Prof. Peter Sinapius PhD.

“The Jail is looking at me like from a mirror; my mouth is closed like the door that keeps me in the morning from hate, from my own and from those, who have imprisoned me. I wish I could lose my mind in order not to understand the senselessness of my punishment.“

(aus: William V.: Ich suche meine Augen. In: In jeder Nacht lacht der Teufel leise – Literatur aus dem Strafvollzug 2011. assoverlag)

From 2000 to 2004 442 prisoners in Germany committed suicide, including 279 in the first 6 months, 7 prisoners in less than 24 hours after arrest:

The German law states that• Life in prison should be similar to the general

conditions of life as much as possible.• Harmful effects of imprisonment should be

prevented.• The imprisonment should be executed in a

way that helps to reintegrate the prisoners into life outside prison.

„Prison are always the others" (Exhibition in Berlin 2009)

“Question Marks”An exchange project between two groups of prisoners: 10 long-term inmates from the U.S. Federal Penitentiary, one of the largest high-security prisons in the United States, and 30 young people from the Juvenile Court / Fulton County Child Treatment Center in Atlanta.

Dias & Riedweg (1996): “Question Marks”

Dias & Riedweg (1996): “Question Marks”

Car number plates, which were then driven in public:

Are you scared of the lifestyle that you must now live as a young man? Who should I fear? Are you who you say you are? What do you want to know about me? Can you get away?

Art-Workshop in a woman´s prison in “Expressive Arts” (2012 in Bremen/ Germany)

“Up to now I am familiar to stab someone violently with a knife. But to handle the knife in such a fine and sensitive way is new for me”

Sculpture-Workshop in Bremen/ Germany: “Open Walls”

“The production of sculptures is like the birth of a child, the

sculpture is born, sometimes even under pain ... To carve a stone

is like merging with the material that is just carved, you develop

a sense of the stone from which the sculpture is created, you get

to know the mass of a stone to its very inner core ...

It is very important that everybody can fulfill himself, so that we

can present to the outside world what really our thoughts are

and not what the society says about us...”

(Paul Bichler in: In jeder Nacht lacht der Teufel leise – Literatur aus dem Strafvollzug 2011. assoverlag)

Arts in Social Transformationwww.arts-and-change.de