Joachim Koester walk through the exhibition Sex, Drugs, Rock ‘n Roll and talks about his  Cannabis series. The works takes their starting point in pivotal moments in time in the history of cannabis production. The series eloquently references both the 1970s magazine High Times in which cannabis plants were celebrated and photographed like the centrefolds in Playboy, and Reagan’s war on drugs in the 1980s which pushed the production and breeding of cannabis in wild, new directions—giving way to unexpected new strains and variants. In allowing the aesthetic qualities of each plant to come into focus, Koester’s series reiterates these histories’ physical traces. In choosing psychoactive plants with this series, Koester reminds us not only of the plants ability to alter our experiences and shift our ways of thinking, but of arts ability to do so as well.

Carefully questioning narratives and identities, Koester’s practice uses the medium of photography to explore the ways in which our shared stories are established, and in the process questions how these mediums are, ultimately, ambiguous.

Filmed and edited by Andreas Rosforth.