The bachelor project Where do you really come from? deals with everyday racism in Germany. Since only extreme racist incidents are made subject of discussions and other experiences are labeled as hypersensitivity, everyday racism seems invisible. The focus is on subjective experiences of People of Color and Blacks living in Germany, as privileged white people - for whom everyday racism isn’t part of their reality – don’t experience racism in their day-to-day lives. These experiences were discussed online as well as offline and broken down into individual, meaningful sentences.
Racism is based on recognizing and categorizing physical characteristics. Therefore the statements have been combined with images to expose the essentializing (and absurd) functional principle of everyday racism.
The outcome is a series of five posters, each addressing a certain type of racism and the physical attribute leading to the seemingly banal but violent sentence, that questions one's belonging.
Additionally a book originated from a discussion on facebook. The subject of discussion were the feelings connected to racist questions – Where are you really from? Do you speak German? – that aren't apperceived as such. Over 400 comments illustrate the current perception of the topic in Germany.
