Host & Producer
My name is Bastian, I am a photographer and filmmaker from Germany and the very proud owner of a little yellow camper van with a small cooker and a bed just long enough to stretch out my short legs. My van is French, a real bon-vivant and goes by the name of Alphonse – or Fonsi for short.
Over the years, Fonsi has taken me to beautiful places, allowing me to fall asleep with a view of the stars, mediating unexpected, rich conversations – often in places that had until recently been entirely alien and foreign to me. You could therefore say – with ample justification – that my view of the world is intimately tied to a hollow, rusty metal cage on four wheels. It wouldn’t emphasise your romantic side though.
With the corona crisis we have all seen a dramatic shift in our realities. Suddenly, human interaction and social exchange seem to pose a threat. Now the whole world, counting my own home, has become alien to me. Something we all share or can relate to in one way or another, I believe.
In all this, culture is what helps me keep my sanity. It is in creativity where I find the touching points that I so desperately need and crave as a social being heeding social distancing. The arts and culture, creativity in itself, is the glue that holds us all together. It is the bridge between the “now” and “then”, the “before” and “after”, mitigating our losses by turning them into something new.
So now, instead of setting out in the van, I will invite the world, that means you, into my alien home to be looking for those new opportunities together, to start something new as a way of welcoming this change into our lives. We will set out on a journey to discover this changed world through encounters along the road that I had thus far associated mainly with Fonsi and his open sliding door.
In the course of this show I will speak to creatives and innovators from across the globe to find out how things have changed for them and where they see new opportunity and inspiration loom. Aiming to get a more detailed topography of our societies and a better understanding of each other.
Looking to spark ideas for positive change and necessary transformation.
So what are you waiting for? Come on the road with us!