop again. “Don’t you EVER interrupt the great Mohsen Namjoo!”, he says and presses play. The music persistently penetrates my throbbing headache and I swing my legs over the edge of the bed to sit up straight. “Ugh for fuck sake Sinon, can’t you go somewhere else in your apartment and listen to that?”, I suggest, and Sinon opens up his new beer. “No, you can go to the living room and sleep on the couch, I want to be in my bedroom now”, he says and turns up the volume on his laptop. “Fine”, I say and get up to go locate that living room in this stranger’s place. As I move through a dark hallway, my blurry memory begins to recollect moments of the day and evening behind me: Taking the train to Berlin all excited, Sinon picking me up at the station in Neukölln, him taking me to a bar, us ordering one drink after the other, sitting at the counter making out and taking tequila shots. I don’t remember at all how we got to his apartment though, and I also don’t remember crashing on his bed. Where am I right now? And also, where the hell is my bag? I locate a doorway to another dark room. Street lights coming through the windows of the room help me navigate this maze I’m trapped in. I can still hear the music and Sinon’s drunk singing voice coming from his bedroom. I find a lamp and switch it on. I look around the room: A couch, a blanket, a pillow AND my bag, fuck yes! I go through my stuff, seems everything’s still there, miraculously. I pull out my pyjamas, take off my party-infected clothes and throw them on the floor. Before I go lie on the couch, I check my phone. A message from Him; “Hope you’re having a good time”, sent a few hours ago. Did I have a good time? I close the door to the living room and snug myself back into wasted dreams. 

I’m abruptly being disturbed in my sleep again as I feel hands on my body and something wet on my belly. I immediately raise my head from the pillow and see Sinon sitting next to me on the couch, hunched over me, he’s got his hands on my waist and he’s pushing his face against my belly, obsessively kissing my skin, “What the fuck are you doing you freak, get your hands off of me and get the fuck out of here!”, I yell and push Sinon away. He stumbles to the floor, looking drunk and stupid and confused. After a few failed attempts to get up on his feet, he finally manages to move towards the door. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry”, he says and disappears into the hallway. I get up, “Do NOT come in here again!”, I yell and slam the door behind him. I shake my heavy head and go back to the couch. The last thought passing through my mind before I fall asleep again is “Shouldn’t this be my cue to leave and never come back here again?” 

The next day I wake up to the sound of a radio coming from somewhere, a cold sun is beaming through the windows. Yesterday’s decisions have now turned into a cloudy hangover wrapping itself around my mind and body in a tired embrace. I slowly roll off the couch and look around. The room is messy, full of half-finished paintings, all saying “SINON” on the front, seems like he hasn’t cleaned in here in a while. I open the door to the living room. The sound of the radio leads me to a small kitchen where I find Sinon sitting at the kitchen table with his back turned against me, seemingly cutting something in front of him, humming along to some pop-hit coming from a small, old-school radio standing next to him. Has he been awake all night? I take a few steps towards him and slap him hard on the back of his head. He shivers and turns around and looks up at me, shocked. “Oh, good morning cookie, how did you sleep?”, he smiles at me, red eyes, tired face, slices of bacon and a few dates are lying on a cutting board in front of him. “Don’t “cookie” me you lunatic! That was really fucking uncool how you acted last night”, I say, “Do NOT overstep my boundaries like that again”, “Yes I’m sorry, won’t happen again, I promise. Do you want some coffee?”, Sinon asks and fetches me a cup from the shelf behind him. I sit down on the other chair next to Sinon and nod my tired head, “Yes please”. I notice his phone sitting on the table in front of us. I smile, and let my fingers walk towards it in slow spider-steps. Sinon follows with his gaze. I pick up the phone and look at him. He’s pouring me a cup. “Milk?”, he asks. “Yes. Sinon?”, I say, and he turns his head to look at me directly. I wave his phone at him. “Can we call Mephisto now?”

April 2025, Leipzig

“So you actually don’t even find Horror House that interesting yourself?”, Connie Cox asks me. We’re sitting at her desk in her big, bright office at the Academy of Fine Arts. On her iPad in front of her, Connie Cox is looking at Horror House’s Youtube channel with much concentration while inhaling her vape. I feel a bit busted. I honestly don’t know Horror House’s artwork very well, cause it seems there’s not much of it, at least not online. I just know there’s something alluring about them, especially Mephisto. He’s been this character I’ve been equally fascinated and frightened by since I discovered him several years ago. Him and his previous art collective, PASTINAK produced a series of great films which I really enjoyed watching during my diploma studies. The movies are documenting the involved artist’s real interactions with each other and with the art world. The PASTINAK-gang would go to art fairs and exhibitions, talk about the artworks on display, the artists behind, criticise curators and art historians for being woke-opportunists and call out nonsensical discourses embedded in activism disguised as artworks. I often took notes when Mephisto was speaking on camera. There seemed to be a completely unfiltered, direct connection between his thoughts and his words, between his mind and his expression. He spoke with such raw immediacy, yet what he said seemed so very eloquent and complex. The movies he made with PASTINAK were a huge inspiration to me, in terms of how I myself perceive and look at art. I’d love to be able to think and speak about art the way the PASTINAK-gang did it. But then, a couple of years ago, Mephisto and the other members of PASTINAK had a fallout, which ultimately led Mephisto to drop out and establish his own art collective with his girlfriend Beth: Horror House. Of course I was more than curious to see what Mephisto would do outside of PASTINAK. Based on the social media of Horror House, it mostly just looked like a lot of action and a lot of fun. And God am I starving for action and fun in the art bubble of Leipzig.

At the Academy of Fine Arts, there is a gallery space. It’s a spacious, clean, beautiful white cube situated in the middle of the university building. Connie Cox is the curator of this gallery. I’d inquired a meeting with her, because I want to use the gallery for a very specific purpose: I’ve invited Horror House to come do an exhibition with myself and other artists whose work I think could be pushing the boundaries of what is considered to be politically correct in the Leipzig art scene. Horror House and I have titled this exhibition The Unsafe Event. The gallery at the Academy of Fine Arts is the perfect place for The Unsafe Event, because this particular space represents the very frame our exhibition wants to break, in every aspect of it’s existence. Releasing Horror House and other misfits inside this palace of German-Academic order and morality would just be the most explosive combination ever.

While Connie Cox is still scrolling through Horror House’s YouTube content, I take the chance to explain to her my project: “The Unsafe Event is a part of an ongoing, artistic investigation I’ve begun working on. This artistic investigation is called The Project. I’m turning my life into an artwork in the sense that everything that happens in my life has the potential to be material for the artwork, for The Project. In this way, I’m also provoking situations and interactions for the purpose of the plot. It is life as a constant performance, in which dramaturgy overrules authenticity. I’m so excited and happy these days, Connie. Everything has turned interesting, cause everything is suddenly art”. Connie Cox raises her head from her iPad and looks at me. She inhales her vape slowly, our eyes locked, “And so Horror House functions as a kind of character within The Project, the gallery of this academy the setting for a specific scene?”, she asks, “Right”, I nod. Connie Cox is a tough audience, her mind filled with knowledge and abstractions, but I’m trying to not let this intimidate me. I take a deep breath and continue to speak my mind: “I think art is supposed to create interactions and dialogue across borders of diversity. That be diversity of political opinions, for example. I’m saddened by the general consensus around the discourse that everything is per default political. Cause I think that art is the one place that should be able to be apolitical. And I think the political climate here at our academy is extremely strong, to such an extent that it’s actually oppressive to the young artist’s minds of this environment. The Unsafe Event is an attempt to shed lights on and break with this issue in a playful, artistic way”. Now looking down at her iPad again, Connie Cox nods her head slowly. “And what are they doing here?”, she asks me and points to a video on her screen. I look down and see Mephisto, Beth and other members of Horror House standing around wearing uniforms, stomping on the ground while performing a gesture with their arms that can very well be interpreted as the Hitler salute. Fuck. “I don’t know, I guess it’s supposed to be some kind of performance,” I say, “but look, I’ll be the curator of the show and I think it could be really interesting to add Horror House to it. I know the main initiator, Mephisto, from previous works of his, and I think he’s an interesting character. Certainly different than anything this school has seen before. I still don’t know what they would do, Mephisto and his group, but that’s the whole concept behind the show, The Unsafe Event: No one knows what will happen. It might sound dangerous, and “unsafe”, but it’s actually not, cause it’s only art. That’s the point”. Connie Cox looks at me, a serious, yet open gaze meets mine. “Who else did you invite to participate in the event?”, she asks. This should be interesting. “So far, the participant’s list include Normal Slavic Girl, Quirky Cool Boy, B and Theis Tooty. Still more to come”, I tell Connie Cox and pour myself a glass of sparkling water. “Normal Slavic Girl and Quirky Cool Boy, okay, but..”, she says, reaches out in front of her and picks up a post-it and a pen from her desk. She scribbles down “B” and “Theis Tooty”, puts down her pen and looks at me. She dabs her one pointing finger on the note a few times while looking at me. I smile. I knew these two specific characters would be trouble. All of the artists I’ve mentioned are students of the Academy of Fine Arts. Theis Tooty is well known for getting brutally cancelled back in 2023, after he got called out on an Instagram page called Your Friends Are Evil (Throw Them Out) for having liked several woke-critical memes. The other person the curator has scribbled down on her post-it is my ex-boyfriend B. B is highly unpopular at our university because he’s openly pro-Israel, conservative, and is not afraid to speak up about it, which is all in all not comme-il-faut within this environment. 

Connie Cox inhales her vape and looks at me. “Theis Tooty hurt a lot of people with his meme-liking and never apologised for it. Thus it’s his own fault that he was never able to redeem himself”, she says in a matter-of-fact tone. “I think what’s been missing from this whole scandal is a dissection and research on the memes in question. I’ve been speaking to many people about this case, most of which are condemning Theis for being satan himself, though when asked about the memes he liked, it turns out most people didn’t even look at them. Theis Tooty’s case is representing gossip-culture at it’s worst. Shouldn’t we be investigating what started it all, those memes, before we condemn Theis Tooty for being in the wrong, to say the least?”, I suggest. “Those memes are hostile towards queer people”, Connie Cox states. I go quiet. I’ve been having this discussion one too many times before, and though I never shy away from sharing my opinion on the issue in question, it always makes me feel extremely uncomfortable. It’s hard to argue against such high moral standards. At best, it can make you look nonchalant. At worst it can make you look queer-hostile, ignorant and obnoxious. “My very best friend is queer”, Connie Cox tells me, puts a new filter tip into her vape and inhales. “I’ve known this person since we were children, so I’ve been first row audience to their development and their deep identity-struggles”. Something in the air intensifies and I feel a new sense of interconnectedness with the clarified woman sitting across from me. “Queer history has a development of 70 years, where queer people have been fighting for their right to exist. And now we’re at a point where, in some societies like ours, there has been created these safe spaces where queer people can exist, nurture and protect their communities together. These spaces are sacred. And these spaces must be protected. Because they’re crucial in order for queer people to survive, basically”. I nod my head silently. Something inside of me shifts and I feel a sensation of empathy warming my body. Still looking at me, Connie Cox dabs her finger on the post-it again. “And B”, she begins, “that’s a bit of a different story. His behaviour and outspokenness about his extremely questionable opinions indeed make him problematic. I’ve heard him say deeply racist things, such as calling the students of Arab ethnicity “lazy and useless””. I shiver. “Was that really racist, though?”, I ask carefully, and a baffled shadow falls on Connie Cox’ otherwise cool, calm and collected face, “Eh, yes, excuse me, but were you even listening?”, she asks. I remember the moment Connie Cox is referring to. And I was listening. It happened at a General Assembly about a month ago. It’s a meeting in which students and staff enter into dialogue about certain issues concerning our university, or at least that’s the idea. At the specific Assembly Connie Cox is referring to, the subject was a pro-Palestine activist group that occupied the centre of the university building for a few months after the 7th of October 2023, and it’s following administrative cancelation. I was sure B would be at that assembly, and I was sure he’d say something outrageous that would freak everyone out. At the time, I hadn’t spoken to him in a while. But it was right at the beginning of The Project, and I was on the lookout for potential allies of stirring things up at the Academy. “I think B might be mentally distorted though, and that’s what makes him such a difficult person”, Connie Cox reflects. “That’s true. I know B very well. We have a history”, I tell her. The baffled shadow reaches a point of totality, “Wow, really? That’s new to me”, she says, and I smile. After two years of a rather dramatic on-and-of relationship with B, it still amuses me to see the reactions of people who know of both B and I, and therefor just cannot fathom the connection between the two of us at all. Connie Cox looks through the window of her office. A few sunbeams dances on her thick, shiny hair. She turns her head and looks at me again, the calm look has returned to her gaze. “Here’s the thing: If you work with B and Theis Tooty, you will be creating problems for yourself”, she says in a serious, yet non-judgemental tone. “But here’s also the thing”, I begin, "both Theis Tooty and B already have good ideas for artworks they want to create for The Unsafe Event. That’s what counts”, I say, “I don’t care what they might have said in the past, or which memes they might have liked two years ago and whether they’ve apologised for whatever might have made someone feel uncomfortable. I don’t like this cancel-madness. I want to break with it, not reenforce it. So as long as people have good ideas and are agreeing with the programme I’ve set, they can participate. Neither B nor Theis are actual predators or criminals. They’re just two dudes who happen to have stepped out of line, somehow. I don’t want to condemn them for their actions, cause I don’t think they truly deserve that. And on top of that, both of them have already been punished for their actions. And in regards to what B said at the General Assembly last time, I agree that his tone was way too harsh and that his attitude can be extremely off-putting sometimes. But I don’t think what he was saying was pointed directly at the students of Arab ethnicity. I think he meant what he said more generally”. 

“You can say that. But you can’t deny that both B and Theis Tooty represent people who are very stubborn and unable to think critically about themselves”, Connie Cox says, “And if you’re not able to represent the other side of this spectrum, call it “the woke side”, as a part of The Unsafe Event, cause they don’t want to take part alongside Theis Tooty and B, then you have a problem with your vision. Then you’re not succeeding in what it is you want to do. If you invite Theis Tooty and B to take part in The Unsafe Event, you are in fact creating a space that will be very, very unsafe for queer people and other minorities. You can’t just unsee the fact that some of the people whom you’ve invited have very clear political positions. You can’t just ignore this”. I feel something drop inside my brain. Good argument. Damn. “And while it’s good that you also have Normal Slavic Girl and Quirky Cool Boy to balance things out, I see a heavy load of problematic people on your list. And quite frankly, based on what I’ve seen from Horror House up until now, I don’t understand what they’re about at all, and I don’t understand why you’re interested in them. I haven’t been able to find any actual works of theirs on their website or Youtube channel. To me, it all just looks like parties and provocative, self-promotional reels. If you could get them to send me a portfolio with actual presentation of their art, we could start from there”, Connie Cox says and sends me out her door. 

I leave the university building feeling equally inspired and defeated. My confidence has been disturbed and disrupted, which is a part of the Connie Cox experience for me. I’ve had several consultations with her in the past about my work. No matter how convinced I’ve been by my own ideas and abilities before meeting Connie Cox, she always manages to subvert my entire belief system with her deep knowledge, strong articulation skills and high moral standards, and I leave feeling dumb, overwhelmed, exhausted and totally enriched at the same time. And this time is no exception. 

Outside on the street, I unlock my bike while the friendly spring-sun kisses my winter-pale face. I have a long day ahead of me, lots to do, but my energy has left me in the confrontation with the fundamental issue in the realisation of my vision for The Unsafe Event. I feel demotivated and the only desire that’s left in me is the one telling me to go home and barricade myself inside of my apartment until I’ve slept off this harsh reality check with my own short-sightedness. Right when I’m about to get on my bike, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I fetch it out. It’s my newly self-appointed mentor on The Project, Sinon, calling me from Berlin. “Hey cookie, how did the meeting with the curator go?”, he asks. “It was brutally interesting”, I say. “Talk to me.”, and I do. “I don’t want to create a space that’s hostile towards queer people”, I tell him, "I want The Unsafe Event to intersect and align, to disrupt our tedious consensus culture by creating a platform where everyone feels welcome, even though we might not understand each other personally or politically. Art brings everyone together! Am I a disillusioned hippy for thinking this possible? What do I do when certain artists don’t want to participate alongside the “problematic” artists? Ugh I just want to sleep for a hundred years now, I feel like I’ve gotten myself trapped inside of a Gordian knot with this project”. Sinon snorts on the other end of the line, “Seems you were being way too honest in there, Ronja. Next time you have a meeting with Connie Cox, you turn up wearing a keffiyeh, waving the LGBTQ-flag and introducing yourself as non-binary”, I can’t help but giggle at the image Sinon has created in my mind. “And don’t call the exhibition The Unsafe Event just yet”, he continues, “call it The Super Safe Event and talk about privileges and gender politics. We just need to get the space. Then we can do whatever we want in there”. I sigh, “I think I gotta talk to Mephisto and Beth, Sinon. Can you tell them to call me when they have time? They haven’t answered to my last messages and I feel like it’s very hard to sell them when I don’t really know what it is that I’m selling”, “Sure, they’re still hungover from the weekend, but I’ll tell them to call you when they’re up and running again”, Sinon assures, “Why hungover, did they have some kind of celebration or do they just go on random benders now and then?” I ask, curious about Mephisto and Beth’s activities. Apart from their online content and a few recent phone calls, I don’t know these people at all. “Yes, it was Beth’s 30th Birthday a few days ago, they’ve been partying all weekend”, Sinon tells. “I can’t believe Beth and I are the same age. Do you think we can be sisters?”, I ask, “Yes, I predict future sisterhood!”, Sinon enthusiastically confirms before we say goodbye and hang up. I get on my bike. On my way through the city I think about the ambiguity Mephisto and Beth’s relationship embodies: a seemingly very odd combination of people, yet so very clichéd. She’s this young, slim, beautiful woman who looks like sunshine. He’s this broad, hairy, coarse older man who sounds like a bulldozer when he speaks. He’s this notorious, rebellious male artist, she’s the crucial sidekick that makes him look more human. I’ve seen this kind of art world hetero-coupling a thousand times before, though never up close. I’m now thinking that might be another reason why I’m so intrigued by Beth and Mephisto: Those two could be a chance for me to investigate that very cliché of a relationship, inside-out: The beauty and the beast. 

December 2025, Leipzig

“I’ve got friends who hate you!”, NPC117 tells me. We’re standing across from each other, fairly close, in a moving tram taking us and our small group of drunk friends through the dark streets of the city. No one except for Nero overhears the conversation between myself and NPC117. Nero is sitting alone in the corner of the wagon, a bit distinct, yet still there, either he’s just fed up with all of the chatter and needs a moment of solitude, or he’s fed up with the topic of our conversation. Or he’s just really drunk and concentrating on not throwing up during the ride. I frown and look at NPC117, “Why? Do they know me?”, “No, but they think you’re a fascist”, NPC117’s answer falls promptly. An immediate, sincere laugh breaks my face in a broad smile. “You like that, don’t you?”, NPC117 says in a serious tone and takes a sip of his beer, “No, it’s just that it’s absolutely absurd”, I say, before Roald yells at us from the end of the wagon that it’s time to get off. “Watching that guy speak at that event was like watching him wet himself in public. It was unbearable!”, NPC117 continues as we exit the tram. “Why would he come all the way to Leipzig just to wee himself in front of an audience?”, NPC117 continues, and I start laughing again. This time because it’s actually really funny what NPC117 is saying. The guy he’s referring to is called Mephisto. He’s the leader of a reckless pseudo-art cult called Horror House with whom I managed to get myself devastatingly intertwined over the span of six months this year, March - August. The event NPC117 is talking about is an artist talk I organised in Leipzig in July. As the collaboration between myself and Horror House had reached it’s climax in terms of public attention and scandalisation, Mephisto and his partner Beth, co-director of Horror House and Mephisto’s persistent enabler, had gone from their base in Amsterdam to Leipzig to give the protesting voices against them a chance to engage in direct dialogue with Mephisto about their questionable collaboration with the American far-right, reactionary weirdo called Guy Bug.

Out on the street we stop in front of a late night shop to buy more drinks before going to Roald’s apartment. It’s a cold December night. It’s Roalds birthday and he’s gathered his friends to celebrate. The past days I’d been contemplating whether I wanted to go or not. Yesterday I was in bed all day, feeling like my spirit had left my body and now my body was slowly deceasing. “I can’t handle anymore judgmental, condemning interactions with anyone”, I whispered to Roald. He’d come around my apartment to make me chicken. “The lunatics in Amsterdam are basically terrorising me by now, and there are hostile side-eyes everywhere I go in Leipzig. I don’t know how I’m ever gonna emotionally recover from this living nightmare”. Roald sat by my bed, quietly, “I feel like I’m dying, it’s so pathetic”, a weak giggle slipped through my lips. “Will you tell me a story about friendship?”, I whispered from my pillow, eyes closed. “A story about friendship…”, Roald reflected. “Yes, please”, “Okay. Once I was at a train station with my friend Peter. Two guys tried to steal Peter’s backpack, and in the heat of the moment, Peter fell down on the train tracks. The guys ran away and I jumped down on the train tracks to help Peter get up on the platform again. Peter was very happy how I helped him”. I opened my eyes slightly, cloudy vision of Roald leaned back on his chair next to my bed, his hands folded on his belly. “How stereotypical”, I thought to myself, “How straight cis-men always grab any chance they get to make themselves look like a hero. Their ego-driven opportunism sabotaging every potential for a poetic moment of vulnerability”. Feelings of irritation and repression gnawed at my already shredded heart as I dozed off to sleep. I woke up later to the smell of freshly roasted chicken. I loved Roald for feeding me. We ate the chicken while watching Melancholia by Lars von Trier. “Lucky bastards” I thought, as the world came to an end when Melancholia blasted into earth, and everything and everyone dissolved into beautiful lights. “Roald I don’t know if I’ll have the power to come to your birthday tomorrow evening. Would it be okay for you if we just meet the two of us first, and then later when you meet with your friends I just go home?”. Roald looked at me from underneath his blanket. His eyes turned big and his lips small. “I’d be so happy if you’d be there all the way through though!”, he said and we both went quiet. After a few minutes, Roald broke the silence; “Ok I’ve thought about it. If someone acts out of line towards you tomorrow, I’ll ask them to leave, efficient immediately”. I felt a rush of inner warmth running through my beaten chest. I smiled, “Really?”, “Yes, promise”, Roald assured.

24 hours later, something’s telling me it’s time to go home. Maybe it’s Roald’s friend, NPC117’s more and more aggressive attitude towards me. “What do you think about Horror House’s collaboration with Guy Bug?”, he asks me. We’re still standing around on the street, Roald is inside the late night shop with other people purchasing a box of beer, Nero and Thea are standing around half-way listening to my conversation with NPC117. I know I’m entering a danger zone by involving myself further in this interaction. But hey, he’s Roalds good friend, and Roald is one of the smartest people I know, so how hopeless can NPC117 be? “I was really hooked in the beginning. I thought Guy Bug and Horror House’s idea for the Venice Biennale was quite interesting. Their original idea was that 100 different artists, from all over the world, should each create their own individual interpretation of Titian’s The Rape of Europa”, I tell NPC117, who’s looking at me with an outmost look of concentration on his long, pale face. “I thought it was an interesting approach to curate the American Pavilion. But I don’t really care for Bug’s political ideas though. They’re pretty much the opposite of how I want to see the world evolve myself”, I add, and light up a cigarette. “What do you thi…”, I almost get to ask, but before I can finish my sentence, NPC117 interrupts me: “What do you think about muslims in Europe?”, he asks. I take a deep breath and inhale my cigarette while I contemplate this super random question of his. It’s obviously a trap. Sadly, our conversations has now turned into a test in which I’m subject to NPC117’s self-entitled need for proving him and his judgemental friends right: That their hate towards me is totally justified, and that I am in fact a fascist! Or I answer the only thing that would be, in these characters minds, acceptable: “Muslims in Europe are my favourite thing in the world! I can’t get enough of them! I hope to become one myself one day!!”. Total surrender. Though they might not even accept this, coming from me, cause they’ve apparently already collectively decided, a long time ago, that I am absolute trash. I decide to take the high road and just share my honest, current idea on NPC117’s attack disguised as a question: “Generally I have nothing against muslims in Europe. But it’s obvious that there are cultural differences that cause problems with integration. I do think Europe has the resources to deal with these issues though”. I speak softly and slowly. Make sure I choose my words wisely, so they can’t be misinterpreted. I make an effort to keep calm. NPC117 releases his sturdy gaze from my face, looks down at the ground and sighs resignedly. “Your answer is only okay”, he says and shrugs his shoulders. Oh, is daddy disappointed? I think to myself, as I feel a stench of anger presenting itself inside of me. Who the fuck made this man president of the world? High judge of moral order? What a despicable, patronising way of engaging with me. Has he been feeling this way towards me the entire time during our conversation? That he’s doing me a favour by talking to me? Does he think he’s here to teach me a lesson, make me understand something I’ve been blind to, up until he sacrificed 20 minutes of his life to help me out? Or rather, is his sole motivation to talk to me that he’s finally gotten a chance to put me to a well-deserved test and get something super “problematic” out of me, so he can go back to his group of hysterically intolerant friends and tell them that they were all right? What the fuck is this? But before I get to remove myself from this more and more uncomfortable situation, NPC117 breaks out in a rant about how much he loves muslims: “I think they are an enrichment to our culture! I think muslims make our world a better place! I love muslims! Look how many great muslims there are here on the Eisenbahnstraße! Look at all of these fantastic food shops around, all run by fantastic muslims!”, he goes on an on, and I just stand there, silently, smoking my cigarette, listening to him, while it takes me all of the power I don’t have to not laugh. Finally he stops and looks at me, waiting for a reaction, I suppose. I nod my head and smile. “Sure, I’m not contradicting you”, I say, and NPC117’s eyes suddenly turn frozen. “Why are you getting defensive now?”, he asks me, his incredibly long face even longer now, “I’m not getting defensive, NPC117. You are”, I say while Roald and the rest come out of the late night shop with our drinks and Nero and Thea approach me to ask what the hell is going on. “I think I’m done talking to you now!”, NPC117 declares, looking like that one stone-face emoji I’ve been using a lot lately when chatting with my friends. Well, there you have it. I was unknowingly being put to an exam in political correctness, and now he’s decided I failed, hence he’ll be sleeping sound tonight. He turns around and pulls Roald aside, “Can I talk to you for a second?”, NPC117 asks him. And tell him what, exactly? That I didn’t say how much I love muslims in Europe and that Roald should stop being friends with me immediately and at best call me out on Instagram as well? Also, wouldn’t this be my cue to go home now? But, of course, out of sheer stubbornness, I decide to climb the stairs to Roald’s apartment with everyone else. I have a right to be here. Roald invited me. He’s my friend and he wants me to be here. And up until NPC117 started having a meltdown, I was actually having a pretty good time. And Nero and Thea are here too. They’re cool. But as we climb the stairs, the mood is weird. No one is saying anything to each other, and I’m in an inner dialogue with myself, making a serious effort to not participate in further escalation of this already pretty fucked up situation. Inside Roalds apartment, I go sit by the table in the kitchen, while Roald and NPC117 goes to Roald’s bedroom. Nero, Thea and a few other people come to join me. We all open up our canned rum & coke and beers and light up cigarettes. The others make attempts to start conversations while I try to calm down for a second. But just as I thought NPC117 and I had finally agreed on something, namely never to interact with each other again, he’s standing in front of me. It seems he’s not done yet. He’s standing next to my chair, looking directly down at me, without saying anything. I get seriously irritated and look back at him, “What? What is it that you want? Why do you have this despicable need to seek my attention just so you can reject me the entire time?”. Everyone around us go quiet. A vile little smile dances on NPC117’s giant face. It says “I got you”, only hate in his eyes. As he leaves the kitchen he says “I didn’t reject you. But you are a fucking racist”. I feel a violent punch in my chest. My hands start to shake. I inhale my cigarette deeply. “Why did he say that?”, Nero asks, and Thea gets up and follows NPC117. Everyone else just sits awkwardly around. Where the fuck is Roald? Now would be a good time for him to keep that promise he made me 24 hours ago. No actually, 10 minutes ago would have already been appropriate. I feel like I’m loosing my breath, chest hurts. Fuck, point of no return. As tears begin to run down my heated face, NPC117 turns up in the kitchen, again just standing somewhere and looking at me. I look at him directly, “Leave”, I say in a sturdy, loud tone, “Leave right now”. But NPC117 doesn’t leave. Instead he attempts to put a hand on my shoulder. I whip it away, “Do NOT touch me”, I say, “Get the fuck out of here”, I yell, and slam the kitchen door as hard as I can as NPC117 finally leaves the room. I dissolve in tears. “That asshole doesn’t know me at fucking all, and he has ZERO idea what I’ve been going through this year”, I tell Nero and Thea, who are still sitting by me. Everyone else has exited this massacre of a party killer. Both Nero and Thea try to talk to me and say nice things, each leaving the kitchen in shifts to ask NPC117 to leave the party, which doesn’t work. Roald has to do it. It’s his apartment. His birthday. But Roald doesn’t show. Apparently, he’s busy hiding in his room. Flight mode. The door to his bedroom is half-way open. I can see it through the kitchen door, and I can’t see who’s in there, but I know it’s Roald. I sit in his kitchen and try to stop myself from crying for about an hour. I try to lighten up and speak normally to Nero and Thea, but unsuccessfully so. “Your reaction is surprising me”, Thea says, “You’re always coming off so strong”, “I know, I hate to identify with the victim-position”, I tell her in a liquid voice. After a while of sitting around waiting for myself to stop crying, I accept defeat and put on my coat. “I’m going home”, I tell the others. “Should we come with you?”, they ask. “No, it’s fine, I just need to sleep”, I say and give them both a hug before I leave the apartment. “I’ll take you to the door”, Thea says and gets up. Out on the staircase she looks at me with her big, bright eyes. She grabs my shoulders and looks at me directly. “You’re okay”, she says, compassion written all over her beautiful, strong, clarified face. “And you’re a decent person, don’t ever doubt that”, she gives me a kiss on my red, salty cheek and sends me down the stairs. It takes 3 minutes and 12 seconds to get from Roald’s apartment to mine. We both live on the Eisenbahnstraße. The guy at the late night shop across from my apartment, the one where I buy single cigarettes for 50 cents, calls me “Cleopatra of the Eisenbahnstraße”. I don’t really know where it comes from. But I sure take it as a compliment. 

It certainly was a dangerous experiment. The Project. The Unsafe Event. My life. My art. I lost my head in it and spent the better part of a year searching to get it back. At times I’ve been totally confused about my own actions and everything they birthed. What was it that I wanted (to do)? What’s the core of The Project? Who am I? Who’s Ronja Brainstorm? What the fuck does she want? And what about the Art Whore-ism?

When the border between life and art gets so brutally, consequently, and radically dissolved, the danger it breeds is inevitable. I think I knew. I think most people knew. And they told me. Time and time again, they told me, while my own intuition roared inside of me, constantly battling my oblivious insanity and self-destructive convictions. And on the outside, out there in real-life Leipzig, at my base, in my bubble, the stronger the reactions towards myself and The Project, the more insistent my performance grew. So why did I do everything I did? Why throw myself into an artistic endeavour so bound to go wrong, in almost every possible aspect? Why insist on pushing myself further and further into the abyss of madness, well knowing it’d potentially be my social death? The answer: Because I could. As a self-claimed BoBo (Bourgeois Bohème) with, in my dear professor’s words, “eine extrem hohe Begeisterungsfähigkeit” (“an extremely high enthusiasm-ability”), an insatiable desire for danger and drama, a, according to my therapist, “narcissistic ground pattern” (which is NOT the same as having a narcissistic personality disorder), and a Danish passport, my story can be only my story. No one else’s. And this is why it’s mine to tell. One of the most shocking teachings I take with me from the madness of Summer-Autumn 2025 is how scary it can feel, when you realise that your story is constantly being told by other people. A lot. And not kind-willed, well-meaning, trustworthy people, no no. People who don’t want the best for you. Judgmental, gleeful, scandal-starving strangers. Or enemies who used to be your friends.

So while I discovered new respect and compassion for actual celebrities who bend completely under the pressure of public scrutiny, I didn’t get to pull the brakes on this way too wild ride before I crashed into a stone wall in a tunnel and my car exploded.

I know it all sounds a bit dramatic. But I live dramatically. My entire existence takes place on a rich spectrum of violent emotions. I’m fortunate to have a handful of tolerant, impressively intelligent friends and a loving, endlessly patient family. And yes, I easily get bored. And yes, many of my life’s biggest decisions I’ve made in moments of sheer restlessness. But the year of 2025 was for my part driven by something different. At best, it was driven by passion and curiosity. At worst, ego-maniac narcissism and idolatry.

All of this, combined with a poetic outlook on the world, is the Mother of The Project. Who’s the father, you might ask, and I’m happy you do! I’d say the father is the time and place in which Mother gives birth to The Project: Northern Europe, 2025. Mostly in tense, repressed, raw East German Leipzig, with strong ties to a healthy, stable, wealthy butter hole called Copenhagen, as well as a rather dangerous connection to a reckless, underground art cult in Amsterdam.

Mother tells the story. She always does. Regardless of what father throws at her, Mother will tell the story. And so I will. The next eight months, I’ll publish a new text every week, telling the conflicted, twisted and ambiguous story of my beloved problem child, The Project.

Writing about past experiences is like committing myself to live in the past for a while. This scares me a bit. I have to admit. But though there is so much of my past I don’t enjoy thinking about at all, radically plunging myself into these moments and writing about them as if I’m still living them is to me the most powerful way of channeling lived life. Eliminating the distance time has naturally built between myself and my experiences is what I call “writing with immediacy”. My writer-friend M says that writing as an I-narrator in present tense is the most complicated method of all writing methods. He says it’s because, as a writer, this method requires an incredible overview of what information the reader will need for them to be able to understand what’s being described. And this can be very difficult to manage when writing so directly from your very own point of view.

But both writing in past tense, as well as writing about the different events of this story chronologically, would bore me to death. I want to write the story of The Project with the same immediacy and impulsivity that I lived and created it. Only in this way can it be real. That is, as real as art can be. The stories within the story will naturally intertwine and entangle, like silk threads dancing and colliding. The nonsense will make sense and the sense will make nonsense. Cause though it’s become more and more fathomable and graspable what the hell went down last year, the more answers I find, the more questions they open up. How to dig twenty thousand deep holes in a tiny field of fragile flowers? While the world around me keeps turning, screaming, yelling, pulling, and pushing, violent distractions and influences for a woman who’s already been shredded to pieces, still barely has managed to put herself together again?

Anyway, I’m losing myself in cloudy metaphors. The point is: the story is there. And it will rise and unfold like a hundred sunflowers that have been hanging low for months, in the shadows of anxiety, fear, and shame.

Okay, I’ll stop now. So I can start.