Berlin based multimedia artist Marie von Heyl answered my three questions about the time we are passing through.
How are you affected?
As many of my colleagues I am experiencing two forces pulling at me in divergent directions. On the one hand the pandemic forces a slowing down, a coming to a halt in mid flight, as it were, with all the lined up events being postponed or cancelled. At the same time, a long-held secret phantasy has come true that I am struggling to align with the dire reality of the global catastrophe: all of a sudden I have so much time!
Paradoxically this plays out as a pressure building up in the void to produce, create, respond to the current situation.
I remain suspicious of this creative reflex, since I believe when the conditions of production change our formats, tools and vocabularies need re-consideration as well. I am trying not to hurry things.
What will change in your country or the world?
Over the past years I couldn’t help but feeling that the art world had not managed to catch up with reality.
The old carbon-heavy formats like art fairs, biennials and international culture tourism struck me as dated, a thing of the past desperately trying to maintain its grip on the present.
The pandemic is a reality shock that seems like the fatal last punch to an old system. I think it is too early to say how the art world will adopt to this but I am convinced things cannot continue as before.
What would you hope to change?
What we see at the moment of attempts to simply transfer existing formats like exhibitions into the digital realm feels somewhat flat and more like trying to keep the (self)-promotional news cycle spinning. But isn’t this in itself insightful? The pandemic makes underlying structures visible, the usually carefully hidden threads of the seams are showing. I hope for new formats and alliances to come out of this mess. And I am curious how little things will change: hairstyles, forms of assembly, greetings, fashion.. definitely a time to don your ethnographer’s glasses!
