(german version for now, but stay with me!)
the leadership discourse
How does language shape our minds? What's the current reality of the discourse used in management and leadership? Is it inclusive? If not, how so and what can we do about it?
Brigitte Biehl (guest professor for gender & queer studies at the Fernuni Hagen) approached me to create an animation film to answer these questions. She was very open to an artistic approach and gave me her full trust - I gladly accepted and set out to work in my favourite way: research and understand the topic as long as it takes for a visual expression to come to me very naturally. Like becoming an artistic medium for a specific topic.
With just a sketched storyboard and a style direction, I went into a month of intense production. Creating the film step by step - just as it made sense.
Through the research and involvement with the whole issue, a style naturally developed. On one hand I felt the long established, male-dominated, rigid, unnatural structures of patriarchy. On the other hand I felt, without these constructs, a very fluid reality exists - taking on many different ever-changing forms and colors.
The design aims to reflect these different concepts of reality - balancing back and forth, hoping to find a common ground, like the topic itself hopes to do. This also finds an expression in the choice of different architecture styles in the beginning and end of the video. A closed-off, phallic power structure in contrast to an open, collaborative environment.
