INTERVIEW: CHRIS BENEDICT AND MARIE-JOSÉ OURTILANE

Project Space Festival, 09.08.2018, Kreuzberg Pavillon, Deep Nation; Photo © Piotr Pietrus

Giving Berlin's landscape of approximately 140 non-profit project spaces increased visibility, fighting for their rights, their funding and their appreciation, both the Netzwerk Freier Projekträume- und Initiativen e.V. and the Project Space Festival are initiatives which do considerable work to help the independent art scene to survive. I spoke to Chris Benedict, manager of the Netzwerk Freier Projekträume- und Initiativen, and Marie-José Ourtilane, the current manager of Project Space Festival, about their first collaboration this August.

INTERVIEW: U5

U5, House of Sentiments (Filmstills), 2018, 4-Kanal-Videoinstallation, © U5 

U5 is a Zurich-based artist collective I first encountered at the screening of their work “The Human Crater” at the cinema of the historic hotel Castell in Zuoz. In this stunning, but somewhat ambivalent, environment of the luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps the collective confronted spectators with subjects such as collaborative working ethics, the history of colonial discovery travel, the human-nature relationship, political and aesthetic strategies. We continued talking at their studio in Zurich, where I could witness the development of their new installation work “House of Sentiments.” Later the musician Vivian Wang, who contributed to the video piece, joined us in our digital conversation about the nuances in our understanding of emotions and colours.

INTERVIEW: ANI SCHULZE

Ani Schulze, Merchants Freely Enter, Video Still, 2017, supported by Kunststiftung NRW
all works © Ani Schulze

I met the German artist Ani Schulze at Sitterwerk in St. Gallen, where artists, writers, craftspeople and scientists meet on several occasions, such as open studios, book launches or presentations of current research. Our conversation about the influence of technological developments on the contemporary visual culture, the representation of landscape and the implementation of new ecosystems continued over an artist talk in Zürich and later, during several digital and analogue encounters.