This diploma records my graduation from the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main. I publish it as a historical document, not an object of prestige. Dated 1 August 1994, it stands for years of intensive training, artistic work and personal effort. Receiving it was an honour. Achieving it was also a struggle.
At the time, a document like this seemed to carry a social promise: commit yourself to a demanding education, develop discipline, craft and judgement, and you gain a measure of recognition. Perhaps that was naive. Today the diploma's social exchange value sometimes strikes me as a beggar's credit card: officially valid, practically without a line of credit.
“You victim!” goes the contemporary insult. A remarkable reversal, as if experiencing power exercised over you were more shameful than exercising it. Arrogance and structural discrimination still confront me in this reversal. I am not asking for pity. I am interested in who decides what counts as value, belonging and recognition — and by what authority.
The diploma itself has not lost its worth. Institutions, working conditions, cultural economies and some of their rather impoverished standards have changed. What I learned remains. So does what I have since written, performed, designed and developed. And I have not stopped making new tools and new artistic forms.
I publish this document, then, as an act of self-empowerment. Not to ask an institution to recognise me again, but to take possession of my own story. The institution awarded the diploma. What I make of it is up to me.