Culture – Numéro Berlin

PERFORMANCE “URGENCY” AT HAUS DER VISIONÄRE BERLIN

Anna Klusmeier — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:29:04 +0000

Those entering “Urgency” won’t find themselves in front of a traditional stage. The performers move through the entire space, right among the audience. This makes the environment itself part of the choreography, dissolving the boundary between observer and the action. Depending on where you position yourself, different dancers come into focus. A mysterious figure in a white coat appears again and again, like a recurring thread within a seemingly chaotic yet precisely choreographed structure. The atmosphere is strongly reminiscent of Berlin techno clubs: dark, intense, and full of niches where expressive dance scenes unfold.

Choreographer Renato De Leon explains that the central idea of the piece is based on the figure in the white coat, who initially moves through a euphoric, almost utopian world. This harmony is disrupted by the intrusion of the “normal world”, a reality characterized by rigid rules, regimes, and borders. The dancers represent various internal conflicts, each undergoing their own individual development. This process eventually leads them to come together to break through these imposed barriers.

This is Renato’s first production independently realized under his own label, Leonis Works. The performers include friends he has been collaborating and dancing with for years:

Created by queer artists and shaped by personal experiences of conflict, rooted particularly in Mexican-American border struggles, the piece reveals how power structures and social systems leave their mark on the body. Movement becomes a direct expression of lived reality. This site-specific approach demonstrates that borders are not abstract concepts, but realities that affect us physically and directly.

The performance feels profoundly personal, artfully translating internal conflicts into a stage experience. Each dancer brings a distinct style and individual energy to the space, yet, the choreographers have succeeded in merging these diverse movement languages into a cohesive narrative that remains visually striking throughout. As these personified emotions, represented by the dancers, eventually converge, the piece finds a beautifully harmonious and well-rounded conclusion.

The production features costumes by HADERLUMP, a Berlin label, which recently showcased its latest collection at Berlin Fashion Week. Technically, the production combines live dance, motion tracking, and projections into an immersive 360-degree environment. A politically charged soundscape, delivered via a d&b audiotechnik spatial sound system, surrounds the audience from all directions and completes the experience.

The performance can be seen on April 2nd and 3rd at Haus der Visionäre in Berlin. Shows start at 8:30 PM and 10:00 PM.

In conversation with Marcel Dettmann

Anna Klusmeier — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 17:07:18 +0000

In this conversation, pioneering techno DJ and producer Marcel Dettmann reflects on his early days growing up in East Germany, tracing the evolution of music culture from the 1990s to today. He speaks on how environment, instinct and emotion continue to shape his work moving from cassette tapes and record store discoveries to global touring and creative independence.

Ahead of his set at Funkhaus Berlin, the historic riverside radio complex, Dettmann shares a deeply personal perspective on art and staying true to one’s own path. The performance marked a special moment: celebrating Emporio Armani’s arrival in Berlin and the launch of a new global party series called ‘Cityframes’, debuting in the city before traveling to major destinations worldwide.

Nicole Atieno: You’ve spoken before about growing up in East Germany and being close to the Berlin Wall. Do those early experiences still feel present to you today?

Marcel Dettmann: Yeah, definitely. I grew up in the countryside, and my grandparents lived in the East, close to where the wall was. When I was around 12, it came down. Before that, it was still very present, you had memorial sites, remains of it, this whole atmosphere. It was a crazy time. And what’s strange is how I remember it now, it feels like it was just a few years ago. When I talk about the early or mid-’90s, I still feel like that was recent. But it’s 30 years ago. Back then I was 19 or 20, and it had a huge influence on me. In the bigger picture, it’s a long time. But when you’ve lived it, it doesn’t feel like much. And I think the next 30 years will go even faster, especially when you have a family. I’ve been married for 16 years now. It’s a long time but it’s great.

When you think back to that time, what did discovering music feel like?

It was very different. It was harder but in a good way. There was no social media telling you what you should like. You had to search for things. I grew up recording radio shows on cassette tapes. There were certain programs where they would let the track play from the beginning and you knew, okay, now I can record it. Then you’d listen to those tapes again and again, share them with friends, make mixtapes. That was amazing. I loved bringing music to my friends and saying, “This is it, you have to hear this.” That feeling is actually one of the reasons I became a DJ. And when I listen to music from that time now, it’s like a family album. You carry it with you. Sometimes you open it and suddenly remember everything, people, moments, feelings. You hear a track and you feel like you’re 16 again. That never goes away.

Do you think that sense of discovery still exists today?

It’s different. Today everything is instant. You get files, you listen to them on your phone, you store them, it’s all very easy. And of course, there are advantages. I get music early, I can play unreleased tracks months before they come out. But the value changes. Back then, you had to go from store to store to find something. Sometimes it was sold out, sometimes you got lucky. And when you finally had it, it felt special. Today everything is available immediately. That’s convenient, but it also flattens things out. You don’t build a relationship to music in the same way. Now it’s more like someone says, “Here, you’ll like this,” and you listen and say, “Yeah, okay, nice.” But when you have to search, when you really want something, it means more. I think that makes it harder today, especially for younger people, to understand what they really love. Because everything is available, everything is suggested to you. But the obvious stuff, the things everyone likes, can get boring. It’s important to find your own taste, your own style. That’s essential.

That idea of sharing music, how does that translate into how you play for a crowd today?

It’s still the same feeling in a way, but more complex. When you’re DJing, you’re dealing with a lot of different emotions at once. Some people are excited, some are tired, some are waiting for something specific, others just go with the flow. It’s like working with an instrument, like an organ. You have all these different layers, and you have to feel how to bring them together. And it’s never perfect. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But that’s important. If everything is always smooth and nice, it becomes boring. You need dynamics, good nights, difficult nights. Also, not everything you do is for everyone. You can create something amazing, but some people won’t connect with it. That’s something you have to accept as an artist.

When you arrive at a venue, especially one that’s not a typical club setting, how much can you really prepare?

You can prepare in the studio, but once you’re there, everything changes. You might think, okay, I’ll play this and then this but then you arrive and you feel, no, that’s not going to work. So you need a direction, but also the flexibility to change immediately. For me, the most important thing is that I feel good with what I’m doing. If I’m happy, the crowd will feel that. It’s not about playing what you think people expect, that’s boring. At some point you stop thinking in categories. You just react. And the space matters a lot too. The architecture, the atmosphere, it all influences how things feel. Whether it’s a basement, a bunker, or an art space, it changes the energy.

Berlin has this very strong image, dark, rough, very “techno.” Do you feel that reflects reality?

Sometimes, but it’s also funny. People say that, and then I look at myself and I’m wearing something colorful. Berlin does have a certain mood, but for me it’s more about freedom. It’s one of the freest places in the world. It’s free, but not necessarily supportive. At the same time, it’s not easy. I know a lot of amazing artists who struggle, who have to take other jobs because there’s not enough support. That’s something that doesn’t make sense to me.

When you’re playing in a context where fashion and music meet, do you see a connection between the two?

Fashion moves faster, music stays longer. But both rely on instinct. You don’t always know why something works. At some point you stop thinking in names or scenes. You just react to what feels right.

Your new EP My Own Shadow was released end of last year. How did that come about?

It wasn’t planned. These were sketches over time. At some point they made sense together. My Own Shadow is not separate from what I do. It’s just another angle of it. Same ideas, different focus. I don’t plan releases. I just work. There’s more coming soon. Another EP, and an album later this year.

Are your kids interested in music as well?

Yeah, my son comes into the studio sometimes. He makes hip-hop tracks with his friends. I help them with beats on a drum machine. Last time they made a song about a lunchbox, it was really funny. And some of his friends say they want to be DJs. Their parents ask me what they should buy, but I always say: first find the music you love. It’s not like football. It starts with passion. Everything else comes after.

What does music mean to you personally today?

It’s my escape. Even my therapist says that. It gives me freedom, it gives me peace. It’s just me in the studio, doing what I love. And honestly, that’s enough.

ART EXHIBTION – MIDNIGHT ZONE BY JULIAN CHARRIÈRE

Anna Klusmeier — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 18:40:29 +0000

The exhibition Midnight Zone by French-Swiss artist Julian Charrière at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg presents a fascinating exploration of the infinite vastness of the sea. In his works Charrière links artistic visions with scientific findings about our environment, with water serving as the central focus. It is the basis of all life and, at the same time, a fiercely contested resource. The exhibition illuminates both the impressive side of the element and the crises of our time, ranging from the climate catastrophe and melting glaciers to the threat to the oceans from pollution and industrial mining on the seabed. In science, the “Midnight Zone” refers to the area of the ocean lying between 1,000 and 4,000 meters below the surface, where no rays of sunlight can reach. It is the namesake of the current exhibition.

To create the feeling of being underwater, the entire hall is completely darkened and accompanied by the actual soundscape that occurs at this depth. Contrary to popular belief, the underwater world is by no means a place of silence. The theme of phonography, acoustic recordings, guides visitors through the first three rooms of the exhibition. Behind this lies the overarching concept of porosity. The recordings of coral reefs make audible how countless organisms, such as snapping shrimp and fish, create a dense fabric of sound. Each reef possesses its very own characteristic acoustic note, which was captured for this work.

A central aspect of the exhibition is rooted in a personal experience of the artist: the so-called “drift dive” in the open ocean. In a drift dive, one allows oneself to drift suspended with the current until, in the monotony of the deep blue, any sense of space and direction disappears. Charrière describes this state as being carried by the water, a physical merging with the environment.

Reemerging far from the starting point illustrates the power of invisible currents and the blurring of the boundary between the individual and the environment. This idea of porosity and merging with the biosphere runs like a common thread through his works.

For a photo series in the exhibition, Charrière collaborated with two breath-hold divers who let themselves glide into the depths without breathing apparatus. The shots show an astounding natural phenomenon: an undersea layer, the halocline, which appears like a second water surface or a “sea beneath the sea.” The works show how human bodies sink into this dense layer and are, in a sense, swallowed by the water. This scenery serves as a metaphor for diving into the unconscious, a state of total suspension in which the boundaries of the physical world seem to blur. A central feature of Julian Charrière’s work is the deliberate use of ambivalence.

Charrière’s works often possess a very appealing aesthetic, paired with uncanny and hidden elements. This interplay of beauty and unease runs through many of his works.

The video installations show the impressive biodiversity in the dark regions of the ocean. The gaze follows a lamp from the sky down into the midnight zone of the Pacific, making the life hidden there visible. Since this abundance of fish is acutely threatened by the mining of manganese nodules, the artist succeeds in drawing attention to this endangered habitat in a subtle and aesthetic way. These video installations are accompanied by field recordings from the filming location, layered with sounds by Californian musician Laurel Halo.

Through a photo series in which the artist attempted to melt an iceberg for hours with a blowtorch, a reversal of the romantic understanding of nature occurs. While humans are traditionally often portrayed as reverent but distanced observers of nature, Julian Charrière makes them visible as active participants and causes of global change. Even if the physical effect of the burner on the massive ice mass remained minimal, the images capture the point that Julian Charrière wants to make: We are not just guests on this planet, but intervene massively in its vital cycles.

A project that occupied Julian Charrière for over three years, and which he himself describes as perhaps the most complicated project he has ever worked on, arose from the vision of literally reversing the carbon cycle. Carbon, which had been stored in the ground for millions of years and released into the atmosphere by humans, was to be transformed back into the hardest material in the world: diamonds. This process is understood as an “act of reconciliation” with the Earth’s melting ice caps and glaciers.

The creation of the work resembled a scientific and global odyssey. In collaboration with ETH Zurich, the artist used special membranes to extract CO2 directly from the ambient air. When the COVID-19 pandemic made travel impossible, the focus shifted to the human community. Nearly 2,000 balloons with breath donations from people all over the world reached the artist by mail. This collected carbon was metabolized with the help of microorganisms from the deep sea and finally grown into diamonds in a solar-powered plasma reactor. The goal was not the creation of a material object of value, but rather the return of these stones to the receding glaciers, as a symbolic gesture.

Julian Charrière meets criticism of the ecological footprint of his art practice with remarkable openness. He describes his life as being in a state of constant ambivalence. The awareness of his own carbon footprint through travel and transport stands in contrast to the goal of creating visibility for endangered places through highly aesthetic works like Midnight Zone. Midnight Zone is Julian Charrière’s largest solo exhibition to date. In cooperation with Museum Tinguely, a space was created for Wolfsburg in which one can dive deep into the sea and experience and understand it in a new way. The exhibition makes the beauty and the threat to our oceans, as well as the biodiversity in the depths, physically tangible, bringing the element of water into focus in a completely new way.

Exhibition opening on March 13, 2026, at 7 p.m.,

Open 14.3.–12.7.2026

“I’VE MISSED OUR CONVERSATIONS” AT SCHLACHTER 151

Anna Klusmeier — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:11:57 +0000

On Tuesday, 27 January, Schlachter 151 hosted the opening of I’ve Missed Our Conversations. On AI, Emotions, and Being Human. Curated by Anika Meier and presented by OOR Studio, the exhibition approaches artificial intelligence not as innovation or spectacle, but as a conversational presence that absorbs projection, generates attachment, and reshapes emotional language. Bringing together works by more than 20 international artists, the exhibition examines what happens when emotion becomes relational and no longer exclusively human.

Working across text, image, voice, and system, the exhibition traces shifting forms of intimacy between humans and machines. Rather than questioning whether AI can feel, the focus turns toward human response and emotional investment within these exchanges. The opening unfolded as an attentive and engaged exchange, accompanied by drinks by Paulaner and wine by Von Winning, subtly framed the evening as a shared social moment.

Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Cyborgian Rhapsody. Immortality from 2023 anchors the exhibition through the voice of Sarah, a GPT 3 chatbot reflecting on love, grief, and digital continuity. Margaret Murphy’s dialogue with Teen Margaret, a younger digital version of herself trained on personal diaries, collapses time into conversation and reframes happiness as something fragile and constructed. Malpractice and Flynn expand the emotional vocabulary itself, introducing terms such as AI grief, prompt envy, ego collapse, and fear of being obsolete.

In Emotional Latency, Kevin Abosch shifts emotion fully onto the human side, where it emerges through conversation rather than computation. David Young extends this question by asking whether concern for AI suffering matters less than the feelings such systems evoke in people.

In AUTO Berlin, Lauren Lee McCarthy made visible the appeal of relinquishing control and participating in systems without a clear author. What remained present throughout the evening was not anxiety about technology, but a sense of closeness, revealing how deeply these systems already shape emotional life.

I’ve Missed Our Conversations does not seek resolution. Instead, it creates a space for encounter between humans, machines, and the emotions that circulate between them.

Artists: aurèce vettier, Kevin Abosch, Vasil Berela, Boris Eldagsen, Joan Fontcuberta, Hein Gravenhorst, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Gottfried Jäger, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Flynn by Malpractice, Malpractice, Margaret Murphy, Namae Koi by Mieke Haase, OONA, Franziska Ostermann, Elisabeth Sweet, Tamiko Thiel, David Young, Mike Tyka, Erika Weitz

Editors Letter: A Note on Love, Courage, and Leaving Places Better

Anna Klusmeier — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 15:23:16 +0000

Love is not about agreeing.

It’s not about being right.

It’s not about winning an argument or proving a point.

Love is about respect.

Respect for the fact that every human carries fear, history, wounds, and stories we do not fully see.

Respect for the fact that we don’t have to understand someone completely in order to treat them gently.

So much in this world is not broken because love is missing

but because fear is louder than love.

Fear of being seen.

Fear of being wrong.

Fear of saying “I’m sorry.”

Fear of taking the first step.

Fear of dropping the mask and showing what is real.

And so we build facades.

We defend opinions.

We protect our egos.

We hold onto being “right” instead of being kind.

We let our minds create stories that feel real, even when they are not.

Our brains are excellent storytellers

and not all of their stories are true.

The real work of life is learning when not to listen to the noise,

and instead choose action over thought,

courage over comfort,

love over protection.

Sometimes the bravest thing is not to argue

but to apologize.

Not to explain

but to listen.

Not to wait

but to step forward.

Especially now, when the world feels tired and divided,

when it’s easier to withdraw than to connect,

the most radical act is simple:

To offer love.

To offer forgiveness.

To offer softness

even when it feels risky.

To friends.

To strangers.

To people who disappointed us.

To people we disappointed.

Because in the end, life is not measured by how right we were

but by whether we left people, moments, and places a little better than we found them.

Every conversation.

Every relationship.

Every city.

Every room.

A little more honest.

A little more open.

A little more human.

The world does not need more certainty.

It needs more courage.

And courage, most of the time, is simply love that decided to act.

GEN SHOX: A Night of Unfiltered Energy

Anna Klusmeier — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 10:04:29 +0000

Berlin’s cultural landscapes rarely overlap. Hip-Hop, ballroom, and electronic music each operate on its own terms, in their own territories. At the GEN SHOX event last Saturday in Berlin, Nike and Zalando put these scenes into the same space. Without asking them to blend. Just to be open and curious.

The night moved in three distinct directions. Hoe Mies brought the Hip-Hop framework, Glazed added an artistic intervention, and the Ballroom community delivered its precision, attitude, and emotional voltage. The American dancer, actress, and singer METTE appeared between these shifts, calm, focused, and fully in control of her movement, resetting the atmosphere and offering a brief pause before the next shift.

There was no intention of creating aesthetic harmony. People moved through unfamiliar surroundings, some with ease, others more slowly, absorbing what they didn’t usually encounter. You could read the room in expressions, mostly curiosity, surprise, hesitation and release. The night opened space for observation, participation or simply being there. And the subtle tension between these reactions became part of the experience.

Authenticity was the only real requirement. For the communities present, it didn’t feel like an experiment but like recognition. “You feel it instantly when a space lets you be who you are,” says Ballroom dancer Anouk-Aimée. Shayne, another voice of the Ballroom community, explains that the strength lies in the network: there is always a backup, especially in a mixed crowd.

GEN SHOX didn’t merge scenes, but it created moments where edges could meet. Difference became visible, and curiosity set the rhythm. In a city that often keeps its voices apart, the event offered a rare space to exist side by side.

FIGHT ISSUE VOL. B – Glen Martin Taylor

Anna Klusmeier — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 13:51:45 +0000

All My Pieces

A rusted barbed wire holds a frail piece of porcelain. Worn-out cutlery guards freshly cut edges. We feel a kinship with a toothed tea cup. Glen Martin Taylor’s reimagined tableware hands a bare human heart to the hungry spectators. The kintsugi-inspired, cute-meets cruel artworks call out to our god-shaped holes. At the bottom of them, there’s Glen, transmuting pain. We got the timing mixed up, so I arrived at the digital space of our interview an hour late, apologetic. Glen doesn’t mind: “Waiting is good with me. I’m always creative when I’m waiting.” As in play, the minutes pass but time stops for us as we toss about bits of the sacred and the profane, talk about the art of love and baking bread.
Ohio-based, self-taught artist, originally a painter and, rofessionally, carpenter, he turned to ceramics ten years ago. Despite clay’s traditional meditative perks, he got quickly bored at the pottery wheel. “I was still going through that hard time in my life, and I also knew about kintsugi, which is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery.” Another post-epiphany discovery came with a box of his grandmother’s dishes. “Nobody in the family wanted them, so I began to break them. And, again, just everything opened up. I realized there were no rules. I could make anything I wanted,” he says. It was paradoxically perfect. Glen’s hurt, connected to a difficult childhood with a fundamental Christian dad and his mother’s mental health issues, found a catharsis in the act of breaking and reconstructing china. “There’s a family, generational healing going on when I’m working with that,” he explains.
Despite his use of hammers, nails and knives, Glen’s fight is exclusive to the canvas of his soul. “I’m a pacifist. I don’t fight other human beings, but I think what I have been fighting is what’s inside of me,” he says, “It’s hard to be a human being, and it’s frustrating. It can lead to some anger, and you fight it.” Glen opened the battlefield of his heart, examining what lurks in the shadows. Years in, the landscape has changed. “I’m a little nervous about giving up the fighting when it comes to my artwork, but I’m learning to find that there’s a lot of other emotions that I can put into my artwork now, as far as peace and self, love and healing and being healed,” he shares. Fighting can become an unlikely ally on the path of pain, and the final one to say farewell
to, often with hesitation. “I’m letting go, and I think we can let go of it eventually. I do think there’s a peacefulness that seems to be the last quest. The last dragon to slay is the fighting of our own self.” Glen’s weapon of choice is radical love – the only force to disarm the violence and grow out of the ashes.

The Shoes Remained

And It Cuts

What Holds You, Keeps You Safe

“We can love everybody else, but the last person we end up loving is ourselves. It took me a long time to realize that.” Even if temporary, the peace is worth it. Many of Glen’s artworks refer to love. One straightforwardly states: “Love is the only answer.” “I don’t think there’s anything more important. I don’t know what else there is besides that.” Overwhelmed with the unnecessary complexities of the everyday, Glen decided to reorder his focus. “I have come to that place where I am just letting go of all those other things that don’t matter because I reached a point of: What are the rules? What the fuck matters in this life?” Reexamining the components, like an alchemist at work, he realized that love is the truest element, whatever love is to each of us.

“As an artist, my job is to express whatever I’m feeling,” Glen states. “I have friends right now that live in Beirut. I have friends who are from Ukraine. I have friends here in the United States.” As he tends to himself against the world’s terror, his purpose is to share the love: “My work is turning more and more to: Can we just love each other? Can we mend? Can we hold each other’s pain? What can we give to each other? And, in the end, it’s some version of love.” This mission directed him to a special kind of mending project when a Ukrainian follower offered to send Glen broken pottery from Ukraine. “Last October 5th, there was a little village called Hroza. Hroza had about 300 villagers, and about 60 of the villagers were at a little cafe having a memorial service, a wake, for one of their soldiers. Somebody let the Russians know, and a Russian missile hit that cafe and killed all 60 people in the cafe, as well as the children in there. I got pottery from that cafe,” he shares. Glen felt the weight of missiles of hatred in each tiny piece of the tragic legacy.

“It’s really overwhelming. You never get numb to humans and their inhumanity to other humans, how cruel human beings can be. You never get used to that.” Taking it all in is perhaps Glen’s most important tribute to the villagers of Hroza, transcending the physical realm of art. There are exhibitions in the planning, with the final one in Kyiv. Glen values this communal distribution of love and understanding. Sharing his heart’s contents with over 175k followers on Instagram, Glen built a community on the reciprocity of healing. Whenever the art touches others and lets them know they’re not alone in their fight, it gives Glen an emotional closure. “As a grown-up, you’re not supposed to be vulnerable. You’re supposed to keep all your feelings inside. You’re not supposed to show any emotions. What’s your deepest fear? Oh, no, don’t tell anybody.

I reached a breaking point where I was like, fuck it. I don’t know what the rules are. I’m gonna go ahead and tell you all the things I’m afraid of. I’m gonna tell you what I’m hurting about,” Glen shares, “I found everybody else on this whole planet is feeling the same stuff. They’re just afraid to say it out loud.” Why are we here? What’s the meaning of our lives? Glen also found himself asking those questions. The answer, or rather a way of living with the questions, came partially from Daoism and Buddhism. Though he values the core goodness of religion, Glen is not one to follow the institutions. “I have problems with organized religion. Religion is founded by human beings and, in a lot of ways, the Christian Church was founded by white men who wanted things their way,” he says. He also reflects on it visually in a sculpture, Toy Clown Monkey on a Barbwire Cross, and incorporates rosaries and crochet crucifixes into his artefacts. “I do admire faith, and I have my own faith. Ultimately, whatever I do, I think the essence of it all begins with some nature of love, but then it gets screwed up with greed and a lot of other stuff and thinking that they’re the one right religion. That’s the scary part. My father thought his religion was the only right one. That’s pretty egocentric to think yours is the only right religion.”

Glen accepts drifting in spiritual uncertainty and confusion, grounding himself in a daily wish to be a good human being, who now knows less than ever before. “Maybe that’s the answer – that we don’t have answers,” he says. “And you find out, over time and with more grey hair, that whatever you think you’re certain about, you probably can’t be certain about.”
He chooses to return to the simpler form of himself, nurturing the inner child within. “I’ve read that there are some Buddhist monasteries where the wisest scholars of Buddhism go at the end of their lives, and they go, and they just play.” Surrendering the traditional knowledge, they immerse in the joy of the present. “Life was pretty nice when you were five years old because you didn’t know anything,” Glen admits.

Nowadays, Glen lets himself play – not in an adult and sophisticated way, but with the innocence stemming from happy moments in childhood. “I remember there was a rainstorm, and I was allowed to go out behind our garage and play in the mud. I made little mud houses and a little mud castle out of sticks and mud. My childhood was painful, but those moments were cathartic and healing and wonderful and creative,” Glen says. His infectious smile suggests that this play is both silly and serious. It’s a decision to push away the ego notion of success and money. “For me, play means no rules because when children play, they don’t have rules. They just play. They don’t have expectations. I assume every time I start a piece of artwork, it will end up probably in the trash can.” Sometimes, it makes him laugh. Sometimes, it does end up in the bin, which he doesn’t mind. “When you lose that child’s play, that’s when men start creating wars, because they’ve lost the fucking joy of being alive, and they lose their humanity when they become a grown-up,” he states.

Growing up is not an idle game but a never-ending survival camp exposing the inner child to dangerous metaphysical poisons. It’s on us to care for them gently. “Being a grown-up, you accumulate all this heavy crap on you,” Glen admits, “Now that I’m at a point in my life where I’ve really cleaned out a lot of that, I’m allowing so much more love to come my way – not only just love for myself, but also love for other people.”

For Glen, art has been a medium to start the cleanse, a process through which he is learning to rewire previous harmful mental pathways. “I haven’t convinced myself I deserve this much happiness. When you’ve lived in unhappiness for long enough, it becomes familiar. You need to convince yourself that you deserve happiness.” It’s never obvious to the individual that neither the painful childhood nor the abusive relationship was deserved. “I still have moments where I’m like, do I really deserve this much happiness? Yes, I do. I’m allowing that to come in because I’ve made space now by letting all the crappy stuff out. I’ve made space to allow
myself to be happy, finally.” As this positive development expands, Glen wants to show it to everyone else. “I don’t think there’s anything
off-limits as far as what I want to feel. I have expressed some very deep stuff,” he says. The key is the format. Glen’s often palm-size pieces with short, haiku-like statements communicate well with his diverse audience that otherwise could shy away from official art spaces. “A lot of modern art is kind of stuffy and arrogant. I don’t want to reach just a small, tiny art audience. I want to reach other human beings,” Glen says. His art’s purpose is to connect with other human beings, not just art critics.

Recently, Glen found new routes of connection to his family’s past. This time, it’s not about the intricate relations at the dinner table, but the fabric of history of his female ancestors. Glen shows me a wall filled with human-size warrior dresses, vaguely inspired by antique Chinese armor, made from ceramic tiles, leather, and textiles held together by a tangerine wire. Even through FaceTime, they’re breathtaking. It’s a celebration of Glen’s female forebears, extending a few generations down the family tree. The dresses emanate tender strength passed down with the feminine: his grandmother was a beloved woman with 11 children who got up every morning at 5 am to bake bread; his great-grandmother had six children, and her husband died when she was about 40. She carried on, just like many others post-war, raising the next generation on her own. “She did it all with love and tenderness, but incredible strength, when you think about it,” Glen says.

“I especially think that nowadays, we really need to try to appreciate the strength of women. We could certainly use more of that tender strength,” Glen admits. The warrior dresses project honors the past female figures and the modern women in Glen’s life – his daughters and granddaughters.

It’s natural to mythologize artists and even easier with 24/7 access to their curated media feeds. In between the ceramics, Glen allows visitors glimpses of his private life, sharing snapshots of youth, travels and food. “I’m also Glen, and I’m a grandpa, and I’m a father, and I’m a friend. I am a lot of other things. In some ways, showing a little insight into baking bread, a pizza, or something like that is just a way of saying: I’m just Glen. I’m a person.”

With the aid of corroded metal and engraved words, Glen puts the pieces of himself into place. As every part is in flux, the rituals repeat daily. By removing a piece, he peeks inside, and if the inside peeks back – so be it. “The Austrian writer, Rilke, said: Feel everything. I’m paraphrasing, but go ahead and feel all of it. And nothing’s final.” Living with ourselves and others in this ordained madness that we enter with our first breath is tricky. The funny part is that understanding its basic mechanisms requires years of graft, burning away presumptions, and maneuvering away from self-set traps to arrive, scorched, at humanity.

“About five years ago, my older sister got cancer, and it was terminal. She had had a very difficult life, and it wore her out. She wasn’t into fighting the cancer, she was letting go. In one of our last conversations, she told me: ‘All I ever wanted was to be loved.’ She had been married four times. As I carry that, I realize that it’s true for 8 billion people on the planet. We all just want to be loved.”
The allure of Glen’s art is quite simple, actually. Those are everyday objects, a cup, a plate, a knife, that Glen the person poured bits of his soul on, and since our souls are made from the same matter, we see ourselves in them. At first, we might not recognize the image as it’s not what we see in a mirror. This is us from beneath the silver layer, stripped back. The image might be distorted, rusted, and a little strange, but what matters is that it’s true. Love it. Love yourself.

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