Kuchen de Manzana
‘Kuchen de Manzana’ is a multimedia installation that examines how everyday culinary traditions normalise colonial histories and racial ideologies in Chile. The project uses apple cake, Kuchen de Manzana, as both subject and lens to explore the legacy of German settlement in indigenous Mapuche territories. Drawing on personal narrative, historical research, and interviews with decolonial thinkers, the work examines how seemingly innocuous ingredients like wheat and sugar embody histories of land appropriation, labour exploitation, and Whiteness as a social ideal.
Set within a wooden structure that references German Fachwerk houses, the installation features a film that references cake recipes, legislation, and land dispossession. The video is projected onto paper made from cake paper and apple skin, sourced from apples exported from Chile to the Netherlands. The work traces global entanglements while challenging viewers to question the sweetness of inherited rituals — and the violence they obscure.
- Photo by Carlfried Verwaayen
- Videostill
- Final Exam set up
- Photo by Petr Kroschinsky
- Photo by Petr Kroschinsky
Shown at:
Dutch Design Week 2025 - Graduation Show
France Design Week 2025 - Presque Demain
Labocine - June Issue MICROGRAPHIA 2025
2024, graphic design and yarn selection with ByborreCREATE
A Closer Look
The Picnic Blanket highlights a lesser-known chapter of migration history. During and after World War II, many Germans and German speakers migrated to Latin America and other parts of the world. Today, far-right media frequently use the term “illegal migration” to stigmatize those arriving in their countries—conveniently forgetting their own migration histories. Placed in spaces marked by movement and border crossings, such as the Brenner Pass, the blanket invites reflection on our shared and often overlooked migration stories.
The blanket offers a place to sit together, share food, and exchange cultures and stories. It creates moments of reflection—beautiful and communal, like the mountain landscapes where many Germans once fled—yet carries a deeper, more complex narrative within.
Points and margin added by Ache Wang
Collaboration with Byborre
2024, upcycled and unknitted knitwear installation with video 03’20
Growing Holes
A German village called Lützerath was being dredged by RWE, a coal company, in January 2023. I could ssee the village on Google Maps, so I set out to find it. But all I found was a hole and machines. I want to tell the story of disappearance. As in Ursula Le Guin‘s „The word for world is soil“, Terran colonists destroy and take over land and space. In La Guajira, Colombia, another growing hole threatens ‚The Wajuu‘, an indigenous community living in the rainforest, because European countries, including Germany, need more coal resources and alternatives to Ukraine. The Wajuu have survived Christopher Columbus, the drug war on their border with Venezuela and now simply being forced to move. It is like taking away their roots for a resource that the Western countries are demanding - and what is left is a hole.
How do we deal with memories, history, and the past when resources are at stake? In a podcast, a woman who grew up in one of Germany’s coal-mining regions describes how she sometimes still goes to the hole to remember her childhood – to places that have now disappeared.
2023, industrial fishing net, handknitted net, video
Sea Borders
The problem of ghost gear is a global one. It can be found anywhere in the world where is fished, and hundreds of thousands of miles beyond Ocean currents can cause ghost gear to drift far from its point of origin and cross and cross countless borders to continue ghost fishing.
Time is an important factor in the fish industry. Vessels are designed to catch the largest possible mass of fish in the shortest possible time. In West Africa, times are tough for the nearly seven million people who depend on small-scale fishing. They are competing with sturdy trawlers, mostly owned by Asian and European companies, that can drag better and stronger nets over a wider area of the seabed. Some of them fish illegally. Over a 10-year period (2000-2010), China and Europe caught fish from the West African region worth $8.3 billion.
The installation features a large, upcycled industrial fishing net, originally produced by fast, automated machines, contrasted with a smaller, hand‑knotted net crafted using self‑made tools at its center. A video accompaniment shows the slow, manual process of weaving the handmade net alongside images of fish trapped in cages, filmed in Volendam, a historic Dutch fishing village that, after the construction of a dam, has largely shifted its livelihood from fishing to tourism. This juxtaposition highlights the tension between industrial fishing and traditional craftsmanship.
- Photo by Petr Kroschinsky
- Photo by Jasmine Fernandez
- Photo by Dugyung Kim
- Photo by Jasmine Fernandez
2022, 09’34 min experimental short movie, research based/ sci-fi
Why does the sun
goes on shining?
goes on shining?
Focusing on the politics of labour particularly of the female body in the semiconductor industry. Two women from different parts of the semiconductor industry's manufacturing chain tell their stories. One works in the cleaning room in Suwon in South Korea for Sungsam, the other in the assembly department at NNOCXOF in Zhengzhou in China. It turns out that the process cannot go on indefinitely.
with Andrea De La Peña Aguirre, Dugyung Kim and Yuhan Fang
- video still, before postproduction
- video still
- video still
- video still
LINK TO WATCH FILL FILM
2022, short fiction film 02:56
Plastic Archeologists
Plastic Archaeologists is a short fiction film set in the year 2083, amid the vast landfills of Turkey. In this imagined future, archaeologists sift through layers of sediment, unearthing the plastic remains of the anthropocene. As they carefully reconstruct fragments of everyday life, the buried waste becomes a time capsule of the Anthropocene—each layer preserving decades of consumption and decay.
Echoing the tone of a BBC documentary, the film is narrated by an AI voice that observes humanity’s legacy from a post-human perspective. Between science fiction and reflection, Plastic Archaeologists questions what traces of our existence will endure and how future generations—or machines—might interpret the world we left behind.
2021, collection and textile piece made from plastic bottles, old textiles and natural materials
No Waste Gala
Our collection No waste Gala is focusing on weaving, knitting and sewing. We spin threads from plastic bottles, old jumpers, re-knit, crochet and weave. Plastic is a particular problem in our world because it just won’t go away and is everywhere. Especially with the pandemic, plastic has become more present again. The textile industry is also flooding our planet with fabrics and wool, a lot of it just lies around and becomes less and less attractive.
As a contrast to the materials that pollute our planet, we also work with natural materials such as dried palm leaves and coconut bark. In our collection we want to show creative ways to make something valuable out of something “worthless” and thus counteract the plastic problem, which is why we deliberately place our collection in haute couture or elegant evening wear or elegant evening wear. We used old leaves to decorate clothes and make paintings.
Since we both come from different backgrounds: Adama from the fashion world and me from product design, we gathered ideas from both fields and also combined resources from our living spaces.
with Adama Sarr
- Model Lilian Maxwell, photo by Neo.Fashion
- Model Lilian Maxwell, photo by Neo.Fashion
- Model Mansour Fall, photo by Neo.Fashion
- Model Mansour Fall, photo by Neo.Fashion
Shown at:
Neo.fashion, Berlin Fashion Week, 2021
2021, scenography and art director
Soraya Luna
The documentary ‘Soraya Luna’ directed by Elisa Gómez Alvarez is a psychological journey into the past. Together with Lola Chamot, who works as a window dresser for Tommy Hilfiger in Geneva, and Nadine Bakota, who studied fashion design at the Kunsthochschule Weißensee and now works as a costume designer for theatre and film, we reconstructed a detailed set from the past.Our research is based on old VHS video footage. Through a series of screen shots and visits to second-hand shops in Geneva, we reconstructed a scene from the past, like detectives, to bring it back to life. While scouting locations, we found an apartment in ‘la cité du Lignon’,a social building designed by the architect George Addor between 1964 and 1966, and changed the floor, the furniture by borrowing it from second-hand shops and recreated the notes and paintings.
„A tragic event brings the director into
repressed childhood memories. Using VHS
footage, Elisa Gómez Álvarez takes us on
a disturbing tale of three vulnerable sis-
ters who are consumed by the destructive
desires of adults, through a courageous
cinematic process that serves to exorcise
the ghosts of the past.“
(Javier Martín - Visions du Réel)
with Lola Chamot
- video still, Soraya Luna
- video still, Soraya Luna
- video still, VHS
- video still, Soraya Luna
Shown at:
2022 États généraux du film documen-
taire, Lussas (France), „Expériences du Regard“ selection
2021 Visions du Réel, Nyon (Switzerland), Tënk Prize, World Premiere
2018, costumes with videoinstallation and liveperformance, Austria´s Pavillion at London Design Biennale
Heische Ritual
Pillaged by the forces of climate change
an enigmatic protest movement has emerged within the Alpine communities.Through reviving the Heische tradition – grotesquely costumed people wandering from door to door to chase away the evil spirits of winter, whilst collecting donations and sharing with those in need –they seek justice and solidarity for those worst affected by the forces of nature.
The tradition of “heischen”, deriving from the old German word for begging, can be traced back millennia to its pagan roots relating to
the alpine goddess “Perchta”. Having survived aggressive Christianisation trough adaption, its legacy among cultures spans from Bulgaria to Switzerland. Although its names and rituals diversified, the struggle that gave birth to this tradition was universial: Winter. The Senario explored the idea that, in a place devastated by climate change, social inequalities would increase. We elaborated on the costumes with references to natual disasters, searched for materials, and created characters to embody the story, then we devolped a new translation of the old performance. Each costume was made of debris salvaged from the corresponding desaster.
Following the old tradition, the new Heische ritual consists of costumed individuals who travel from door to door in the urban community,performing a choreography, bringing
blessings ans collecting donations that are
later redistributed among the victims.
The biggest challange was to design the costumes for the performance and to make them
wearable. With the help of costume designer
Ute Neuber we developed a way to make them moveable and carriable.
with Fabio Hofer, Catherine Hu and Kerem Atalay
- Fabio Hofer, Cathrine Hu
- Fabio Hofer, Cathrine Hu
- Fabio Hofer, Cathrine Hu
- Sarah Franzl
- Sarah Franzl
- London Design Biennale
Shown at:
Austrian Pavillion, London Design Biennale 2018
Design Investigation - After Abundance Publication
https://designinvestigations.at/2018/10/25/after-abundance-in-the-press/
2017, scenography & art director
Cytolove
The sinfonic orchestra of University of Arts plays Lorin Maazel‘s version of The Ring Without Words, an abridged summary of the musical highlights of Richard Wagner‘s The Ring of the Nibelung. Cytolove tackles racist aspects of Richard Wagner‘s tetralogy, translates them into the current and futuristic context of sexuality, femininity, racism and genetics to critically question future-oriented tendencies of In-Vitro-Fertilisation and prenatal diagnostics. Currently, the research field of so-called
„g-r-i-n technologies“ (Genetics, robotics, information, and nanotechnologies) is increasing rapidly which demands asking ethical questions about the relationship between body, mind, identity and offspring. These technologies are driving humanity forward in the goal of improving the human body. Prenatal Genetics corresponds to calculable „breeding“ of offspring according to plan. Are we in a new age of human blood stock and hygiene? Cytolove is a feature-length experimental silent film. As a collaborative project, the film was premiered with orchestral accompaniment at the opening ceremony on 05 May 2017 within the framework of the music festival CRESCENDO at UdK concert hall, Hardenbergstrasse.
In-Vitro-Hotel
For millennia the humanity breeds plants (and animals). Breeding refers to the artificial selection and controlled reproduction of two individuals of a species that have certain desired characteristics. This procedure suppresses unwanted. In the future the act of fertilization and therefore the reproduction happens consciously and not randomly. Men and women go independently of each other to an exclusive place of anonymity and relaxation, where they can perform their booked fertilisation ritual in the private space of retreat. Lateron they are able to rest in the In-Vitro-Spa with hormon cocktails to take care for their freshly fertilisated external uterus.
Cryobank
The individual modules which are necessary for a successful fecundation were extracted from the body and were safely stored in the Cryobank. All male and female individuals between 18 and 25 years in age, in their phase of best quality reproduction genes, must pass a morphological, physical, anatomical and genetical examination. This process is similar to a mustering. This once-in-a-life-time examination is legally defined and culturally established. The verification is a landmark in each individual‘s life, it represents the initiation to a hedonistic infertile indivdual. The Kryobank is the cloud for fertile cells, the male and female features for reproduction. At the same time Cryobank collects big data that makes the individual more transparent than ever before.
Main cast
Frederik von Lüttichau, Elena Gómez Alvarez, Wiebke Wackermann
Concept/Screenplay/Direction/Production/
Editing
Elisa Gómez Alvarez
Concept/Screenplay/Set design
Catalina Gómez Alvarez
Screenplay/Production/Assistant Director
Büke Schwarz
Camera/Cinematography
Paul Nungeßer
Costume Design/Make-up/Styling
Nadine Bakota
Visual Effects/Compositing
Timo Kreitz
Editing
Tom Siegert
Shown at:
Opening Concert, crescendo, 2017
LINK TO WATCH THE CONCERT