What are you working on at the moment?
In the Lausitz mining region, open-pit lignite mines are now being converted into huge lakes. Where conveyor bridges once dominated the landscape, marinas are being built. And the miners’ chorus has to retrain to sing shanties, instead of the traditional miners’ good-luck-greeting »Glück auf«, now it’s »ahoy!«. I would like to capture this on film. In parallel, I am collaborating with my friend and colleague Sebastian Orlac on a new subject: the oldest known battlefield in Europe can be found in a valley around the Tollense River in Mecklenburg. In the Bronze Age, around 4,000 people literally beat one another’s heads in there. It was likely about who controls an important trade route. And about bronze. We ask what this 3,300-year-old skull fractures can tell us about our present.
What are you reading or listening to right now?
I often read several things in parallel and from all sorts of areas. I just finished Katja Hoyer’s ›Diesseits der Mauer‹, while I was on holiday Nina Haratischwili’s ›Das achte Leben‹ and ›Secondhand Time‹ by Svetlana Alexievich, because I wanted to understand what the post-Cold War period was like in the post-Soviet world. And every morning I scan through several newspapers, from left to right. That’s part of my work.
What does good art education/outreach require?
I would say it all starts at school, with teachers who can awaken an interest in art and the conceptual worlds artists. Art has an important social relevance and children can also understand that art can tell them something about their lives, that emotions are amplified here, that art can provide consolation or joy. Art can be a chance for self-inquiry: why rejection here, approval here? If you can get access to them, these people later probably will go to museums less burdened and more open-minded. I observe how my children approach artworks with confidence. They owe that to their art teacher, thank you! But they think my work is boring and never tire of letting me know that.
Do you have a favourite building?
Yes, the building I live and work in. The landlord is interested in maintaining a solid Berlin mix, something that’s rare to find today. My neighbours are taxi drivers, craftsmen, social workers, students, teachers, or the unemployed. On the ground floor a bookbinder has his shop. The rents are comparably low and that does something to people when they don’t have that damn pressure every month. We meet in the building’s foyer and chat with one another. I hope she never sells the building.
Is there someone you would like to meet?
My biological father, if this person is still alive. But when it comes to a historical figure, I would say I’d have to think with whom such a conversation would be satisfying for both parties. The person should also be interested in my own time. I sway back and forth between Ernst Jünger and Rosa Luxemburg.
Do you have a daily ritual?
Not in the narrow sense of the word, more like routines. I walk every morning with my dog on a large, green lot between two S-Bahn lines. Amazingly, the real estate industry has not yet discovered this lot, perhaps the ground is contaminated with heavy metals. At any event, my dog can run free here and I feel free too. It’s good for me, I’m a hardcore pedestrian.
What accessory or object could you not do without?
Dog poo bags. In the evening: cigarettes.
What does sustainability mean for you?
Eating less, shopping less, owning less. Understanding that doing without is not about lack. In 2020, I got rid of our car. For a year, a really suffered withdrawal symptoms! Now that’s behind me. Deutsche Bahn is constantly trying to convince me to buy a new car, but then I think of this stupid drive on the A2 motorway where my kids only saw my back. Now they see me from the front drinking beer. And now we’ve discovered night trains. Going to bed in the evening in grey Berlin, getting up in sunny Budapest the next morning. There’s a lot to be said about sustainability and the art business. For years, I took cheap flights to exhibitions and biennales. Now I’m over that.
What do you think Berlin’s artistic and cultural landscape needs?
I would like Berlin to remain a liveable city for all income levels. When there’s no affordable residential or work spaces left, there are no artists. Then there are no off-spaces and no smaller galleries. No experiments, no trying things out, no punk. Then the city is just dead. I once spent four weeks in Hong Kong. In the evening I didn’t know what to do with myself. A horribly boring place.
What do you do when you’re done working?
I work on maths with my daughter. In the evening, I take a walk, with or without the dog.