"I’ve always liked transgression that has no victims. Violence is also a transgression, but it has victims. Football hooliganism is transgression but it has victims. But when people just have fun together and no one is harmed, that is a great spirit."
"The personal would never be my point of departure, because why should my life be more interesting than your life. It’s very unlikely that by definition, it would be more interesting. It is about perspective on the personal life, that makes for an interesting work.
"A lot of people when they start out say '... I want to be an artist and express myself.' But to that I think, well, we all want to express ourselves,
that’s not very special."
Video from YouTube user Kasia Katarzyna
Then in Berlin there was this special situation, of crumbling infrastructure in East Berlin with lots and lots of empty unused factory spaces. All open to be squatted in. So a lot of impromptu clubs sprung up in some basements, maybe most famously, Tresor in the vault of a former department store. It was where they would keep all the money from the store, so it was a safe room with a thick metal door — really the last thing that should be used as a club because it was a fire hazard, you couldn’t get out. But the whole room was lined with metal shelves for different deposits of valuables, and in it was just the most loud techno music you could ever imagine, way beyond any health limit. Luckily my hearing is okay now, I’m grateful I didn’t over-do it.
What’s a song you think of when you think back to those times?
I was recently asked to make a playlist, and one song that sprung to mind was 3 PHASE feat Dr MOTTE's "Der Klang der Familie." That was a track that was played many times as the closing song of Love Parade, which was like a demonstration, or street carnival around techno. It started with around 300 people in 1989, and it grew within 7 years to be 1 million people strong. Around 30 huge trucks with sound systems would drive through Berlin, it was unbelievable. There’s nothing more beautiful than loud music in a city space.
Do you feel nostalgic for that part of your life today?
Fortunately not, no. I feel like because those times were also not easy, in the way that I was very much affected by the fear of AIDS. That was a lethal threat. It’s hard to imagine now, but every encounter you had then could’ve ended your life.
Can you name a couple of your favorite clubs back then? In London? Berlin?
There was a club called Trade in London, which was the first 24-hours club in the city, because you know, they have very strict licensing rules. There are some 24 hour clubs now, but not many. Night life now has become so much more controlled in most cities around the world and this has to do with real estate prices, and the fact there’s almost no empty space left in cities anywhere.
Trade was...pumping, steamy, boiling hot, and everyone was topless. And there was a sense of nowness, of being in the moment, and a shared awareness of that time being special. We were all doing something that our parents wouldn’t understand. And at the same time realizing that it was actually really good, that it wasn’t damaging. It was this transgression that was creative, and I’ve always liked transgression that has no victims. Violence is also a transgression, but it has victims. Football hooliganism is transgression but it has victims. But when people just have fun together and no one is harmed, that is a great spirit.
What would you say is the legacy of your generation’s youth?
Interestingly, it’s all still active today. For me the values have not been superseded, they live on, and the music hasn’t stopped either. Maybe the type of music we were listening to then is not at the top of the charts, but it’s in America now, bigger than ever. In a way, it still feels like what we were discovering, expressing, and experimenting with.
It’s still valid today, I feel. I don’t know if that’s arrogant, but I feel there is a continuity, and it hasn’t gone away. This sense of openness, and allowing doubt, an interest in purity - not everything is this or that, it could be multiple things. Those soft values. I hope the ‘90s are never seen as a “wrong” time or anything. When you think about the right wing populism now that’s saying “We need a clear, strong macho leader,” in a way, that’s exactly the success of 50 years of civil rights, a more relative approach to masculinity, and equal rights for women, and non-racist progress. It’s that success that is troubling for this part of society which is why there’s this rebel against change. But I think the pendulum will swing back. I just hope this is a short period before the old white men do some serious damage.
There’s a big ‘90s revival right now, but how were those times different from what we’re seeing today?
I really feel it’s important for people today - well I’m also a person today - to know that it’s okay to idolize a different era, just as we did at other times. But you must always understand that you have the potential to make up everything. In relative terms, you are free. You can choose your values, and if enough people choose to change things, they will change. I hope.
The main thing about the ‘90s was this sense of community. That the other, the stranger is not your enemy, not your competition. But you can hug each other, and be happy together, that sort of lack of competitiveness — although, competitiveness can at other times be a great force in youth culture, like battling in voguing. But that love for other people — solidarity — that’s a word that’s not very fashionable or used much, and a lot of people probably don’t even know what that is now. But it was about caring for your fellow humans and understanding that together, everyone gains more than if everyone only looks after themselves.
As I’m about to leave Wolfgang to walk through his newly set-up show, I ask him if there’s
a narrative I should keep in mind:
You shouldn't try to read it in one linear way. When you look at the walls, you should sense what happens when you look at it, in terms of color. How the pinks in this room here bounce off each other, then how the pinks and purples resonate in this photo of this dark oily swamp...it’s a lot about color. Color sounds superficial, but I think it’s very deep, and if you have a sensitivity to color where you can feel color, that is something that is very spiritual. And so there is a lot of stillness in this work. I’m interested in stillness and hanging on for a second, observing, and carefully looking. And that’s what I try to encourage. It’s not about next, next, next, but about taking time.
You’re not very motivated by Instagram, but you’re active on it?
Yes, it’s the only social media I use actually.
The idea of motivation and Instagram is a big issue right now.
Like you said, we have people thinking their lives are more interesting than others, and they become competitive because they’re able to quantify exactly how appealing they are with how many likes they get...
There is a lot of pain created through it...when you can’t get over three or four likes, there’s nothing you can do about it. Especially when you see other people getting more.
As I’m about to leave Wolfgang to take a walk through his newly set-up show, I ask him if there’s a narrative I should keep in mind:
You shouldn't try to read it in one linear way. When you look at the walls, you should sense what happens when you look at it, in terms of color. How the pinks in this room here bounce off each other, then how the pinks and purples resonate in this photo of this dark oily swamp...it’s a lot about color. Color sounds superficial, but I think it’s very deep, and if you have a sensitivity to color where you can feel color, that is something that is very spiritual. And so there is a lot of stillness in this work. I’m interested in stillness and hanging on for a second, observing, and carefully looking. And that’s what I try to encourage. It’s not about next, next, next, but about taking time.
Do you consider your art really personal?
It cannot only be about the personal, it is about the whole conversation. And I am trying to talk about what it is like to be alive today, through the particular objects, or places in my work.
For example, I don’t try and talk about how a particular t-shirt in a pile of clothing belongs to me in that picture up there. I don’t want to talk about how this is my laundry, and I had a lazy saturday, and didn’t do the wash. It doesn’t matter. I’m talking about this in a more general way, a universal sense. This is color. This is clothing. This is something that was very close to somebody’s body — yesterday. And it’s not today. This was a volume, and now it’s crumbled to a smaller volume. Those sort of things...but you need to have personal things to work with as an artist, to have a point of view from which you speak. Like a singer or songwriter needs to take something that other people can connect to.
So the personal would never be my point of departure, because why should my life be more interesting than your life. It’s very unlikely that by definition, it would be more interesting. It is about perspective on the personal life, that makes for an interesting work. But not like “Hey look, this is a plate of food that I’ve eaten.” This whole Instagram picture culture has little to do with me in terms of motivation.
You’re not very motivated by Instagram, but you’re active on it?
Yes, it’s the only social media I use actually.
The idea of motivation and Instagram is a big issue right now.
Like you said, we have people thinking their lives are more interesting than others, and they become competitive because they’re able to quantify exactly how appealing they are with how many likes they get...
There is a lot of pain created through it...when you can’t get over three or four likes, there’s nothing you can do about it. Especially when you see other people getting more.
The conversation happening in art, and art’s motivations.
My boyfriend at the time in the mid ‘90s introduced me to the old master painters like Caravaggio because he was a painter himself. When I looked at the labels of the paintings, it said when they were born and when they died, and when the paintings were painted. And I realized a lot of the time, the painter was 27 years old, or 31 years old when they painted the painting I was looking at. Then I suddenly thought oh, they could be my friend, I was 27 before.
We are contemporaries, and we would be contemporaries if I had lived in their time or if they lived now. And so I understood that other artists could be my friends, and we have something to
tell eachother.
So to listen, and to look at what other artists before you had to say, is really empowering, and enriching. It makes you feel less lonely, because you can have so many new friends, they just happen to be older, or dead, or not nearby but they’re still your friends, and that’s what I mean, by art exists in a context.
So unfortunately, a lot of people when they start out, they say “I want to express myself, I want to be an artist and express myself.” But to that I think, well, we all want to express ourselves, that’s not very special of you. The question is more what can you contribute that’s not just about you, and will add to this dialogue? What has not been there before? What has not been said yet? So a good thing to ask yourself, is what is missing? Because we don’t need more of the same things.
How we look at art in the world.
I think I understood from an early age that everything man-made looks the way it looks for a reason. There’s someone who decided it should look that way. Mao decided everyone should wear blue workwear, and someone else decided what a handrail on a bus should look like.
When we look at the world with this in mind, there isn’t really a distinction between low culture and high culture, it’s just different places of study and examination. The street or the nightclub is a place of studying or listening to artifacts. And the gallery is a very unique, special place because I see it as a laboratory. It’s a clean room where things can be looked at with relative insulation from the outside world.
And so art can happen in places other than the gallery. But when it’s the other way around, there is sometimes a misunderstanding that anything can be art. I don’t think just anything can be art, art is a conversation between artists, and of course the audience. It’s a language that has been built over thousands of years. You don’t need to know every bit of history that’s happened but you need to be aware that art only exists in context with other art in time.
I think a lot of people romanticize the idea of ‘90s youth culture which obviously you were a part of and would photograph. Why do you think that is, what was so special about it all?
It was a sense of breaking down hierarchies. Of course there was punk just before which was a breaking down of hierarchies as well, perhaps more radically than anything else. But in the ‘90s there was for the first time the importance of doubt, the importance of failure and allowing failure, the consideration of failure. They were soft strengths.
The ‘80s was a time of power, dressing, money, and luxury. A bit like now, but it felt very extreme then. So in the beginning of the ‘90s, the end of the cold war, it was the end of clear ideologies. There was a celebration of norms. People began to think maybe things aren’t black and white, maybe it’s not capitalism or communism, maybe there’s a new way, a third way. And so there was an openness and a hopefulness at the same time which felt quite liberating. There was a strong sense that this was a special time, and I can understand today’s youths’ interest in that.
It’s the last week of March in Hong Kong; months away from summer night swims, but the streets are buzzing with the insomnia and energy that Art Basel brings each year. The city is usually an international stopover for business men and consultants, but this week, it’s a destination for artists like Wolfgang Tillmans.
Born in the industrial town of Remscheid, Germany, to a father often away on business trips and a mother who busily worked as an accountant and politician, Wolfgang experienced a level of freedom during his youth most of us would envy. From the age of 15, he got a taste for nightlife in cities like London and Amsterdam, where he was photographed by i-D Magazine for wearing an eco-statement hat made of living moss. That photo linked him to his first set of club photos he would eventually shoot for them when he moved to Hamburg; a city he described as having “one of the most sophisticated club scenes in Germany” then.
Come the ‘90s, Tillmans moved to London with his two best friends Alex and Lutz who he famously photographed sitting in a tree. He quickly shifted his focus away from shooting clubs and magazine spreads, and began studying photography in Bournemouth. From there he refined his un-artificial style, steering clear of the overly stylized and overly artistic approaches to aesthetics which were popular at the time. Since then, he’s partaken in the revolution of his generation’s youth, shown his work internationally, and has become the first photographer and non-British person to be granted the Turner prize.
Preparing for his first Hong Kong show at the David Zwirner gallery, Tillmans approaches for our interview, dressed in adidas track pants and sneakers. I realize he has a casualness about him that only runs surface deep — he could be mistaken for relaxed at first glance, but he’s clearly preoccupied with small details as he continues to give meticulous instruction to staff before reaching his seat. The same could be said about the presentation of his photos — what appear to be simple inkjet prints with the borders left on them, are actually created with incredible intention, and their placement in the gallery is equally meditated. After describing the beauty of bioluminescent algae to me, we begin talking about life in the ‘90s, pumping techno clubs, and his thoughts on making art.
Wolfgang Tillmans: Maybe the luminescent algae in the bay by Fire Island in New York. It was summer two years ago, we went swimming at night and suddenly realized with every hand movement in the water, there was a glow that would follow.
