Collect and Disappear began in Namibia 1991. I was working for 3 month as a camera assistant for „Oshilongo Shange“ by Lilly Grote and Julia Kunert shooting a film about the repatriated „GDR-Kids“ which have grown up in the GDR. One month before the official German reunification in August 1990, all kids and youngsters where immediately brought back to Namibia. In my free time, I filmed German-Namibian farmers and their colonial heritage with a high-8 video camera. At the same time I filmed the early moments after the Namibian independence, the new freedom and hope of people in Katutura and Khomasdhal and also the living conditions of the „GDR-Kids“ in German schools in Windhoek and Swakopmund, their new homes or hostels. I learned about the genocide of Nama and Herero people in 1904 under German colonial administration and also about the apartheid system ruled in Namibia during South African administration.

More material comes from Alex Petrus , who I first met in Swakopmund in 1991 when he was 15 year old boy. He sent me music and letters, later we made videos together in Berlin and Düsseldorf. I organized concerts. He played in the Shedhalle Zürich. Some of the material has been accompanying my life and appears in videos like LC$ Alex, Father and forms the narration of Benji in Absent Present.