Of nets

Participatory installation

Variable dimensions and materials: ropes, cutting and writing tools, prints and handwritten notes

2024 - 2026

Nets can support, carry, but also keep away and separate, just as social networks can be used to connect, to care, but also to gatekeep and exclude. Structurally, a safety net and a wire fence have a lot in common—while reflecting two very different visions of creating safety/security: through solidarity or through exclusion.

The way a net is constructed determines its structure and behavior. Similarly, different social structures give rise to different ways of forming relationships—and vice versa. Can the physical object then help us reflect on the interpersonal?

In workshops, using of our bodies as anchor points allows us to experience how each person’s actions affect the tension of the whole. Visitors can then continue to weave the nets through participatory installations, guided by questions and excerpts from the publication One Safety Net (2022).

In this way, I offer to collectively reflect on the connections between our relationships, our social structures, and our ability to feel safe. Thoughts can be shared with others by leaving notes on the nets or walls.

image details

Workshop at La Kunsthalle, Mulhouse, November 2025 (images 1-3). Participatory installation at Galerie 23, Hamburg, July 2025 (4-6). Workshops and open studio during a short residency at Arbeitszimmer thealit, Bremen, November 2024 (7-9).

Four people are standing behind a large net of ropes suspended from the ceiling. Each of them is attaching an annotated stripe of paper to the net.

A large mesh of ropes is laying on the floor. At the edges of the mesh, two people are seen sitting tying ropes together.

Three people are standing looking at three blocks of papers nailed to the wall one under another. The papers are cut to form vertical stripes that can be torn out, each stripe is printed with a different question. Each block uses a different language and has a slightly different paper color: the top block is beige, the middle one white, the bottom one light grey.

Four sticky notes in bright ned and bright green annoted by visitors. The first note reads in German,

On the left, A4 papers are hanged to the wall with oranger and light pink tape. They are hanged in 3 rows to form a large grid, 6 and a half sheets are visible here. The papers are printed with sentences in handwriting and sketches. On the right, the corner of a net made of brightly colored ropes is visible. Behind the net hands another grid of papers, the grid is not horizontal but instead leaning down to the right.

At the center, a large net made of bright colored ropes, blue and orange are dominant. On the right, a grid of papers hanged to the wall on 3 lines of 8 papers, forming a grid. On the left, behind the net, there is an armchair made of a bright orange net hanged on a wooden frame. Visitors have connected it to the net by a thin rope.

A person is writing on a tiled wall. In front of them there is a sketch with arrows starting at the center that point to words written in a circle, like

Four people are working together on a net during a workshop. They are holding the net under tension with their hands or by attaching it to their bodies.