Translated by Tanja Ohlsen

Fiona Jassmann in conversation with Johannes Büttner about his artistic work and his current work Soldaten des Lichts (Soldiers of Light)

It is about how the society we live and work in determines, how we are subjectivised. About people and how they organise themselves, and their fears, explains Johannes Büttner when asked about the focus in his artistic work.

With his expansive installations which often consist of videos, sculptures and sound, he poses these questions both to himself and to his audience. Working with various (socio-)economic phenomena, he engages with grievances in the world, often in close collaboration with people outside the art world.

Büttner‘s serious interest in people and their stories is like a common thread through his work. The result is, that in his art he speaks seldom about but rather with people. He says that this is based on the hope for communication and discussion and on the hope to understand people and groups.

This hope is evident for example in The Factory (2020), a work in which Büttner engages with the digital job market. Her he is interested in people selling their digital labour online, and the inherent possibilities of transformation.

In order to gain an authentic insight into this world, he works together with people selling their labour on the online platform Fiver. “I thought it interesting how these people see themselves. Do they say we are a form of working class—or are we rather digital entrepreneurs?”

Büttner allows the relevant groups of persons an interpretative authority and asks them rather than observing them from a distance. This reveals his desire to work with them on eye level in artistic collaboration.

However, Büttner does not follow a strict scheme, but makes distinctions. He adapts his behaviour individually according to the person he is currently collaborating with.

This weighing up becomes apparent among others in the work Higher Potential (2021), where he enters into a kind of business relationship with “life coaches” (personal development coaches who sell their products with the promise to optimise their clients’ lives). The coaches are permitted to offer their products via Büttner’s video installation at the Kunsthalle Mainz. Every time a visitor buys something, Büttner receives a commission.

He is concerned with the distribution of wealth and the importance not to externalise such issues:

“How are we ourselves involved in these crises, and what do they have to do with our own position? Isn’t also the art world a highly competitive one, one driven by self-optimisation?”

Here again, Büttner works closely together with a group of people, but here the power dynamics are different.

On one hand the coaches make him feel that they are superior to him in respect to hierarchy and finance, on the other hand Büttner is well aware that it is ultimately he himself who has control over his art (for example through editing and contextual framing).

He himself says: “I think there should be a kind of eye level, but at the same time I know that this eye level does not really exist. There is always a hierarchical imbalance. Then it depends a bit on whom I work with, how I try to address this hierarchical imbalance, whether I try to dissolve it in parts, or to create a balance.”

When working with his last project, Büttner was confronted with very different hierarchical structures and power relations.

Soldaten des Lichts (2025) is a documentary created together with director Julian Vogel. Premiere was in April 2025 at the 56^th documentary film festival Visions du Réel.

In their film, Vogel and Büttner follow several protagonists from the conspiracy theorist and Reichsbürger scenes. Raw and unfiltered, without any explanatory voice-over, the film dares to cast light on a world that for most viewers must seem incredibly far from their own reality.

In order to gain this intimate insight, Vogel and Büttner followed their protagonists over a long period of time. This close contact did not leave them unaffected. The various forms of ableism, classicism, antisemitism as well as LGBTQIA+-hostility they were regularly confronted with as well as the sometimes intense personal stories of their protagonists ultimately led them to the decision not to film for more than four or five days at a time.

Nevertheless they developed different connections and thus varying degrees of responsibility towards their protagonists: “With a right-wing activist or the “King of Germany” we felt, this is already some kind of public person or actually a political activist. In this case we have a different, maybe a lesser sense of responsibility than for somebody who is very young, or maybe ill, and moves on a very different level in that hierarchy.”

Büttner denies that the filming process had any influence on the people in front of the camera. Feedback came only after the film’s release.

“Afterwards, however, I spoke to some protagonists, where the film triggered some kind of reflection. It’s probably too much to speak of ‘rethinking’. But I had the feeling there was the possibility to think about things again in a different way.” Thus, the film seems to have the potential to give people from the scene the possibility to reconsider their convictions, a chance to review their own environment from another perspective.

Such an influence, though, seems not to have been the initial goal. “This actually developed during the process, since we were not sure from the beginning what we were really working toward.”

But as the project took form, the desire to support those affected, grew.

“Timo’s ^[1] parents declared from the beginning that they wanted to take part in the film. Both are not involved in the far-right or conspiracy theorist scene and were quite desperate that their son had slipped into it. By their appearance in the film they were trying to warn others who might be affected or to help them. I think we were grateful to hear from people actually affected that they saw the possibilities in the film.”

Another goal for Büttner and Vogel was to search for people’s motivation. Why are conspiracy theories spread? Is it the desire for power over others? Is it delusion? Or is there actually a “good intention” behind it, the desire to enlighten others and to help them?

“I don’t think we have an ultimate answer to that. But I had the feeling that those we were dealing with, don’t wake up in the morning and say, okay, now we are going to fool everyone. They are rather so ideologically convicted that they really believe to do the right thing or that they are helping people in some way.” The fact, that they monetise their conspiracies and myths and profit personally from them, is often used as an argument against that, says Büttner—this would contradict the assumption of sincere intentions.

“But it is not really a contradiction or a conflict, but rather a continuation of the value system we are living in: a system, where economic success is seen as the “rightness” of our own actions and is also used as a kind of moral justification”, the artist says.

Thus, Büttner also in this project moves from the individual and their personal story to the larger systemic questions.

Soldaten des Lichts does not “only” offer insight into a part of the right-wing scene that asks on a personal level why people are spreading conspiracy theories, nor does the film aim to raise awareness or support those affected.

It goes beyond that and asks, what our system has to do with those societal phenomena. Büttner and Vogel try to look beyond the surface of conspiracy theories and want to get to the bottom of their current social relevance.

“We are presently living in a time of crises, and there are many different societal reactions to those crises. It can be extremely frustrating to engage with them—particularly when doing this from a materialist perspective, when acknowledging that many of those current crises arise on account of our economic system, capitalism.

Or you make it easier for yourself to deal with injustices: you ignore the complexity and just looks at a “good” and a “bad” side. By choosing the “good” side you free yourself from the responsibility you might have within those crises.”

In his art, Johannes Büttner offers both himself and his audience the possibility to approach this responsibility: He asks himself what role he has within our system and what the lived realities of the people he encounters, relate to him. Thus he creates access from the personal to the political as well as spaces for his audience where they can think about their own role within our world.

“I was socialised in radical left circles by autonomous centres. Therefore I have always had the idea that society can be radically changed in a completely different way. This is interesting from my current point of view, but I am also interested in historical examples. And what future might still have in stow for us”, Büttner explains about his motivation.

Johannes Büttner was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1985. In his art, he approaches different crises and injustices of our times and links them to socio-economic and societal phenomena. His work has been shown among other places at the Istanbul Biennial, the Kunsthalle Schirn and the K21 Düsseldorf. Since 2022 he has led the basic class for sculpture in fine arts at the HBK together with David Zink Yi. Since 2025 he has also participated in the PhD-programme of the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg.

Fiona Jassmann was born in Hamburg in 2002. She studies Fine Arts with Sara Sejin chang (van der Heide) and Art Education with Martin Krenn at the HBK Braunschweig. She currently spends an Erasmus semester at the Malmö Art Academy.

^[1] Timo is one of the protagonists of the film Soldaten des Lichts.  He is part of a group of conspiracy theorists and tries to heal his hallucinations and anxiety through – among other things – a raw vegan diet.