Leigh Sachwitz
It is 1993 and Scottish native Leigh (Haas) Sachwitz moves to Berlin. She has just received her architectural diploma from the Glasgow School of Art and arrives at this post wall city where, at that exciting time, anything seems possible. She sees Berlin as it is, a gigantic playground, and ventures to the many temporary spaces and improvised art events in the eastern part.
It is the experimental 1990’s in Berlin and while she works in an architect office by day, she helps create makeshift clubs, bars, art spaces for the night using all sorts of materials, light and projections. Later she would add sound and video. Her visuals, sights and sounds are ephemeral and bang on trend, mixing media and technologies, yet they create visceral experiences for the visitors, the artists and party people of the night.
Leigh leaves the architectural office to focus solely on these immediate creations and transforms the transient spaces all over this constantly evolving city over the next several years. For example, at WMF, a legendary club housed in ever changing, unique locations for more than a decade, she evolves from experimenting with simple slide installations to live mixing elaborate and encompassing club visuals. With the curation of the Jugend Musik Festspiele at Volksbühne Berlin her directorial skills were pushed to another level.
It is 1998 and Leigh decides to turn her vision into an official business – flora&faunavisions (FFV) is born and evolves into a slowly growing team of diverse professionals in charge of management, finance, design and more.
From Leigh’s first slides in Berlin’s temporary spaces in the early 1990’s, she and her ever growing FFV family develop further to VJing with Super-8 film and VHS tape. With the technologies evolving she moves on to play with and utilise DVDs and laptops. Then comes the internet and immersive 360-degree projections.
Technologies never cease to amaze Leigh and she is delighted every time she can try and create something entirely new, such as using live 3D mapping to choreographed visuals, 3D projections to a live performance, GPS motion tracking and so much more that will be tomorrow’s latest trends.
It is the big picture that makes Leigh tick. In the end, a good idea is a good idea. Leigh is easily bridging the gap between art and commerce, making the most of each of her team member’s individual skills. She says, “Vision is imagining the future and thinking outside the box.”
Now there are many, many projects coming along during all these years. From established brands to artistic interventions, Leigh loves them all and is filled with pride what she and her team have achieved.