Biljana PopovicI draw the line between contexts. When you’re working as a designer it’s a totally different context than when you’re working as an artist. Your work is meeting entirely different needs. I like to state it as a joke: “design solves problems and art creates problems.” When I’m making art, it’s always an open ended process. I don’t have an image of what I’m going to make. I don’t write a brief for myself and then try and fulfil the brief. It’s more like an adventure where the direction of the project becomes more and more articulated as it takes shape. Whereas with design, you can’t just take off without a clear goal – you need to know exactly what you need to deliver. There are these things called “deliverables” and you need to know exactly what they are, exactly when they’re coming in, exactly how to prioritise them and what order to work in. It’s much more regimented. The creative side of design is very interesting but when you’re working as a commercial designer there are more or less tried and true methodologies that we tend to use. I’m not saying that the ideas are the same every time, but the way that we work has a pattern. That’s true for some artists as well. But I would say that at this stage in my art practice, I’m all about developing and extending these methodologies.

I think it’s very good to be mindful of which context you’re working in. If you’re using too many art-context methods in the design realm, they’re probably not going to work. But if they don’t work in the design realm maybe they’re good art methods.

BPIt was definitely there before I worked as a designer. I feel like I’ve always occupied the gap between art and architecture. There were a couple of times during art school that I wanted to switch to architecture, but when I’d go over to the architecture studios, the students would be working on drawings and maquettes, and I’d be disappointed. I wanted to see the buildings, I wanted to see the actual spaces! At art school I made the kind of spaces I had the skills to make, because I wanted to see the articulation of an idea and the entire form.

I’m also really interested in architectural history, and the socio-political context of a building. I think architecture is a really good sponge for identity as well. It doesn’t produce identity so much as absorb it, I would say. Or maybe it’s a two-way street… but I really enjoy thinking about architecture as this kind of backdrop or sponge for social identity.

BPVery literally in fact! We have a tendency to re-write history to suit the needs of the present moment. In the 2010s there was a popular interior design trend called industrial chic, which appropriated the aesthetics of factories from the early industrial period. I think the popularity of this trend stems from a longing for a time when technology still promised to deliver us a better future. Andromöeda imagined an interior that was set in 2017 but from the perspective of the future, looking back. The work interprets the liminality of our time by collaging disparate materials - 90’s TV graphics, Victorian heritage architecture, civil rights emblems and ancient Greek mythologies. The work cautions us against reducing history to an aesthetic reduction of a time-period that leaves no meaningful representation of socio-political life for people living in that time. It’s the responsibility of artists to consider their own intersections.

BPRight, so it’s a matter of personal responsibility. Traditionally the architecture world and the world of academia, and many other institutions, have been dominated by hetero-, patriarchal, white perspectives. When I’m reading and researching I often think “what is missing here?” In order to find the ideas that really inspire me in this domain, I’ve had to literally use these keywords, and ask: what does a feminist architecture look like? How do architectural historians explore their intersections through writing about and making buildings?

Andromöeda was a bit tongue-in-cheek and uneasy, because it’s a projection of the future, and what future institutions could look like. It was about imagining new ways in which we can design cultural institutions and it was like a micro version of an institution in its own right.

BPYes.

BPWell, it’s not just public transport, I’m interested in private transport as well – for example, my show at The Physics Room evolved from the “skin” of a smart car. Following Andromöeda, I was describing the work I was making for Synthetic Baby (The Physics Room show), and someone said to me “it seems like you’re taking a different direction.” And I thought, how is this a different direction? For me, the passion for both of these things come from the same place. 

When I was 18, I had this obsession with 1960s American design. At that time there was a fixation on the space race, and the idea of houses as machines for living, and in 1968, 2001: a Space Odyssey came out, and there was a fascination with spaceship interiors. I was into this architecture firm called Superflex, and the Italian industrial and interior designer Joe Colombo. They were almost imagining how to make an interior for living that uses the same logic as the interior of the aeroplane. Theirs was a type of design that blends interior design or architecture with product design. And my interest with all of this was not just with supermodernity as such, but with the optimism that has been attached to it – the feeling that living with technology is going to enhance your life. And I’m interested with the flip side of that as well, all of the ways in which technology fails us.

BPTouch is really, really, really important to my work. Touch is the mother of the senses. And public transport, aeroplanes, cars and all of these kinds of interiors, are all so fascinating from a sensory perspective, in a way that architecture just isn’t. They have their own micro-sociologies going on, they activate all of these different parts of the body. The haptic sense, and muscle memory, and – especially in Berlin – the olfactory sense! That’s very interesting to me.

BPAt first when I got to Berlin I felt like an outsider. It felt like I didn’t know what I was doing, I’d just learnt how to use a train and go in the right direction –

BP– yeah. And I had this feeling… that almost everybody on the train knew that I wasn’t meant to be there, and that I stood out. Of course in reality nobody cared, no one was looking at me, but this feeling… I couldn’t shake it. But then! We would arrive at these stations, and they were just so spectacular, I wanted to get out at every single one. They were such a distraction from this bad feeling that I thought, whatever this feeling is, it’s so worth it to get to these stations. Immediately, I was in love.

Being underground was a world of different sensations. It felt very separate from life above ground, in the beginning. I could see there was a lot of history, and I wanted to read these stations like texts. But I didn’t just want to do a tour by one of those classic historians who just give you the facts, “this station was built in the year blah blah blah and it is such-and-such long.” You have to do a lot of work to read between the lines, and there are many gaps in the information. The gaps are so crucial to me, but you can’t find writing about them anywhere. So you work with them, in them, through them.

The stations are places where people hang out. There’s a whole culture of the underground train, which is specific to Berlin’s specific social-cultural makeup. And there’s also a generalised train-riding culture, which can be observed in other cities with underground train networks. It’s definitely a lot more at-ease than the feeling of being at an airport with a whole bunch of strangers. There are all these different social groups in the U-Bahn, and for the most part, people are being very tolerant of one another. And so I had this feeling that the U-Bahn is like the living room of democracy – this is what democracy looks like! It sounds trite and it sounds naïve, but this was the feeling I was met with when I moved here. 

BPI’m not thinking of my work as a play but as a “performative lecture,” which is different – the basis is a lecture, and not theatre. I will only have one main prop – which is a decorative curtain, a 1:1 reproduction of the tiled walls of the Hermannplatz U-Bahn station. The curtain becomes this kind of soft façade backdrop for the lecture, which will start in Hermannplatz, covering its peculiar histories, but then depart to unexpected destinations. It’s something between a backdrop and a piece of decoration. Depending on what the speaker is talking about, it can take on one meaning or another. It’s a very flexible prop.

In the work that I did at The Physics Room, I said I was making a prop opera (although since the main actor was dancing rather than singing, it was more like a prop-ballet). Thinking about the objects I make as props is really interesting to me. Sometimes they’re props, sometimes they’re décor. They’re very slippery things.

BPI wouldn’t say artists “should” be teachers. But I think they can be teachers. Lots of people that I’ve encountered during the research for this project have been amateurs, in the sense that they aren’t working within traditional institutions. And I love amateurism! It brings its own beautiful energy. And with this performative lecture format, I get to play with what it means to be an expert on a subject.

BPThe idea to use a lecture format came from a few different places. I started going to this event called Berlin Spoken Word, and again, I was thrilled to find myself in a community of mostly amature writers. Anyone can go and just get up to perform a poem, or a song, or some kind of reading. They get up in front of this room of strangers, and everyone’s so encouraging, it’s like doing karaoke at Charlie’s on K’ road in Auckland. When I go to those kinds of events, I’m confronted by the literal power of the voice. It’s really beautiful, it’s so simple but there are so many different things you can do with it. 

Making this new work I was also thinking about the architect Katarina Bonnevier. With her thesis “Behind Straight Curtains” she turned the thesis format into a play. The way she uses the voice in that piece is really interesting. It goes between an academic tone and a very heartfelt, funny character. The fact that she said to herself “Ok I’m writing a play, I’m not just writing a thesis” gave her a lot of license to do things that you literally cannot do in real life. The play jumps through time, it’s a door which takes you to a different dimension… that’s amazing to me, and you can do it if you decide to make something theatrical.

But going back to my lecture… you have to think “what am I giving to the audience?” Making art is weird, you have to be selfish and generous at the same time. You have to create work for yourself, definitely, but you can’t just do it for yourself. If your art brings together all the things you love, like a personal, special little thing of yours, that’s great, but how are you giving the audience access to the subject that interests you?