Benutzer:MoritzH

Pigeon Zine

Moritz Haider (WS 25/26)

Starting point

In my artistic practice I combine text, sound and movement. I think about the spaces in which my works appear. Thematically, I think about the mundane, queer daydreams, witches. And pigeons.

This kind of pondering, however necessary it may be, is also what drives me away from intuition into a freeze-like state. When thinking transforms into an increasing spiral, I tend to get overwhelmed by the amount of possibilities how to perceive/portray/etc. a certain topic. I feel like I have to understand all of them, that I can’t decide on only one aspect and therefor rather not engage with the execution to avoid “mistakes“.

Having only five days to work on a project served as the perfect foundation since it doesn’t provide much time for (over-)thinking. You have to go with your first impulse in order to experiment with different materials and get something done. In advance I had the idea to make a zine about pigeons because they are my favorite animals but also, without disregarding their relevance, it seemed to be a topic that could be fun and less complicated than other ones that held me back from actually doing something in the past. During the Open Lab I already shared this idea as well as my current state of research.

Process

Karin and Mara started the seminar with exercises that built up a group dynamic and also helped to get us closer to what we would like to do. Since I had already thought about it it felt easier to present my concept and start right away based off of the visions I’ve had in advance.

Gabriel kindly let me borrow his typewriter. This changed my process fundamentally. I mainly do literary writing and am known to delete a lot or not write at all out of fear. Working on a laptop makes it easy to forget that you actually have done/achieved something. The typewriter made me hear, louder than the sound of a keyboard, that I was doing something and as soon as I pulled the paper out of it I had something in my hands. Something that felt a little more permanent. If I spotted a mistake (and there were a lot) I just had to type it again or accept it’s existence which showed me: It’s not that bad.

I tried out the typewriter and wrote a couple of texts. Everything came very intuitively.

I tried out typing on different materials, such as plastic or other forms of waste.

I folded my first dummies.

I printed out different images and drew patterns that could serve as a background.

I used the Riso for the first time and printed out more images.

In the end I layed out all my texts, dummies and prints in order to present them.

Result

The process throughout the week was really fun and freeing. It showed me the potential of experimenting with material and not just imagining things (until they overpower you). It also made me realize that I want to create a couple of zines about pigeons. This first one should mainly focus on the Taubenbrunnen (pigeon fountain) by Ewald Mataré that is located close to Kölner Dom and keeps getting overlooked. In the zine I would like to combine documentary and poetic texts about it that I’d like to read out publicly at the fountain upon the zine’s release. Maybe it could become a kind of artistic brochure, just like the ones about the Dom that you find in every tourist information centre. I see this as an ongoing work in progress and when I come back to KHM in October of 2026 I want to finish the first zine.