High Life

Performance, 2025, with Marlen Pflüger, 30 min.; Nur das was muss, Spoiler, Berlin

In High Life, Rosanna Graf and Marlen Pflüger examine the entanglement of finance speculation, spirituality, and the contemporary precarity of (artistic) labor. The work operates within a material vocabulary drawn from ritual practice, embodied voice, the semiotics of economic speculation, and future predictions.

Increasingly pushed to navigate unstable funding landscapes and shrinking institutional support, the suffering artist optimizes and minimizes their potential until a life-saving new opportunity arises from the ashes: The Artistic Finanza Life Coach Persona comes to life. The persistent demand that artists convert instability into creative surplus has found its final form within her. This persona reflects a broader cultural pressure to remain adaptive, strategic, and relentlessly self-optimizing in the face of unpredictable futures. It is a figure born not of empowerment but of systemic withdrawal, an answer to a world in which everyone is compelled to manage volatility alone. One can only speculate about the suffering the life coaches endured in pursuit of their previous unsuccessful artistic careers.

The piece mobilizes the language of investment, speculation, and risk not as metaphor but as a shared condition: the artist, much like the small-time broker, is compelled to orient themselves within systems that reward constant projection, self-optimization, and belief in future value. The Artistic Finanza Life Coach Personas hold your hand, break eggs on your forehead, channel market fluctuations, dance the shape of your crypto, and wish you luck for your future endeavors.

High Life, 2025, Performance; Nur das was muss, Spoiler, Berlin; documentation photos and video stills (photos: Lea Hopp, video stills: Rosanna Graf)

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High Life

In High Life, Rosanna Graf and Marlen Pflüger examine the entanglement of finance speculation, spirituality, and the contemporary precarity of (artistic) labor. The work operates within a material vocabulary drawn from ritual practice, embodied voice, the semiotics of economic speculation, and future predictions.

Increasingly pushed to navigate unstable funding landscapes and shrinking institutional support, the suffering artist optimizes and minimizes their potential until a life-saving new opportunity arises from the ashes: The Artistic Finanza Life Coach Persona comes to life. The persistent demand that artists convert instability into creative surplus has found its final form within her. This persona reflects a broader cultural pressure to remain adaptive, strategic, and relentlessly self-optimizing in the face of unpredictable futures. It is a figure born not of empowerment but of systemic withdrawal, an answer to a world in which everyone is compelled to manage volatility alone. One can only speculate about the suffering the life coaches endured in pursuit of their previous unsuccessful artistic careers.

The piece mobilizes the language of investment, speculation, and risk not as metaphor but as a shared condition: the artist, much like the small-time broker, is compelled to orient themselves within systems that reward constant projection, self-optimization, and belief in future value. The Artistic Finanza Life Coach Personas hold your hand, break eggs on your forehead, channel market fluctuations, dance the shape of your crypto, and wish you luck for your future endeavors.