In(ter)Ception: The Tale of J.T. Bieber

NEW PROJECT - COMING SOON!!!

IN(ter)CEPTION: The Tale of J.T. Bieber (2023-2024)

 IN(ter)CEPTION: The Tale of J.T. Bieber is an artistic research project investigating the integration of transgenerational heritage inequality, where an individual faces an unresolvable inner conflict due to conflicting ancestral backgrounds. The search for belonging and processing transgenerational trauma becomes a perpetual quest, where one is lost in the shadows of political and historical turmoil intertwined with personal traumatic experiences.

 In Germany today, exists a generation of people whose ancestors were, on one hand, loyal, convinced, and active perpetrators of the Nazi regime, and on the other hand, Jewish survivors of organized acts of violence, destruction, and annihilation. The dialectical tension finds expression as the transgenerational narrative. The courage of male vulnerability becomes essential to overcome totalitarianism, echoing Hannah Arendt's insight that violence begins where talking ends.

 This project investigates a very complex personal story of Jonas Tobias Bieber, whom I first met in June 2023. Born in 1982 in Berlin, he is the son of a nearly 400-year-old Westphalian farming family on his mother's side, which became part of the industrial beneficiaries of German coal and steel production in the 19th century. On his father's side, he comes from a Jewish family of East Prussian origin, which came to Berlin as traders and merchants in the late 19th century. One side serves in the Wehrmacht and SS, offering the mother a considerable sum of money, a car, and a condominium before her marriage to a Jew to avoid the union. The other side leaves Germany after a wedding on November 9, 1938 (Kristallnacht), shocked by Germany's events, and relocates to Bolivia. After the birth of the children, the German mother is forced to promise not to raise the children as antisemites. One family cherishes and celebrates tradition. The other family no longer recognizes itself. What remains are unknown family photos, old spoons, and a stumbling block.

This torn identity is the project's focus, drawing me in due to my own family history. Being an immigrant all my life, the search for belonging and overcoming the transgenerational trauma has been a never-ending quest of my own existence. IN(ter)CEPTION project situates the personal narrative within the broader societal context, demonstrating how individual stories reflect and influence collective experiences. Against the backdrop of the current global situation, where we witness wars, resurging waves of chauvinism, and mass destruction based on nationalistic hatred, this project highlights the frightening possibility of a future where new generations of people in different cultures will experience the long-lasting consequences of these conflicts. Therefore, my hope as an artist is to inspire dialogue through photography as an accessible art form and to provoke thought and deeper understanding, that would allow our society to develop greater empathy and the potential for transformation.