Dust Party Project

'Dust Party' is a project I worked on in 2002 & 2003 in Los Angeles, during a fellowship at the Villa Aurora. It is currently still exhibited till Feb 19th at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. I had once done another big Project in LA in 1997, which I mostly shot in the city. It was called 'Surf Fiction' and had a lot of references to popular culture. For 'Dust Party' I wanted to shift my focus geographically. I was attracted to shoot not only in LA but also in desert scenarios and was also really interested in the themes of borders and bordercrossing and how I could transcend it to different areas and also connect it with dark and erotic elements.

Also there was a few books and films and music which I used as an inpiration and which helped me get going among them:
'Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia' - a movie by Sam Peckinpah
'Touch of Evil' - a movie by Orson Welles
'A diamond guitar' - a short story by Truman Capote
'Crystal Frontier' - a song by the band Calexico

At the beginning I did a lot of location scouting, driving around in the Californian and Mexican desert, which was really fun. Then I developed the scenes I wanted to have in the project, among them an orgy scene, a police scene, scenes I wanted to shoot at locations I had found in the desert. And I also started experimenting with light and color.

So the work started evolving from my initial inspiration into other themes like: the dynamic of the center and the periphery, atmosphere, desire&connection. You can find a PDF of the current edit of Dust Party here: Link