Martin Mai: My first real interaction with image-making that went beyond hobby photography happened during a family get-together. I was tasked with documenting the whole thing on Super-8 Film, and it somehow turned out very experimental. I think I was about sixteen at the time. Despite the footage not being very usable as documentation, everyone was fascinated by the result. “You’ve got something there. You have to make something out of it,” is what they told me back then.

So, after graduating from high school, I applied to the University of Essen (Folkwang School). My studies in communication design were actually quite broad, with art history, philosophy, and semantics as theoretical subjects, and painting, drawing, graphic-design and photography in practice. It quickly became clear that my talent lay primarily in photography.

After two years I changed to Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan to finish my studies and started working primarily as a fashion and portrait photographer. However, this desire for classification and categorization of my work always came from outside; I never liked setting those boundaries. Of course, Fashion and Portrait need a different approach and focus, but I’ve always believed that featuring the model’s personality is just as important in fashion photography as a fashion statement is important in portrait photography. But yes, my focus is truly on people – even though architecture and interiors have always played a big role, too. Of course, there are many other reasons why one would choose photography as a career: traveling, meeting people, and seeing places you wouldn’t normally have access to, but my driving force is ultimately the feeling that there are still pictures I have to take.” I think my biggest theme though, which lies at the core of everything – and I don’t want to sound dramatic – is beauty and transience. Perhaps this theme keeps coming up because I lost my sister when I was 16. She was 18. In that moment, I realized how quickly life—even in its most beautiful and vibrant moments—can end. Perhaps that’s why my fascination with beauty is so strong. At the same time, I always feel this sense of impending danger. Beauty is always threatened, be it by time, by fate, or simply by changing circumstances. I’m not just talking about obvious, visual, and certainly not superficial beauty, but beauty in a very comprehensive and, of course, very subjective sense. And there’s this unstoppable urge to document and capture it in my own way. That’s why, for example, I would have difficulty, directing a play.

Exactly, at least no physically tangible one.

Sure. And of course, things and situations that aren’t beautiful also pass away. But then you’re perhaps more willing to accept that.

What you call “after” is actually my “before.” When I want to photograph a person, I spend a lot of time studying their face beforehand, discovering facial features that perhaps haven’t been discovered before, even in people who may have been photographed many times. In this process, my relationship with the person changes, even before I’ve photographed them. Sometimes strangers become familiar to me, or I discover something strange in familiar faces. That’s why, for example, I don’t have a standard light; instead, I always model the light in the moment, trying to figure out what it needs. The challenge then is to capture these aspects on “film”.

I met Armin last year when I photographed him for another design magazine. We immediately sensed a special connection between us. We met a few times, became friends, and the idea of making a film portrait of him was born, which we’re still working on. We were just finishing a day of filming in his studio when Numéro asked me to portray him for the Fight issue. There was no briefing, only that it had to be black and white. So Armin and I decided to simply throw away all boundaries and sense of caution. I think that only worked because we already knew and trusted each other. This trust enabled us to be very radical. The traces of his injuries are, of course, very obvious on Armin. The question is how to deal with them as a photographer. Armin already explained his perspective on this in the interview. For me it was important not to have a voyeuristic view, nor did I want it to appear exhibitionistic. We ended up taking almost 30 pictures, and in the end, we only removed two. One because it was too banal, and the other because there wasn’t enough justification for showing it. I think there are already many intelligent interpretations and classifications of Armin’s work, and I don’t want to join in on that now. What has changed for me though after these days is that I feel I intuitively understood his paintings and driving force much better. What connects us, I think, is a sense of urgency that underlies our work.

Right – and if that’s the case, then every image, every photo has its justification. Whether you say you like it or not. Because if that’s your motivation, if it comes from you, then you’re in a sense unassailable. That doesn’t mean you’re incorrigible. But you can stand by what you do, no matter what others say.

Yes, but honesty not in the sense of being fact-based; that would be too much of a limit in creating art. I would perhaps rather speak of truthfulness regarding one’s own concerns and intentions.

Fantastic. I never felt the need to add color to these photos.

Taking a picture is always about that “magical moment.” Everything comes together in that one moment, regardless of whether it’s “caught” or staged.

At some point, I felt the need to tell my stories in a different way. But film, of course, requires a completely different approach. You can photograph alone or in a small team if necessary. But in filmmaking, I had to learn to redistribute tasks. I had to learn to trust others.

Yes, it starts with an idea that becomes a script. At some point, the actress or actor reads the script aloud, and it comes to life. On set, lighting, costumes, location, acting, and staging come together; in the postproduction the music and editing—it’s an incredibly beautiful process, how things come together, how the individual layers create something amazing, to which so many people contribute.

In 2021, I shot my first feature film in Ireland—not as a director, but as a DOP. I had no experience with the processes on such a large film set. But the director just told me, “Don’t worry. On set, I actually had complete freedom to do it my way, and the director ultimately got the images he wanted. The film, by the way, won many awards at international festivals.

I would describe it more as a vague feeling. It’s not like I have a stack of images I’m working through. Nevertheless, there are of course specific topics that interest me and that I’m working on. A long-term project of mine is photographing crying women. In a moment of fragility, a face has so many facets, it’s very fascinating. It’s not that I am striving to create a documentation of women in distress—quite the opposite. I think allowing and showing vulnerability is a great strength. And for me, it’s also about showing this incredible strength. The process often exhausts me as much as it exhausts them. But it holds the potential of creating very iconic Portraits.

Tan Mu: I grew up by the seaside and our house is right by the ocean so if I think my childhood memory the sound of ocean like walk by the after school and all my childhood experience, the memory with family and friends all involve this ocean. When later on I went to school in Bejing I really felt disconnected. So every time I got the chance, I always wanted to see the blue.

Beneath the ocean, there are all these submarine cables transforming all the Information coming from the surface in real time. Right now, we’re able to talk and there’s no glitch, even no delay. That’s really fascinating to think about. It’s all connected through the ocean.

The cables really fascinated me because of the functional design made out of this contemporary material, it’s plastic. We use it to build everything. While that, visually the cable reminds me of cells, so that raises question about this Idea of a body, what is manmade and what is biological. I realized once again that I am part of this big body which in the end is like a machine and still always growing organically.

The ocean is like a mirror reflecting the sky. These two are always connected, and us humans live in between.

When I started looking at the cables, I was like, this is literally a web. We call the internet a web, but this right here is a real one, still there’s no way for people to see it. I started seeing it as a neural system transporting cultural collective memories in real time.

To connect and exchange we need to build up this infrastructure in very technical ways. While that, the eager to communicate is emotional, it’s about connecting and exchanging with the people we love. I think that’s very poetic already.

I don’t see myself as an US artist, not a Chinese artist, just an artist trying to observe. I feel more connected with myself when I’m in the depths of ocean, there is no differences in languages and the beeings. Even the whale or sharks feel like I’m a fish, part of them. I think that’s beautiful.

Being better, faster, stronger, that’s a driving force for humanity. Painting is a way to slow down. That’s also a reason why I use oil painting, this ancient method. I think it’s a statement for artists to work against this force to speed because when oil painting the time and effort is so easy to overlook. In the Signal Series, all the dots are hand-painted, it takes layer after layer. It’s really time consuming.

I am always drawn towards the unknown. Right now I am already planning a trip into an Antarctica or the North Pole for a glacier series, my next series. Glaciers are like an ancient freeze of time, they hold so much information and memory as well. That’s another big part of the oceans body, just a different organ.

Audrey Hobert: I’m so happy right now. I really am. It’s funny because when Ricky and I were making it, it was so much fun to do. The thought that it was also going to be equally exciting to finally get to talk about it never came up. I don’t know, I just thought nothing could be more fun than making it, but now that I’m getting to talk about it and do stuff like this, I’m like, oh, it’s all very fun. 

I mean, I’ll definitely play shows. I have things I would like to do in terms of TV and like certain performances – a wish list. But yeah, definitely I’m going to put on concerts and have fun in that way.

I decided that I would be doing my own project after I wrote “Sex and the City”, which took a full week. Back then, there was not a record label really in the conversation. It was more like, I had finished writing this song, then sought out Ricky, asked if he would make it with me. And two months later is when I started to feel, I guess, more pressure. I thought it was just making an EP, but when I started to get record label attention, I knew that it was in my best interest to make an album. But still, I just was really having fun the entire time.

Yeah. I didn’t think there would be a world in which I wasn’t doing something creative, but I have a lot of interests. I really like to edit. I like to direct. I like to write. I like to sing. I like to dance. I like so many things. And the fact that I’m actually getting to do all of it in this career is, it’s like, I keep saying it, but it’s the best job I’ve ever had, for sure. Because I’ve had other more normal jobs and this is by far, I mean, it’s crazy.

Yes, I shot it entirely at home! I have four music videos in my contract. We had done the “Sue me” music video, the “Bowling Alley” music video and then lastly the “Thirst Trap” music video. I still wanted to do something for “Wet Hair”. So I just filmed for a few weeks randomly if I was in the mood and then I would sort of edit it as I went. And it was actually really fun to do. 

I like to challenge myself to do something different each time. Even though I definitely feel like I have a style that I like and an identity. It’s interesting for me to try and change things up for the songs I’m making videos for.

But yeah, usually there are certain songs on the album that I will kind of naturally have ideas for videos. And then, for instance, the video that we just shot, and I’m editing right now, is for “Thirst Trap”. And that was a song that I didn’t naturally have an idea for a video, but I knew it was going to be the album single.

So I would walk around my neighborhood and listen to the song and just try and see things. And now it’s turned out to be totally different from the others.

My song “Sex in the City” is sonically a little slower. When Ricky and I were making it, we called it our Stadium Somber, you know, there’s not a dark tone to it and it’s not really sad either. And I have a hard time writing a sad song because I don’t want to sit in the feeling of self pity for too long. I need to find a way to make it okay for the protagonist or make it all make sense. So that would be probably the one that I would classify as more like that, but it’s not really sad and there’s a lot of jokes in it and I need to be making myself laugh as I write a song or else I get bored.

I mean, I feel like “Sex in the City” is one that so many people feel. But then also “Girls”, and I wouldn’t mind living in “Friends” or “The Office”. I love television, and New York!

I studied screenwriting for four years. But I also think some people are born with like a natural sense for story, and I think I am one of those people. Then also to getting to study it for four years, you just learn so much, not just by like being in a classroom and being taught, but by being given what to read and what to watch. I’m very interested in story and kind of all the millions of ways you can tell an amazing story. So I think it’s just naturally in me.

It depends. I mean, if I’m really like hunkering down and working on a song, I’m usually at my desk in my house. And I’ll just stay there. But I also get ideas a lot out in public. So, I wrote a lot of “Sue me” at a coffee shop. When I was still living near the beach, and I was stuck on something, I would go walk for miles along the beach and just listen to the instrumental in my headphones and write on my notes app. Or I write in my car a lot. I’m kind of like writing songs everywhere I go.

Yeah, it was definitely a shift where I had only ever written with Gracie. And then when her and I wrapped up writing songs for her album, she went on to promote it and put it out, and I still had the urge to write. So I just tried doing it by myself and also writing with people, both are so fun.

And I’ve historically written alone when it comes to scripts and stuff, even though I do love to collaborate. And what was also so great about the arrangement with Ricky was that he totally respected that I needed to go home to write and then I would come back and bring him a song. And then the fun collaborative part was making it with him and building the instrumental. I got both sides of the coin, which was the best part. 

I mean, I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for Gracie. I had not written a song before her. And it was such fun with her, that it made me want to keep doing it. So I will always be indebted to her.

And from Ricky … The entire time we were making the album, the thought would cross my mind multiple times a day: “I don’t think anything more special has ever happened to anybody.” It just was that kind of connection that I had with him. And we would just laugh all day. But also, his depth was as deep as mine. And we could just have interesting conversations, but then not talk at all.

And I would not have been able to do this with anybody else. He became one of my best friends, too. I mean, we barely knew each other when we started. And now he is like family, and just one of the most special, special people to me. And the whole thing, even when it was hard work, still every day, I was so excited to see him and to work with him.

I can’t believe that there’s a world in which people make an entire body of work with one other person and don’t feel that way about them. It’s because it’s so intimate. It’s such intense work sometimes, but it also should be really light hearted and fun.

I’m always thinking about young people and particularly maybe a young person who is like having a hard time at school or not quite sure who they are or maybe they know who they are, but there is something about the current state of their life that makes them feel like they need to be different. I feel like I’ve gone through that and have throughout my youth sort of felt like I maybe need to dull myself down sometimes or not show so much interest in something because it might be embarrassing. And it’s really a waste of energy to feel that way. The faster you accept exactly who you are, the more fun I think you have in general.

Well, I love theater. And so I am really, really hopeful that I can put on a show in the future that feels kind of theatrical.

And I just really enjoy the suspension of disbelief that happens when you walk into a theater, and kind of the attention that that medium demands of an audience member. I’m gonna play a lot of shows in my life. And the more successful I am, the more money I’ll have to put on the dream show I want.

But in the meantime, I think it’s important that I’m having fun on stage, and I’m feeling free to be myself.

Benjamin Heidersberger: Is it okay that the music is running in the background like this?

Exactly. It’s a project I’ve been working on for 15 years now, and it’s increasingly become a part of my life. That means I live with it, it’s running basically day and night. It’s a bit of an attempt to assign unique melodies to the entire span of time, from the Big Bang until 16 trillion years into the future, and thus create a coordinate system for time. Every melody is unique, and I’m continually expanding it. For the past one and a half years, I’ve been streaming it worldwide with about 2000 hours listened to per month.

I come from an artistic household, my mother was an actress, my father a photographer. I myself actually studied physics, biology, and computer science. So I come more from the sciences. At 30, I veered into art.

At first I always worked in collectives, that’s a completely different process, you’re never the sole originator. At some point I felt the desire to create something on my own, and that’s how this project came about. It’s perhaps a bit like a coming-out as an artist. Every artist wants to communicate in some way, to be seen. Suddenly you’re standing there alone in the world and have to take responsibility for what you’re creating. For me, that’s actually been a positive process.

I definitely benefited greatly from my parents, they gave me a lot of freedom. From my father I picked up a lot of technical skills, and I got to know photography in depth. He had a beautiful workshop in the castle in Wolfsburg, and I was able to experiment a lot there.

Yes, they’re two parents you really like to have as parents, whom you also like as people. That has an influence — in terms of intellectual freedom, inspiration. But if all is culture, all is intellectual, that’s almost too much of it. Of course you also have to push back a bit against that.

Today, among other things, I manage my father’s estate in the Heidersberger Institute, which I founded together with Bernd Rodrian and the City of Wolfsburg. That’s not always an easy confrontation, because you’re also promoting another artist in a way. But I’ve actually been handling that quite well, still, I’m now trying to gain a bit more distance from it and focus on my own work again.

Wolfsburg is my hometown, but it’s a prototypical industrial city, and that brings a certain narrowness with it. At some point I wanted to get out. After Hamburg and Hanover, I moved to Berlin in 2010. Berlin is a really amazing city , with crazy possibilities, with crazy people, it’s very impressive. Of course, it also has many downsides , there are too many tourists, and Berlin is often cheap, not in terms of rent but in the sense that what Berliners like is often a bit cheap.

I could also imagine moving somewhere else at some point, maybe to India, which I feel closely connected to. For 20 years now, I’ve been spending my winters there in a monastery.

Spirituality plays a big role in my life.

I believe that the biggest accusation one can make against capitalism is that it deprives people of the meaning of their lives. I believe that the true task of a human being is to find out who we really are. Not in the sense of doing therapy and approaching it psychologically, but rather to understand and discover this essential core of being that we all share, and to integrate that into life. And I believe that’s what we call a spiritual path.

So, from the Big Bang until today, only one-thousandth of the total composition has been played. Sixteen trillion years is a pretty long time, but it is finite. That was very important to me, I could have written the program so that it loops after that, but I decided that it ends.

To see it in a more spiritual light: we have to use this finite time we’ve been given. At some point it’s over, or maybe it’s not but we still have to make use of the time we have here on this earth, in this body.

I have to say, I was a different person back then, and perhaps it doesn’t have that much to do with the original idea anymore.

What has remained is the idea of an algorithmically based composition. Even back then, it would have had to run on a computer, otherwise it wouldn’t really make sense.

What’s also remained is the expansion of the composition into the world. That’s what I’m doing now with the streaming. My idea is to create a network of people listening at the same time. No matter where you are, you hear the same thing. And that sense of simultaneity is a very important moment in listening for me.

My intention is that the composition helps people find peace.. There are often phases between the notes where nothing happens, or where you have to really listen. It’s ambient music, it doesn’t impose itself on you, you have to listen carefully, actively observe what’s happening between yourself and what you hear. That’s a bit of the idea behind it.

I’m part of this network and probably the one who listens the most. It connects me to the world. Art is also always about being seen. And that’s always a form of the artist communicating with the world. In that sense, I’m also creating a communication offering.

What’s important is that it’s generated algorithmically, meaning there’s a formula behind it. It’s entirely deterministic. What it is not, and that’s also very important to me, is artificial intelligence. It’s just like a world clock.

I view AI very critically. I think it will change us. I think soon we won’t know what’s true and what’s false. And that will bring a huge upheaval, possibly even a tragic one, because we might lose our footing. So I’m very cautious about the use of AI. But I’m currently planning  performances across Germany and abroad. There will be a visual extension of the work. I could imagine that it might involve something with AI, but I don’t know yet.

Armin Boehm: Without sounding dramatic, I’d honestly say the biggest fight was literally for my life – because I almost lost it in an accident. Between the ages of 16 and 21, my biggest struggle was simply to recover. The explosion set my body back by years. I couldn’t do the things others my age were doing physically. I had to reinvent myself, to build a new identity. I felt different – like an alien. For years, I lived with pain, fear, and near-death experiences. Becoming an artist was never my dream or goal. I had very different problems. Maybe you’re born an artist without even realizing it. But that fight for survival, and the confrontation with my own mortality, awakened something in me that had long been dormant.

AB: Not at all. I come from a family of engineers, lawyers and businesspeople – art wasn’t a big topic in our house. I was a pretty rebellious child, so my parents only offered moderate resistance when I decided to apply to art school. I think they also just couldn’t picture me working behind a bank counter or in an office.

AB: I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. And when I was halfway recovered, I started working with oil paints. As a child, I used watercolors, but they dry so fast. Oil paint was different. There was this silky, beautiful sensation – you could build entire atmospheres with it and completely lose yourself in the process. I walked around like a young bohemian, always dressed in black, wearing a beret. As soon as I got my driver’s license, I started traveling to Paris. I’d go to the Louvre, photograph the paintings that spoke to me, and develop the photos at home so I could study them closely. During my recovery, I gradually got lost in this universe of painting. Maybe it helped that my body was still very restricted – painting didn’t require intense physical effort. My hands were intact, and my eyesight slowly returned. Painting became a world I could immerse myself in. I wanted to live and work in that atmosphere beyond the everyday. I was drawn to the darker, metaphorical paintings of the past, and to the unconventional lives of the artists behind them. After visiting the Louvre, I’d often head to Père Lachaise Cemetery to visit the graves of painters, poets and musicians.

AB: No, for me, art was never therapeutic. It was the doctors, my friends and my family who really helped me through. Right after the hospital, I had to fight to regain my vision – I could barely see. Art only became possible once I’d fought for my health. But once painting became important to me, a new kind of struggle emerged. Entering the art world means stepping into a different kind of battlefield. I applied to art school thinking I’d get in right away. But they rejected me three times. “We see no artistic talent. We wish you all the best in life.” That’s what they said.

AB: I often compare paintings to children. You can control them up to a point, but at some stage, you have to let go and follow them – they develop a will of their own. And if you don’t let them go where they want, it causes problems. If, for whatever reason, I can’t engage fully with the painting, it becomes really agonizing. Then I start to see it as an opponent.

AB: Yes, there are times when I give up and say, “I’m stuck.” But it’s more like a break in the battle. I’ll put the painting somewhere out of sight, and eventually, I’ll have an idea – it starts speaking to me again. Paintings hold time within them, like it’s been preserved. Years later, I can still see which parts gave me trouble – where I scrubbed things out or kept layering paint over and over.

AB: I don’t like explaining my paintings, because my explanation is just one of many. That would only narrow their meaning. I can only tell you what I see when I look at them. In my political, social paintings, I see types of people I recognize today – though they’ve probably always existed in different forms. The double faces and grotesque exaggerations are just my sober observations of contemporaries. The digital masquerade we take part in today is not so different from the hierarchical masquerades at 17th-century courts – or the moral masquerades painted by Hieronymus Bosch. I try to depict reality without aestheticizing it, and without relying on drugs or substances like the Expressionists or New Objectivity painters did. But I do use a kind of gesture that might recall those times. Maybe we’re fighting similar social battles again today.

AB: I like the role of the observer because it suits my nature. I enjoy painting cats – they’re observant animals, too. As I mentioned, ever since that failed youth, I’ve had this feeling of being a guest. I never really wanted to participate fully. Once, my music teacher asked me, his face flushed red, whether I actually felt like just a guest in this world. I paused briefly and then said, “Yes. You’ve nailed it!”

AB: No, I wouldn’t say that. Painting shouldn’t be used as a kind of therapy. In art, everything is just material. Including myself – I’m just material, too. A substance, something I can process through painting. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll manage to add something to the history of painting. But that’s not for us contemporaries to decide – that’s up to the generations after us.

AB: But none of this is new. These experiments with personal emotional states already happened in the 60s and 70s – with well-known results. Simply repeating all that today is the opposite of progressive art. Why should I bother with it? What interests me are radical artistic positions that communicate with me across time. A compelling artistic idea can be sent out in a century long past – like a letter – and you receive it, sometimes centuries later, and continue the work. A painter like Maria Lassnig, for example, really engaged deeply with her own physicality, despair and emotional state – and created radical painting from that. That’s the kind of thing I find compelling.