Time Of No Culture

2013

This series was first inspired by the story the anthropolgist Bac Ngoc told me about the retreat ritual of the Sedang, a Vietnamese ethnic minority who retreat to the jungle, once every year, to clean themselves from „The Dust of Modern Life“, (which then later became the title of my feature length film). He called this „The Time of No Culture.“ The photographs in this series depict my friends from art school running in the forest, a practice they often engaged in to take a break from their studio work and reconnect with nature. I found it intriguing that despite the stereotypical image of art students indulging in drugs and alcohol, many of them sought solace in nature instead.

The series forms part of a larger body of work in which I explore various forms of retreats observed in different cultures around the world. Through my research, I aim to understand the universal human need for moments of withdrawal and introspection, irrespective of cultural background.