The Tie That Remains
2026
Berlin, Germany
This project is a performance for the camera in which my body enters into a tense relationship with a piece of wood through the repeated action of looping, binding, and tying rope. The rope becomes more than a material object: it is a link, a connection, a bond. It reaches between body and wood, between human and nature, between attachment and captivity. At times it suggests hope: the desire to belong, to hold on, to repair a broken relation. At other times it becomes an image of desperation, restriction, and exhaustion.
The work explores hybridity and dislocation. The body and the wood appear neither fully separate nor fully joined; they become an unstable hybrid form, caught between human figure, natural fragment, burden, shelter, and wound. The wood carries traces of nature, but it is also displaced from its original environment. In this sense, it becomes a symbol of homelessness: removed from its roots, carried, bound, and forced into a new relation. My body mirrors this condition, searching for connection while also being trapped by it.
In the performance, I sit with the wood and try to connect myself to it through the rope. This repetitive action becomes both intimate and futile. The rope promises relation, but it also exposes the difficulty of making relation possible after rupture. It speaks of care, dependency, survival, and attachment, but also of violence, constraint, and loss..
The image in which I carry the wood on my back introduces the idea of burden and humiliation. The body is lowered, almost animal-like, placed in a position of submission and strain. The wood becomes a weight that must be carried, like memory, history, displacement, or inherited trauma. This pose suggests the physical and psychological cost of carrying what cannot be left behind.
The project also responds to war and destruction. The bound wood can be read as a fragment of a damaged landscape, a remnant of a world broken by violence. The body’s attempt to connect with it becomes an act of mourning, but also resistance. In a time of destruction and distraction, the work insists on staying with the material, with the wound, with the burden. It asks whether connection is still possible when both body and nature have been displaced, damaged, and made vulnerable.
Photography : Andre Fiebig
