Serge:

"Why did you invent me?"

Markus:

"Sorry, but I needed an alias, to show my work as an artist."

Serge:

"Why?"

Markus:

"I had studied graphic design, but decided not to be an artist, when I was twenty.
Not like Herbert Distel and Harald Studer, who were my colleagues, at that time."

Serge:

"A petty bourgeois you were!"

Markus:

"Maybe! And then I had family, pretty soon. So I had to forget my ambitions for higher studies,
and I decided to earn my bread in advertising agencies, starting with little design studios in my home town,
then heading to Zurich, where the bigger agencies were."

Serge:

"You could have applied as an art director, at least."

Markus:

"I applied as a copy writer instead, because I love to write as well as I love to design."

Serge:

"You could have written a book, under my name..."

Markus:

"Jean Etienne Aebi took me as a fifty-fifty "art director/copy writer" in an American advertising agency
in Zurich. I got to be his successor as creative director, when he left."

Serge:

"And the artist in you...?"

Markus:

"...had to wait for another twenty years, when I was hired by the Swiss Federal Railways,
as their head of publicity. No way anymore, to shine as an artist yourself, or even as an art director,
when your job is to plan the communication of a big company, and to inspire others to do the creative job.
It was a choice I had to make. Still, I did some drawing and painting for myself, during all that time.
People told me that I could be an artist. I smiled them away."

Serge:

"So now: Your coming out, as an artist, after all that time, and under my name!"

Markus:

"I'm no artist. I just do, what I love to do. It's your job to be the artist."