Despite advancing digitalization, a large part of bureaucratic processes in Germany still takes place on paper. If one were to place the nearly 12,000 files from the NSU trial on a shelf, it would need to be almost the size of a ten-story building, 35 meters high and 9 meters wide. The work conceived by Dennis Fuchs for the Paper Future Festival aims to provoke thought about these dimensions of bureaucracy in paper form. It consists of files at a scale of 1:8, filled with recycled paper from Berlin's administration. The number of files lined up corresponds to the display case, and the content consists of recycled paper from the surrounding administration. The spines of the files are not labeled, leaving it up to the viewer to imagine their contents. A grid is created, which passersby can only decipher upon closer inspection. The concept of compression plays a role here. Even if many administrative processes are digitized, the sheer volume of regulations, data, directives, and paragraphs remains, albeit in a compressed form. How can bureaucracy reduction be designed beyond digitalization?

Dennis Fuchs (born 1992 in Berlin) still lives and works in Berlin. He studied Art Education and Philosophy/Ethics, as well as Fine Arts with Ina Weber at the UdK Berlin, and in London and Tokyo. He has exhibited in Berlin, Zurich, Milan, and Tokyo, among other places. His works have been awarded the Special Jury Prize of the Takifuji Art Awards Japan in 2018 and the Audience Award of the Kunstverein Ebersberg in 2019. Since 2023, he has been teaching at the Berlin University of the Arts. His artistic work begins with the exploration of mass-produced everyday objects. The design of these objects reveals much about the needs of our hyper-commodified society and, as Bruno Latour notes, they possess an agency. Through their material properties, they shape movements, thought processes, and social relationships. The artist takes advantage of this dynamic interaction by modifying everyday objects to humorously reveal their inherent assumptions and mechanisms. For him, the idea that objects develop a life of their own plays a role.