How to Live, 2008; 39 minute video based on a series of performances and monologues; part of residency project at Galerie Art Claims Impulse, Berlin, May-Jun 2008.
Click on image above to view short edited clip of How to Live, and on images below to view individual performances.
Walking backwards around Mariannenplatz
...so I'm kind of wondering why… why it's proving so difficult to find… to find anything really. I mean I keep walking – I've been walking for miles. But um, I think walking in itself is not really teaching me anything. So I'm going to have to keep doing things. Um, otherwise… I mean I might get very fit… and I can already feel the soles of my shoes wearing thin. But… I mean surely there must be more… I don’t know, walking… you get from A to B – and that’s something.
It's – it's not as if I've got any great theories about walking. It's just that as a way of going from A to B it's – it's definitely one of the most efficient. I mean, you can hop… hop… hop from A to B. Um, I guess you could – you could kind of jump. Except that, you know, you wouldn’t cover very much distance. You could run – and that's er, that's – that's quite obvious. But walking – walking is quite… the speed's not as fast as – as cycling for instance. But walking I would say is… one of the… one of the… really – really great ways of getting somewhere...
Changing shirt according to colour of trains
...I've just had a coffee. Um…that was quite, er… quite an enjoyable experience. Um… I went and sat down at the – at the, er, table. Um, the guy came over, I ordered coffee, er, drank it – that was nice. It was… slightly, um… a slightly pointless experience in a way.
You just go there, you sit, you drink your coffee, you talk to your friends, or if you're alone you read a book, or a newspaper. And really… I don't know… there seems almost to be no point doing it, and yet everybody does it. So I'm thinking maybe I'm missing something…
...and um, and I've just stumbled across this, um… this building which, um, is some kind of industrial building. I'm not – I'm not exactly sure what… it was, um. And just in front of it, um, there's a kind of, kind of doorway, which is behind me here, um, er, which is for vehicles, for cars I guess. And there's a ramp, um, which I'm standing on, which winds its way up into, into the building. It's obviously the way that vehicles entered and left… this building – whatever it was when it was working, um. But it's been left to… er, it's – it's been abandoned and it's in a certain state of ruin at the moment.
But there's just, I don't know, I just get a sense that something is – is wrong. Or I got a sense that something was wrong about it, and I think… what is wrong is that… the leaves seem to have collected on – on the right hand side. That's – that's over there. And… it's perfectly obvious to me, and I'm sure it would be to anyone else, that the leaves should be on the left side...
Sweeping leaves from the right side to the left
side
...so here you find me, um… in the evening, as you can see. Um… the sky is actually really quite red and um, I guess this is what… um… what's kind of known as "beauty". Um, but I, um… I'm not sure if I want to get involved in this thing because it might – it might lead somewhere that I don't particularly want to go. Um, so I'm doing my best to avoid looking at the sunset. Um, it's kind of behind me at the moment, and I'm quite happy with that.
Um, it is unfortunately casting its glow on everything – I mean the buildings are kind of red, and, um, there's a sort of redness in the… in the light – I mean in a general sense. And um, I think what I'm going to have to do is really just go underground and perhaps get a train somewhere – um, because I really don't want to be exposed to this… any longer than I have to. Um, so yeah, I think the next move is – is to, well, is to get inside, really, before this becomes… I don't know, quite… worryingly dangerous...
...okay so I'm here in, er, Tempelhof airport. Um, unfortunately I don't have an aeroplane, so I don't really know what I'm doing here. But um… it's a pretty impressive kind of building, and I kind of wish I did have an aeroplane… otherwise… there's really not much you can do here – other than look.
There seem to be a lot of people… kind of just waiting. I don't know, I guess they've forgotten their aeroplanes as well. But um, anyway, perhaps I'll come back. Perhaps I'll come and fly here, because, you know, "flughafen" – it does kind of imply flight of some sort. But anyway, at the moment, I'm just kind of looking round, maybe thinking… I might bring a little plane – a little model plane, and fly it. Um, because I think, you know, if you're going to fly a plane anywhere, then… this is kind of the sort of place to fly it, really...
Flying a plane at Tempelhof airport
...but I don't know, I mean, whenever I turn a corner I see something else, and I go that way. Um, often I get lost, but it kind of doesn't matter. But something's compelling me to spend hours and hours just going to places. Or not even going to places but… starting out going to places and on the way… going to other places, and going on detours.
But if, I don't know, if you don't have the luxury of having somewhere specific to go, then… then you do have to just keep looking at things – looking at the grass around you, looking at the trees, looking at the people. And… and what these things are telling me I've no idea. And um… I don't know what I'm wanting them to tell me. Their not giving me any answers but I – I don't even know what my question is...
Trimming a hedge with a pair of scissors
...I've found quite a nice stretch of wall here. Um, it's very colourfully painted. Yeah they've really, kind of, made it look quite nice.
And um, I've kind of noticed that in this city there is a sort of – sort of obsession with walls, almost, which I quite like. Um, there seem to be – walls seem to have a real significance… um, you know, there's even a museum dedicated to a wall, which… which I quite like.
I've spent a lot of time, um, in the last few days just walking round… walls. Um, or walking round streets looking at walls, rather. Um, this one's a particularly good one, I think...
Building a wall of spray-paint cans
…
...there are lots of things you could say about this, um, Holocaust Memorial, um…
The only idea I've had is that… it might be best to walk around the whole monument and touch every stone… one by one. And there are two thousand seven hundred of them… so it might take a while…
…
…
…
...I've just been into a supermarket, um – I just wanted to buy some… some bread really, um… for lunch. Maybe going to a supermarket to buy some bread is… a little bit excessive. Um, but um, but yeah, while I was in the supermarket I was really struck, um, not only by how cheap things are in – in this country, but… there seemed to be lots and lots and lots of tins of fish. And um, I – I don't know, there's something about that that I wasn't quite… I don't know, I wasn't quite happy with.
And I've just been sitting here on the bank of the Spree, um… um, eating my bread. It's very nice. It's a very nice day, it's quite warm. Um, you can get really close to the river here. Um, and suddenly it just occurred to me that… what I need to do with these fish… what – what would make complete sense, would be to put them back into the river...
Releasing anchovies into the Spree
...so on one level, um, I think it was, it was quite a successful… you know, a successful… trip, really. And I did – I did begin to see, er, a lot more than I'd seen before. But – when I got to the top… all I could do was just look. And, as interesting as that may have been, um, I think you should do more than just look when you reach a high point.
I mean, after climbing… all those steps – and I think somebody mentioned that there were two hundred and something steps. After all that – to put all that effort into climbing to such a high height, and then, have nothing… nothing to, you know… nothing to do when you get there, I think is a bit of a waste of energy. I mean… I mean, other people were just – other people were just… taking photographs obsessively. I mean, I guess… I guess they were feeling the same thing, I guess they were thinking well we've made all this effort to climb up all those steps, and all – all there is to do is just look around… you know. And you can see a long way but, I mean, it's just looking. I think two hundred and twenty steps… just to look… that’s not really… that's not – that's not really a fair exchange...
Pulling a sausage tied to a string
Read interview about the project with Melanie Zagrean and Pierre Wolter.
View a selection of the around fifty preliminary research drawings made during the How to Live project.