Original subtitles

Yeah, there's a little shade here.

An architectural masterpiece of urban planning.

Fresh from the drawing board:

the theory of an urban district.

Guess they're going to call this "Europacity."

Europe is certainly deserving of that.

Should I turn it up?

We don't have power anymore.

We need power.

NOTICE OF TERMINATION

Things can't stay as they are.

Things aren't allowed to stay as they are.

Let's assume the three of us live here.

We live a makeshift life.

Our bags are always half packed, we're on the go.

Freedom is important to us. We have no bonds and don't want any.

-Take care. Good luck! -Bye!

Hello!

-Hey. -Hi.

-Give that here. -Camera.

Our goals are short term.

The main objective is to make ourselves happy.

The main objective is to make ourselves happy?

My film's about self-optimized individuals and collective consciousness.

I wanted to know what you're aspiring to at the moment.

What is your ideal aim?

You mean for my future?

Yes, for your future but also more generally.

These things prove the arbitrariness of economic principles.

These shoes were new and had a price.

They're still new, but the price is now a fraction of what it was.

All the same, no one wants them.

Is this all without value?

When does it have a value? Right now it's clearly superfluous.

This is broken and worthless now.

I put it back together and it's Jeff Koons' "Balloon Dog."

It was once worth 10,000 dollars.

-Excuse me? -Yes?

Can I give you 10,000 dollars for this?

No, you don't need to pay. You can just have it.

-Thank you. -You're welcome.

Thanks.

-Hello, Mr. Felsch. -Hello.

Mr. Felsch I read your book. It inspired me to do the film I'm making.

I was wondering where we are today. Have we entered a "long winter of theory"?

Because that combination

of theory, reading and political revolt no longer exists in that way.

Firstly, we have an entirely different reading culture.

You can really see that at universities.

-You work at a university. -I do, that's right.

I teach cultural studies at Humboldt University.

I believe the people who were part of the 1968 generation

were, above all else, gifted readers.

As has been noted repeatedly that generation itself

didn't really produce very many high-level theoreticians.

-They... -That's interesting.

As if one can't read and write at the same time.

That's sort of the point I wanted to make.

Lots of figures from the 1968 political scene

read a whole lot and got books and texts in circulation.

Like the founders of little left-wing publishing houses, such as Merve.

When you look around universities today

it's actually virtually the reverse.

That is, we are all constantly writing something.

People write a lot more during their studies.

Cyberculture has greatly reduced inhibitions about producing writing.

Without having to go to any fuss you can get publicity in some form.

There's probably a lot more resistance with a typewriter.

With a typewriter what you've written is only on paper,

no one reads it.

There are a lot more ways to get publicity today.

Peer-to-peer culture encourages writing. It's very empowering.

You have to wonder if all that's written is getting read.

Yes, mathematically that can't be.

So how is it as a historian?

Can you research the future as well?

-Is the future relevant to an historian? -I think that's a pretty important point.

The long summer of theory,

the reason it was so long and so hot

was because they were theories that ventured to predict the future.

The blueprint for that was Marxism

or the philosophy of history, which goes back roughly to Hegel.

Theories that don't just describe things in the now

but that also make a claim to know how history will develop going forward

and that always project towards some objective at the end of history.

I don't think we can go back

to those grand, optimistic

teleological narratives

that tell us what direction things are heading in,

what direction history is moving, it's meaning.

Yet, at the same time, I see,

in and outside of universities, things like the Anthropocene discussion.

They show there's obviously a desire for that again.

That after these 20 years of postmodernism

there's a desire to return to something,

to develop a theory of history

that can somehow or other give us a sense of how the story will go on.

I think it's clear that has resurfaced.

I'll sleep with you.

Yes, I'll sleep with you.

Now that we've been married for a day.

Yesterday,

on April 29, 1945, we got married.

My name is now "Eva Hitler."

My hair has turned brown in the bunker.

Like my old name.

"Eva Braun."

Braun. You have to roll the R, that's what they did back then.

What kind of a text is it anyway?

I'm no longer pretty.

My powder boxes are empty.

My silk stockings have runs.

Runs.

And tomorrow...

Tomorrow we'll all be dead.

But I'm going to fuck you before then.

I think that's good.

Yeah, I reinterpreted the text. No one can perform this crap.

-And then? -"And then" what?

What happened then?

Then another girl came and she did it.

Bye-bye German Film Award.

-You'd have given him a blow job? -I'd do anything for a lead role.

Besides, let's be honest.

What's the deal with humanizing a monster? Am I supposed to empathize with Eva Braun?

"Sentimental drama in the Führer's bunker."

Nazis had human emotions too.

Justification of the past is the new genre with "good Nazis."

Justification of the past?

I have a different theory

I think those films are so well-loved because of the female parts.

Back then women were still beautiful, seductive,

and, most importantly, submissive.

You know, that brings back memories of the good old days,

when a man was still a man and a woman was still a woman.

Frau.

-Frau! -The woman from bygone days.

At least your part had a name.

Recent movies hardly ever pass the Bechdel test.

-What test? -The Bechdel test.

It indicates if a film is misogynistic.

A film isn't that if it has at least two female parts.

And they have to talk to each other about a topic besides men.

-What else do you want to talk about? -Yeah, that's right.

-What else would we talk about? -That's about it, really.

This isn't going to be misogynistic, but it won't be very kind to men either.

Okay, read it.

"Dear, etc... I find your movie title,

"The Long Journey from Collective Consciousness

"to Self-Optimized Individual - We become I..."

-Cumbersome? -"Romantic.

"You swoon over the past.

"Nostalgia oozes forth like lukewarm gravy..."

If your theory is labeled "romantic" you can take it to an emotional level.

You have to do that in every screenplay. It's about identification.

This is a total Hollywood independent film expert speaking, right?

I don't want a character to identify with.

Why not?

It imposes foreign emotions on you and I don't want to be manipulated.

-I mean I'm really hungry. -Yes, I'll be there in a sec.

What kind of a character is Detlef?

Detlef has always been here in this apartment.

Yeah, when we moved in he always slept in the bathtub.

-Until we got him the sofa. -Thanks.

Detlef has seen the entire recent past.

He basically holds 30 years of history inside him and now he mostly keeps silent.

-So the silent past? -That's enough for me.

I don't want to sit here later and have done nothing.

Can you convey that to the viewer?

It's not entertainment. Nola is making a political film.

-And it's about freedom. -Freedom sounds a bit romantic, right?

-Replenishments. -Finally!

Freedom isn't romantic, it's existential.

We'll notice that when it's gone.

Where are your doors?

-They were in bad need of refurbishment. -Yeah, that's right.

Yes, they urgently had to be fitted with gilded doorknobs.

-The hypothesis is: What should we do? -That's no hypothesis.

Sure, we just have to scream it out: "What should we do?!"

That's all been done.

It's how Baader and Meinhof sat at the table planning abductions.

Nonsense! First they set fire to a department store in Frankfurt.

Yeah, but we're talking about not reenacting the past.

Not reenacting it but processing it.

Or as inspiration.

But still the question remains:

What to do?

-Hi. -Hi.

-Hi. -Hey.

Is something going on with you guys?

Nothing at all is going on.

Work, earning a living,

a livelihood.

And we're not any further ahead.

The low-wage sector is still primarily occupied by women.

More and more so.

A growing number of women are working in low-wage jobs

like caregiving,

cleaning.

And then the neoliberal blather

about how emancipating it is when a woman can provide for herself.

She has to provide for herself.

All that does is provide capitalism with cheap labor.

And women end up doing the same jobs as always.

I toil for my independence. That's a contradiction in terms.

You know what, Nola,

sometimes I'd like to have it like that too.

Someone who helps me put my coat on, who holds the door open for me

or who escorts me to the table.

And who reads the menu to you.

An older man who fumbles to get his reading glasses out. Oh, Katja!

You know what I mean.

But, you know, as long as the tourists come

and pay their 25 euros a head per night

and are happy with that everything's dandy.

At least someone invented the washing machine.

Yeah, what are we complaining about?

-I think we should go in for the audio. -Sounds good.

Can you explain the term "state feminism" to me?

That's the title of our book and it's actually meant a bit ironically.

About ten years ago it was a surprise

to see established politicians turn feminist.

They gave passionate speeches about the importance of women's independence.

Then came a series of reforms.

The parental allowance was introduced,

day care was expanded and "mini-jobs" were introduced.

Ultimately it was clear that the main aim of that reform

was to get well-educated women to have lots of kids

and to get them to return to work as quickly as possible after childbirth.

Once you realized that it's primarily women

who take care of small children and old people

it turned out that it was ultimately the intensification of a double burden.

As far as we know that has never been the aim of a feminist movement.

We don't know anybody who wants that.

So the burden on women has actually increased

thanks to prevailing ideas of motherhood?

Yes.

But you can't view that independently

from the other laws that have changed as well.

The Hartz IV reforms to unemployment and social welfare were implemented,

so were mini-jobs and part-time jobs.

And all those things led to

a lot more women being in employment.

The labor force participation rate for women

has increased from 2003 to today

to over 70 percent.

And back then it was 55 percent.

That's something that makes you wonder:

How did that happen?

Why has the state discovered feminism all of a sudden

and why do we now have so many women with children who are working?

So it's really about creating a more productive society,

about incentives to make society more productive.

-That's how I see it. -And to preserve the capitalist system.

-Actually. -Yes, to preserve it...

-Or even to... -To optimize it.

Yes, to optimize it.

So that... Yes, you really can say that. What does it mean for society?

Well-educated women who are then supposed to be...

After having spent all of 20 years going to school and studying

they're supposed to put all their effort into raising one or two children?

As far as the state's concerned that's a huge waste,

from a capitalist standpoint it is as well.

Basically those women are supposed to continue

to make their productivity available to the market.

Nowadays most women have to work. Lots of women had to do that before too.

But in this day and age there are more demands.

Women are expected to have immensely successful careers

while at the same time, and we haven`t yet talked about this,

lofty demands are being put on mothers and fathers.

You can't just raise a kid nowadays,

they have to be very gifted and you have to foster

your children as much as possible.

I insist upon my right to laziness.

Like other people insist upon their right to work.

I've always been a flop on the job market.

Whatever.

I had a job as a corpse in the theater.

In this play that was like three hours long.

I died ten minutes into it.

I lay there, me with my weak bladder.

I couldn't hold it anymore after 40 minutes.

And I had to decide if I was going to pee onstage or go to the toilet.

I chose the toilet.

I got up, went to the toilet,

came back

and lay down in the same place.

No one really noticed.

But the director totally blew his top.

He was so hot-tempered he fired me on the spot.

It's absurd, as if anyone really believed you were dead.

-Yeah! -That's an idea.

Theater with real corpses.

Maybe with volunteers who want to live out their final rush.

Yeah, like GG Allin.

He died in front of his audience. He did it.

Even as a corpse in a theater

you still have no right to laziness.

Come on.

You coming?

Hey, come on!

That's good. One, two...

three!

Towards me. That's right.

We're nearly done.

Oh yeah, this is...

I don't even know what his name is.

-Time for a Sexy Lamp Test. -Oh, you're mean!

We'll take the part out of the script and replace it with a decorative lamp.

If the story doesn't change, it's a fail.

Two against one, so...

Man, you guys are so mean!

The guy is really nice, and a great actor to boot.

-Hello. -Hello.

Hi. Nice lamp.

-Can we borrow your bike again? -Yeah.

-Do the Chinese guys still need it? -The Chinese guys don't need a bike.

Yes, you can take it.

-Have you found a new apartment? -Mom says we won't with all the dogs.

-What'll you do then? -Grandma has a yard.

Do we know where we're going to move yet?

"My husband is my home." That's what my grandma said.

I mean, what are we doing here anyway? I mean in the here and now.

Are we different or are the times different?

We're sitting at a dumb hand-me-down table with all our old crap.

And all we own is the cup in our hands.

Wouldn't the situation be totally different

if we were sitting in a cozy little garden?

Like in the community garden Bornholm II?

We're different people in this situation.

We'd read a Friedrich Kittler text totally differently.

We may even interpret it differently,

take the opposing position, not an affirmative one.

I doubt I'd read it at all. These brats would have me at my wit's end.

The situation could be totally different.

Imagine it, we're sitting in the salon

of a 200-square-meter pre-WWII apartment on Pariser Strasse.

The nanny has already put the brats to bed.

Or we didn't have any to begin with. Right? You not here at all!

Wow! I never thought your imagination was so bourgeois.

To be honest I find it pretty strenuous to keep my bearing all day.

I mean, bearing in what sense?

-Towards what? -I imagine it being quite fun.

You know, when you really get into it and get a feel for it.

But then it'd be the only life you have.

Thank you.

We could do something totally normal.

Yes.

An occupation we never would've chosen of our own free will.

Right, this is for you. You can read through it.

Well, if I had to sit here at my desk every day

I think I'd try to find happiness in the evenings and on weekends.

-I think that makes lots of things easier. -I couldn't do it.

But if I had to

maybe then I could.

Maybe you have to have to to be able to.

And then it makes sense to rebel against all this crap.

You're right about that, everything here really is total crap.

We're going on about parallel worlds. We could do this forever.

Yet it doesn't get us any further along, and we never go far enough.

A coffee picker in Bali, a seamstress in Bangladesh,

we jump from one extreme to the other.

The more extreme we get the more we neutralize ourselves.

Neutralize?

Yeah.

We always revert to being ourselves.

Yeah.

Damn!

Yeah, you have to position yourself.

To find a position.

But within or without?

Do I think from the inside out or do I see myself from the outside?

I would actually rather do the latter.

But I fear there is no "outside" anymore.

The individual has greedily absorbed that within.

But what you dream of, or what you mean,

is that everyone is outside.

That no one follows any rules or any laws anymore.

And that brings us back to the Red Army Faction.

No, that's baloney.

Even if I were allowed to break laws I don't know which laws I'd want to break,

let alone demolish.

I can think of one or two things that one could demolish.

Yes, you as an individualist.

But, in all honesty,

we're all totally sedated

and stupefied with little gifts and rewards.

And no one voluntarily demolishes their little reward.

That's a primal instinct.

Sure, but I'm not even that far along. It's not relevant to me.

Right now I don't have any possessions that I could defend.

All right then, I'll explain the entry area to you now.

As you can see it's a prestigious space, gloriously awash in light.

You could call this room the centerpiece of the apartment.

Look how the wonderful features of this old structure are brought to bear.

-Cool, eh? -That's right, I want to hear a "whoop!"

Yes, now I'll show you the bathroom units.

You can have them converted and made into a designer bath and sanitary facilities.

-Hello, Ms. Jaeggi. -Hello, Nola.

How do you define the term "forms of life"?

I'll tell you the formula and then explain it.

They are something akin to inert bundles or ensembles of social practices.

That alludes to some things that are key to the term "forms of life."

One is that they are social practices,

things that people do and that they do with certain behavioral patterns

that are social in that they are socially shaped and defined.

When discussing forms of life people argue about what practices to include.

Is a family still a family if the members no longer talk or eat dinner together?

-Lots of fighting. -Interesting.

Is it a city if it no longer has public places

where people can meet up without making a date and without paying?

You could say that contradicts the idea of a city,

or of how we construe the city as a form of life if such spots are gone.

In the film we dream ourselves away into other scenarios.

So we're actually a little bit weary of our existing form of life,

or of existence in general.

So we dream about how it would be if we had a bourgeois family

or if we had jobs that didn't allow us so much time to think,

jobs that are a lot more structured.

But in the end we realize

no matter where we dream ourselves away to we always revert back to ourselves.

What do you think about that?

I mean, would that change me?

Or, what does a form of life do with me, as an individual?

The idea that I as an individual am here and the form or life is here,

like it's some kind of armor that you slip into,

or as if your form or life were some kind of a cabin that you walk into

but can also walk back out of and be yourself.

Yes, that is not the notion that I...

That isn't the notion that guides me or that...

I don't assume that, I basically assume that you...

I assume that getting out of that socially determined behavioral...

What I mean is that you can't escape interpretations

of how you see your life and what you are.

That is, you can't just step out of them.

When you step out of them you're still referring back to them.

-A good way to explain that may be... -There is no neutral space?

-Exactly. -I'm always in a form of life.

I can't step out into a vacuum with no form of life

and step into a new one.

But you can still consciously plan collective forms of life.

Artists living together precariously is a conscious attempt at a form of life.

One could call that a form of life

that takes the fluid or the transitional...

It institutionalizes the transitional phase.

We were talking about our lack of bonds, which we actually quite like.

I wanted jump to the way the New Right interprets what it means to have no bonds.

It sees reviving ties to family and homeland as the way to save humanity.

So they basically see a lack of bonds as the plague of humanity.

How do you see that?

Something like that quite crude notion of homeland and family,

the idea of something you're born into that is steadfast and undying,

is something that is meant to give us the guidance we are all allegedly missing.

I think that is a very, very disastrous interpretation

and a very disastrous diagnosis that seems to cover a lot of things.

It's why the New Right call themselves "identitarians."

I think it's important to realize

that a lack of relationships, an indifference towards the world,

oneself and others is a real problem.

But that cannot be correlated

to pre-existing, given and developed

identities and ideas of homeland.

My assumption is actually the opposite.

I believe that overemphasis, or that emphasis on what is given,

the emphasis on homeland and traditional family structures,

is something that has to do with the fact

that people feel powerless in the circumstances they live in.

-That they can't shape them... -Out of fear?

Yes, it's a...

-A realization of impracticability. -Yes.

That's just how we grew up.

Politics are for politicians and we, we do something else.

It's established, like the division of labor.

If we're political at all then we're the opposition.

That's not really true anymore. We were the opposition.

Now Pegida, the AfD, right-wingers and identitarians are the opposition.

So now we're the opposition to the opposition.

Or we...

Or we work hand-in-hand with politicians.

With the government.

A cabinet of horrors.

But we want to be the opposition, that's our role.

Oh, guys, opposition aside. Don't we want to do something?

Make political films or films in general?

I've seen quite a few political films that were just political thrillers.

They were about big names and big-time topics.

I'm definitely going to revolt. The only question is when?

Whether I'll do it before or after the Nazis have seized power.

Somehow we have to create entirely new structures.

To reinvent politics.

Like reinventing the wheel.

We have to start there, by creating a new -ismus.

-One that doesn't exist yet. -Yeah, and what should it be?

Empathism, perhaps.

What's that supposed to be? Rousseau?

Should we start over from the beginning?

Empathy as a value anchored in the legal framework.

Not before I've pushed through the right to earn money with your eyes closed.

Am I the only pragmatic person in this room or what?

It's not like the refrigerator fills up overnight on its own.

Well, in a certain sense it does do that.

Really? How does a refrigerator fill itself?

Well, Katja managed to crack the lock to an empty apartment in this building

and to use it as a nice Airbnb lodging.

-In order to feed the family. -Let's move beyond the food issue.

We really should open up our eyes.

Do we really want to see this?

It is high treason against the German people.

We categorically say no to expanding immigration

to allow third-country nationals.

It would overstrain our country's integration capacity.

Lying press!

Lying press!

Lying press!

What does the German oak care

if a warthog rubs against it?

So you'll eventually only get stale bread and water.

Because that's what is just for you.

Deport!

Deport! Deport!

-I'm going to make an announcement. -Yeah?

Listen here, everyone.

Zip them!

As you know this is our last Wednesday dinner.

We're going to be thrown out in three days.

Today we sit together, then we party and then it's over and done.

So I propose that we all raise our glasses again.

-To a new start. -Did someone ring?

What's that?

-What is that? -An ulcer remedy.

Do you have an ulcer or do you mean us?

Oh, come on.

-Hassan. -That's a bit mean.

-What's he doing over there? -Dishes.

-Boy, you guys suck. -Hey, have a burger to add to your halo.

He's an actor, like we are.

But he fell out with all the directors and his agency dumped him.

Yeah, and so we help him with his rent.

He wants to work for it, so he does dishes.

I saw you on TV playing a Lebanese drug boss.

Na, dude, don't start.

I'm done with those roles. Screw stereotypes!

I want to play normal people.

We work, we've been living here for years. What the hell!

Then play yourself, write your dialogs. I have a low-budget project.

-What do you say? -With deferred payment?

-No, I said low-budget, not no-budget. -Oh, okay.

Dog, don't get me wrong. I have to do my job. I get a set rate.

-I got you. -My hourly wage drops the longer we talk.

-Okay. -That's straight talk.

The art crisis.

The real question is: Does art always have to be unpaid?

It's more that we differentiate. We say "no-budget" is art.

If something's paid it's commercial.

-It's either-or, that causes poverty. -I make art and my punishment is no money.

For me making loads of dough doing it would be a disaster.

I don't think he wants that either, that's why he's here.

So you don't want to be whores, but what if you love your clients?

If you made really awesome money doing things that you love?

Paradise.

Yeah, but the market is made up of people and people desire things.

Do you think people really desire what they see? Or that it...

-I'd say audiences, the masses... -Bye.

Bye.

They watch what's shown to them.

The problem we're facing right now is that critical art is what's in demand.

I don't need money, just burgers.

22/6, first take.

Clapper.

Go ahead.

-Hello, Mr. Hegemann. -Hello.

Nice to see you. We are now here...

What if a movie didn't create an illusion? Would that not be cinema?

When making art in general and when making political art

you have no choice but to peek at what's behind the façade.

And no matter how bad it is you have to concern yourself with it.

That would be a kind of enlightenment.

But you have to be fully aware that the audience

always feels it has been duped then,

because audiences go to the cinema for that illusion.

But a film that employs those mechanisms of illusion

to present a successful revolution or a strong socially critical plot

without breaking the illusion is perhaps not all that political.

-According to Brecht... -Then it's more manipulative?

Yes.

It's probably without effect.

You watch it, are moved and maybe you shed a tear and that's that.

Brecht said people are lulled into the illusion

and no longer construe the world as alterable.

You can only construe it is as alterable when you free yourself from the illusion.

That doesn't exist anywhere else, it only exists on this stage.

That a grown person can claim they are the King of Denmark or similar.

And that is interesting,

because if you were to do that in real life, if you were to dress up...

That great suit you're wearing is borderline.

-It's almost a costume. -Yeah.

-If you walk around in that... -I get stared at walking around the city.

As Hamlet I'd probably be...

If I said I was Hamlet I'd be put in a psychiatric ward.

Or if you were to put on a tie and stick a moustache on

and claim to be a man.

Wearing a glued on moustache in the theater is no problem at all.

People believe it, people accept that kind of mixing of identities.

But mixing up life with a theater stage, that can be really dangerous.

It is simply extremely liberating when you can say what you think.

A colleague who is your age recently told me

she didn't know anyone among her acquaintances

who still says what they think.

People can't afford to do that anymore.

But what kind of a society, what kind of life is it

when you only ever say what's suitable in a given moment

and the other person does that too?

Then you live in a totally illusory world,

then the theater of social roles is truly detached from the people.

-And that's why it's so liberating and... -Then we're all zombies.

We can say that this stage is exemplary because people here,

where others stay objective and cool when they try to lodge a tiny objection,

people here yell, that's why there's so much yelling.

That's because here people can use their voice to express authentic thoughts.

And that truth and seriousness, you really can't act as if it were so.

It seems you can only do that onstage, where it's not forbidden to yell.

In my script it says we ride Bobby Cars now.

If it say so, we have to do it.

I doubt it's conducive to self-optimization.

-This is chic too. -I think it makes you look old somehow.

-The fur, not you. -Um-hm.

Yeah. Or maybe a two-piece outfit...

"This rapidly changing city

"that made its flaw of a lack of tradition into a sign of modernity."

That sounds like it could be from now.

But it was written by Robert Walser in 1908.

"Makeshift existence suits Berlin,

"where people are eager for anything new, quickly pass over yesterday

"and nothing stays as it was."

That's still true today too.

"To Robert Walser Berlin is a body, a dream populated by Berlin's women.

"He wants them all, the naïve, voluptuous violent lady

"and the good little girl from Kurfürstendamm."

-Button it up, right? -Yeah.

"Berlin is a giant lady.

"Contemporaries continually stress the analogy of Berlin and its women

"Robert Musil, Carl Zuckmayer...

"These quotes have

"a striking mix of incredulous adulation, erotic attraction

"and restrained aggression that they use to describe the city and its women."

This is still the 1920s.

"The spry and firm big-city girls

"with their insatiable open mouths grow annoyed

"when my eyes settle too long on their gliding shoulders

"and floating cheeks."

A certain Franz Hessel.

More "Berlin as woman."

"The 'rubble woman.'

"Youthful beauty contrasts with the rubble she sorts.

"In the mid-1980s Helmut Newton shot his 'boardinghouse photos' in Berlin."

That sounds good. "Fräulein Petra."

"Ten years later, Jürgen Teller.

"Cloudy puddles, rusty iron doors, barred windows, dismal trees,

"garbage, construction cranes.

"Teller's Berlin photos look like a hastily opened gift

"whose contents disappointed and were cast aside.

"He photographs flawed female bodies that don't fit any ideal:

"thighs adorned with red spots, lips ripped open, elbows too raw."

Heroin chic?

Me again.

"He reacts to the dematerialization of existence with vulnerable bodies

"that tell stories.

"In Berlin he seeks phenomena that open themselves up to narratives.

"The girl in the sweater with Hölderlin in her pocket,

"as Harold Nicholsen described in 1929,

"had become a junkie after 1961."

I'm the girl in the sweater. I have Hölderlin in my pocket too.

The City and Its Bodies.

The City of Women.

No, that was another film.

And behind that façade lurks an immense void.

-Hello, Ms. Allmendinger. -Hello, Nola.

I interviewed students for my film and what stood out to me

was most of them answered the questions in relation to their own futures

but never in the context of society as a whole.

And I was wondering if it was due to my questioning technique

that it always went in that individualistic direction.

People naturally start talking about themselves.

We know that, and so we have to resort to measures

to make them move on to talking about society of their own accord,

or to get them to extrapolate from themselves to their social circle

or to what they think about society and the world.

So you can of course do that by sitting in a bar for a long time

drinking beer with them

and you'll get that in what we call a "narrative interview."

But you don't get anything representative with that.

We start with just what you were criticizing.

We want people focused on themselves,

so they notice how they feel.

And that they begin with themselves alone.

And we do that by trying to shut down cognition.

They shouldn't think.

And then we give them these surfaces. This is a kind of mat.

This is rough, this is glass, this is corrugated cardboard.

-And we say... -And it works. You immediately...

-You feel... -We ask, "How does your life feel today?

-"Just tell me how life feels today." -Yeah.

What the media tells them, what they read in books is immediately gone.

Think about how your life feels.

You can do it differently. I can have you smell this.

How does your life smell? Like this?

Or does life smell like this?

And voilà! You forget what people have been telling you.

We don't want that. We can read that in the paper.

We're interested in your opinion.

When we have them at a point where they've attained inner peace

and have forgotten all else, then we get started.

Then we ask, "How important is a feeling of togetherness to you?

"How important is that to you?"

And then you can answer that question on that very pure level.

Those are preliminary questions, then we move on to the real ones.

What do you desire for the coming generation?

What do you wish to pass on to your kids? What'd be your legacy?

We've already moved a step from a focus on "me" to a focus on society.

And then if we then take a third step and ask,

"And what do you think? How will society actually be?"

Those steps get us something utterly different

than going right to that third level does.

You're absolutely right, then people stay in their own little lives.

If you were given carte blanche what would you change in our society?

What we see is that income is important and, of course, so is education.

There's no doubt about that.

But when we consider which people have visions,

which people see life as an opportunity to shape the things around them

and see life as worth shaping.

Increasingly those are people with true circles of friends.

And not lots of friends who are all from the same place,

as was once perhaps the case for me,

but friends from different countries and from a diverse array of backgrounds.

People of varying ages and sexual orientations.

And that can be facilitated.

That's something I think society does less and less.

We've noticed that those various groups are increasingly staying among themselves.

And so what I would recommend is a mandatory social year.

That there's a kind of mandatory exchange

with people in other countries.

We have to introduce people, young people, to that

so that we don't stay in one little spot in Germany our entire lives.

So we want to open up and have to open up to the wider world.

You can't force that on people, they have to want it.

And the will to do that comes with one-to-one contact, with experience.

People with a broader focus?

Pessimistic people say, "The feeling of togetherness is lovely,

"but it's going down the drain."

Those are people who haven't experienced a feeling of otherness.

-Yes. -Yet you can create that.

You can do that politically, socially with incentives

and by supporting that.

To create the possibility of having those diverse social contacts.

Not by doing the opposite with urban planning,

that is, keeping people among their own, in their own schools.

Or, on the other hand, by having schools that are so diverse

that there's no longer a common thread.

Thank you so much.

We're waiting for one little screw then it's done.

It looks pretty good already.

Nola.

-How's your film coming along? -Nearly done.

-I just need a really good final scene. -Do you already have a resolution?

I'm not deluding myself.

My film won't change the world or kick-start a revolt.

It's more of a stocktaking.

I asked questions and everyone has to find their own answers.

I'm going.

A package for Pit.

So? Sexy lamp?

"You can't do a thing there anymore," so they said

It's like a museum, all it does is look good

And that's why we're moving on

To shut down the next city

Ownership

Our ownership

Own

Own and everything

Ownership

Our own and everything

-Hello, Mr. Groys. -Hello.

-Nice to see you. -I'm glad you're here.

We've chosen this very futuristic location.

Do you feel like you're in the future here?

Yes, perhaps, inasmuch as this place reminds me of

how I imagined the future when I was a child.

When I read books and saw movies

this is more or less how I imagined it.

It seems to me that for a period,

in the 19th century, at the start of the 20th century

and into the 1960s and 1970s,

people still thought a lot about the future.

And people had the feeling that they could shape the future.

That you could push a project through, develop a vision, so to speak,

and then realize it.

There was this idea of a sort of human omnipotence.

But now, more and more,

the future is becoming an event to us.

An event

that's new to us.

We're not really prepared.

It often comes as something unexpected.

And we have the feeling that we should constantly adapt.

I believe that our strategic behavior

has increasingly become a strategy of adapting to the future.

I sometimes call that "self-updating."

In one of your texts

you talk about film and say

film contains a paradox between vita contemplativa and vita activa.

That screen heroes are hyperactive.

They shoot, they jump,

they have to achieve heroic aims,

and the viewer automatically becomes passive

because he or she sits statically in a chair in a theater seat.

How can you become capable of acting in the face of that paradox?

Or how can you induce the viewer to become active?

By getting the viewer

to internally identify with the movie's heroic character.

What you described as internal movement of thought?

-Not movement of thought. -No?

No.

Neither the hero can think...

-The hero can't think? -He can't think.

The hero has to act heroically.

And when you act heroically you don't think.

And the viewer isn't supposed to think either.

The thinking viewer was a big mistake of Brecht's.

The viewer should identify...

The viewer should identify with the movie.

The viewer should identify with the hero.

And if that hero is a revolutionary

the viewer will try to adopt the same position, the same attitude.

But via identification, Brecht was anti-identification.

Yes, but I'd say via identification.

Ultimately...

you have to...

You become revolutionary

when you feel like you're in a movie in real life.

-Yeah? -That's the premise. You have to...

-Like you're in a movie in real life? -Yes.

Or like you're in a novel.

The true revolutionary is romantic. What does that mean?

It means life is like a novel to him.

If, just for a moment,

he crashed back down into reality, so to speak,

then the revolution and the romanticism is over.

That means that only as long as I live in that...

Only as long as I live in that totally artificial reality,

which is more real to me than any reality,

am I capable of inciting a revolution.

The moment that reality becomes

a kind of quotidian misery...

When I perceive reality as quotidian misery

-When I surrender to that misery. -Yeah, then I just want to go to sleep.

That is, and everyone said this,

Mayakovsky and others said it.

The daily grind destroys revolution, the misery of the everyday.

-But still... -The boredom.

The boredom of life. Life is fundamentally boring.

Fundamentally.

And you can't have any kind of revolution against boredom.

Disgust and luxury.

Luxury and disgust, shell and content.

You throw concepts into the ring that go beyond the world of shopping

and refer to capitalist society.

It's the bland, dull husk that luxury leaves behind

when the expensive veneer is peeled away.

It's immanent, and thus wickedly genuine.

The luxury item in the glossy bag turns into a monster.

Money is of no use.

An illness that can't be cured with all the plastic surgery in the world.

Yes.

Ms. Schöne-Radunski.

Marvelous name, by the way.

Yes, you have huge potential.

Debunking the hype machine behind the linking of fashion and art

in a clever and rebellious manner.

You really make me feel pissed off,

and like I genuinely don't want to play along with this.

Which is all the more attractive. What I can't have is all the sexier.

That type of thing can escalate into an obsession.

You know what I think of all the pseudo-rebellious young women

who walk in like sluts and do totally conformist art.

That's where things come full circle.

Those drug-addict role models have to be the faces of those luxury brands.

I could really imagine something with you, marketing you.

We'll stage your art in public,

crash cultural events, disrupt, we'll be all over the media.

No, you know what?

Screw that.

Right.

We'll shoot this without cuts, okay?

Right.

Just read them aloud one after the other.

What is this? Improvisation?

Please start.

I'll start.

I won't say anything about this cart as a container for goods.

That would be too obvious.

It's about the value of things.

I just bought this thing for a euro.

Are you stupid? I had a plastic token.

Think about what it cost. It must've cost 200 or 300 euros to make.

And who pays for that?

The supermarket?

Initially, yes, but the supermarket has you, the shopper, pay for it.

Yeah, exactly. It's like a truck toll.

Huh.

-Huh? -Or like paying taxes.

Yes, it's paid for by the general public.

Uh-huh, but who does it belong to? The supermarket?

Me, because I put a euro in it.

No, you're the holder but not the proprietor.

Come on, let's not get into terminologies again.

Yeah, the thing about taxes is much more interesting.

Huh? Why are taxes interesting?

He means the general public, the general public needs such things.

The question remains whether this thing is ours because we paid for it.

If it is ours then we want to have a say in what happens to it.

Yes, that's right.

Exactly, we'd better go get the drinks with it or we won't get anywhere.

End of scene.

That's written here.

Welcome!

When do you have to go? Where will you go?

I think they're putting a fitness studio in here.

There can never be enough love.

We need loads of love in politics.

I was thinking about all the empty vaults in cemeteries that no one looks after.

You could make hostels out of them.

That's funny, I was thinking that yesterday.

Really?

I'd like to live in a public space.

-A public space? -Yeah, the circle line.

A theoretician called that "depopulation." I think it's a good term.

The zombie city!

If you have love inside you because you know how it feels

theoretically you can...

But we can't afford romanticism anymore.

I think we need empathetic politics, that'd be key.

I recently saw a couple having sex on a public subway.

That's private. Sex in the subway is privatization.

But isn't that just the problem?

Like the Internet, where everyone writes their beliefs

and makes a public space private.

It's not a belief it's sexual relief.

Can't anyone write that kind of love poem now?

Lots of people think people don't work anymore

but I think that people would...

Where's the incentive?

We're flying!

We're flying right out of here!

Bye!