Das Kiez Monument, 2019
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Monument to the Späti international
When I arrived in this city, the Neukölln neighbourhood was a kind of “No one’s Land”.
The Späti International was, and still is, on Weserstrasse, in the middle of this neighbourhood. Only now, going inside it is no longer an adventure. The International had a “secret” back room, which was accessed by opening a curtain. There was no door. Artists of all kinds gathered here. There were drawings everywhere of Marilyn Monroe, or perhaps Elvis. People drank Sterni and were allowed to smoke inside. I was never sure if the performances were scheduled.
Once, someone showed up wearing a pink balaclava, Pussy Riot style, and read us a poem about forgiveness that made me cry.
Person in the pink balaclava: please contact me and read me that poem again.
The time I used to wash my paintings
For a while, I was an artist without a studio. I only had a very small space in my room where I could work, so I decided to paint, erase, and paint again on the same surface, a white fabric.
I used my washing machine to erase. I hung the fabric in the bathroom to dry.
Not everything was erased; something always remained, but it didn’t matter. I liked the idea of not being able to choose or predict what would be erased. Just like memory, some strokes remained, others were erased forever, and now only fragments of what it was can be seen, never the whole story.
I don’t know how many times I ran the washing machine.
Speculating to decipher meaning
An investor has purchased the entire building where my studio is located.
The walls of the building are covered with written words and secret, half-erased messages.
Dear Investor:
If you like to speculate – on the facade, on the walls leading to the courtyard, and on the wall behind the trash bins – there are a lot of half-erased messages that you could try to decipher and connect. They look like a conversation! Some have little drawings, like contemporary hieroglyphics. Come see!
Perhaps you will discover new speculative worlds and leave behind the speculations you have been making up until now!
Berlin Matter
Thank you, Jane Bennett, for your book “Vibrant Matter”.
Without your inspiration, I wouldn’t have been able to find the fake diamond, nor the plastics I used to make this piece.
Ultra romantic
Spain never experienced a Romantic era. While other parts of Europe were constructing neoclassical buildings, imitating the beauty of ancient Greece and Rome, Spain was embroiled in civil war.
No melancholic poems were written; no intellectual sadness driven to suicide by forbidden love was felt. No paintings adorned with flowers were created, nor were ruins deliberately constructed. The word “Sehnsucht” doesn’t even exist in Spanish. It cannot be translated; it never happened.
From that era, we are left with images of the horrors of war painted by Goya.
In Prussian Romanticism, villa walls were painted to imitate marble. It was an expensive technique.
Painting a wall to imitate marble was more expensive than covering it with genuine marble. The imitation was more valuable than the original.
In the streets of Berlin, I often encounter a similar scene. There are walls covered in fake marble.
Only, no one has painted them. They’re remnants of posters that have faded and worn away, resembling marble.
It’s a very decadent scene, a ruin not created intentionally.
I think it’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen.
