„FOR I AM MANY“ deals with how ancestral mythologies are constructed through the ascription by others, genealogical research and alternative „ancestral lineages“. Who defines a supposed origin? What information is used to justify it? Which persons or groups can be part of such a narrative and what is their necessity for collective and individual subject constructions?

The question „Where are you really from?“ serves as the starting point of the work. The constant confrontation of as other marked persons with this question, both in everyday life and in professional life, can be seen as an externally imposed change - as „not belonging“ in a social construct. These myths of origin, imposed from „outside“, not only place people in other geographical regions or religious communities, for example, but they also occupy them with projections of supposed „cultural otherness“. The constant reference to one‘s own speculated ancestry forces the persons questioned into a continuous questioning of their own family histories and classification in social relations.

The implications of such ascriptions can vary greatly in their individual psychological and collective socio-political effects. But it is precisely in such circumstances that an ancestral mythology can at the same time offer a kind of orientation and open up the space for a constructed togetherness or belonging - even serve as a survival strategy and actively empower oneself to one‘s own ancestral mythologies, contrary to the ascriptions of others.

Link: https://vimeo.com/775966589