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.

I kept hearing friends talk about the differences between the art scenes in Berlin and Paris, so I visited a few times, met some artist friends, and also stayed in Berlin.

Engaging, questioning, living

In sculpture, I tend to approach the work by considering the materials and their historical context, while in painting, I focus more on the perspective and language of the image.

Of course, I have been reflecting on this question especially after moving to France, because French and Mandarin are vastly different languages. I see painting and sculpture as separate languages, and this has made me think about how to communicate the meaning of my work through the artwork itself, so that people don’t need a specific cultural background to understand it. This has been the language I’ve been trying to refine in my creations this year.

I make time to visit Berlin every year. It seems to have more underground spaces and a strong influence from underground culture, which gives experimental artists greater room to survive and create. In contrast, Paris offers fewer such spaces. I believe this is closely tied to the art ecosystem and economic factors. Although Paris has become more international in recent years, the rising rent makes it increasingly difficult for many artists to sustain themselves—especially those in the experimental phase, who need more space and resources to take risks and make mistakes.

Victor Auberjonois first reached out to me on Instagram with an invitation to exhibit, and after some discussions between him and my representing gallery, Nicodim, we began exploring the uniqueness of both the space and the project. I’ve always been drawn to historically charged or atypcal spaces—they inspire me deeply. I believe that artworks dialogue with different meanings depending on the space they inhabit, and I’m constantly seeking new contexts and interpretations, which often lead to fresh insights and reflections in my practice.

This sculpture further explores the transformation of the relationship between humans and nature through metaphor. The horse stall, once a space of labor and close interaction between humans and animals, is now reimagined as a hollow shell — symbolizing disciplined nature, the erased body, and the alienation brought by industrialization. By reinterpreting this structure, the work turns a once-living space into a symbol of control, loss, and historical rupture.

The coal-covered floor and rusted walls are not only material choices but also symbolic expressions — they carry the traces of time, the corrosion of power, and the slow collapse of traditional structures under modernization. Through the use of discarded, repurposed materials, the artist transforms forgotten remnants into metaphors of memory, history, and political inquiry into existence.

In essence, SPINE BOUNDARY does not convey political messages directly, but through its use of material, metaphor, and spatial reconstruction, it raises profound questions about domestication, control, forgetting, and disappearance.

I never want to impose how I think people should feel. What I find more interesting is listening to what they tell me they feel.

Yes, I would consider the size and safety of the artwork since it’s in a public space. Other than that, I feel quite very free to create.

Of course, I noticed these elements and felt excited because they add more layers of interpretation and complexity to the work. They also allowed me to step away from painting practice and think about other issues. Last year, I worked with ceramics, a different material, and this year, in this sculpture, I used animal skin, which is also related to the body. This gave me a new understanding of bodily perception and is part of my exploration of the relationship between materials and perception in my creative process.

I hope to see many works that explore different aspects of humanity. Human nature is complex and ever-changing, which is probably why we are always fascinated by it. But I believe the simplest reason is that a good artwork is one that moves people.

Paz de la Huerta: I come from Spanish aristocracy, and my own family sex trafficked me — also to Harvey Weinstein. I went public with my story, but members of the aristocracy are forbidden from speaking to the press. As punishment, they tried to kill me. Once, they had me hit by a truck, which left me with a near-fatal brain injury. Just three years ago, my father — who also abused me sexually — beat me almost to death. I still receive death threats to this day.

For a long time, I nearly destroyed myself with drugs. But three years ago, I took a plant medicine that repaired my brain. I was able to piece together my past and truly understand who was trying to kill me and why. I took some money and left Spain. Now I live in hiding with high security.

Yeah. I have reason to believe that my family offered people money to find and hurt me. And now people are wondering: Where’s Paz? What happened to her career?

Every time I survived an attack, I had a spiritual experience. When you’re close to death, your brain releases DMT. That changed something in me — it made me want to live instead of die. So yeah, it’s a really crazy story. There are even films based on my life, like Leos Carax’s Annette. The kind of trauma I went through is beyond words. I was the sacrifice. They wanted to sacrifice me.

I’m also a victim of satanic rituals. In those, it’s always the most innocent — animals, small children — who become the prey. Now, in my hiding place, I live with all these animals, they’re all white, including dogs I’ve rescued. I call the swan that appears in many of my paintings my wounded angel. And I like the matryoshka doll as a symbol – it keeps taking on a new life, again and again.

Yeah. My family put me in psychiatric hospitals many times. When they couldn’t kill me, they tried to make me seem crazy and lock me away in one of those places for the rest of my life. No one, not even people who are truly crazy, should be in places like that. But I’m an artist. Even if you locked me up, I wouldn’t stop creating. I’d just keep painting my crying angels.

It was there even before acting. As a child, I painted these books called “The American Mansions.” I was never safe, I was always being abused. So I think I was trying to create safe spaces through art.

Yes, the animals in the paintings and the real ones I rescued are like my inner child, which I’m trying to protect. Over the years, it’s become a way to escape from my exploiters. I never turned to brutality or misery like they did. I turned to spirituality. Even though I was abused not only as a child but also as an adult, until just a few years ago.

I don’t know how it was possible. My family trafficked me and I never even saw my earnings as an actress. They stole millions.

I feel safe where I am now. The art is definitely helping me heal. I have high security and everything, so my email can’t be hacked. If it were, they’d know where I am, and I’d be dead by now. The press supports me because the evidence is clear, even the most conservative Spanish newspapers take my side. But I still lost the case against my family. Well, I didn’t lose, it’s just archived, and I’m trying to raise funds to start it again. I’m doing what I can to fight for my rights, especially with the legal stuff. I had a brain injury, they were drugging me, defaming me, and gaslighting me. I’ve only been safe for the last three years, ever since I took the plant medicine.

Oh, I believe in God. I’m so grateful I didn’t give up. I’m so happy I survived all of this. There’s a guy I like. I have a great therapist. And I want to do more plant medicine because I feel it kind of reverses the aging process inside. So, you know, I’m excited about life now.

Obviously, in a perfect world, if I were to lock up these people – pretty powerful people – and I would take the money and start an orphanage.

More and more. I don’t think I ever knew happiness before. But now… it’s coming. I would love to have a child. They made me lose two children because they wanted to erase me and anyone who would tell my story. But I think about motherhood now, and they can’t hurt me anymore, I won’t let them. That’s something I would love. I am experiencing happiness, learning that there are good people in the world. It’s hard to trust after everything that’s happened.

They had tried to steal those paintings, so I had to rescue them. That’s the only reason I had the show. And then I have hundreds more paintings I’ve created over many years. If my blood money wasn’t enough, they were also stealing and selling my art. But as long as they aren’t burned, they still exist. They’re somewhere, so find them.

Yeah, a lot of things. But above all; purity is something sacred and should be protected.

Sebastian Hoffmann: I worked in the art trade for quite a bit, as a co-gallerist organizing exhibitions and programs. Two and a half years ago, two friends and I founded an interior firm called Tadan – we like to call ourselves “decorators”. So I’m surprised curating has remained a part of what we do and as important to me as before. The spectrum between decorating and curating is narrower than I thought. They’re really not the same, however, they’re both about relating things to each other and spaces, situations.

We’d done a couple of smaller projects before, including a loan for the brasserie upstairs – black-and-white photographs by the Latvian artist Edgars Gluhovs, of a wine tasting and paired with a quote from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”: “Anybody with their nose pressed against a glass is liable to look stupid.“ After that, I jokingly ended an email with: “Next up – the windows…”

That kind of joke you wish becomes a reality. And then, a few weeks later, they somehow picked it up and asked if we could talk about it. KaDeWe had collaborated with artists before, but I wanted to do something with no products from the store. Then we had the idea to align it with Gallery Weekend. That’s why all participating artists are represented by galleries involved in the festival’s program.

I’ve been going there since the ’90s – mostly with my grandmother. Whenever she said her lipstick had run out, I knew we were going to KaDeWe. In hindsight, it was probably just an excuse, no lipstick’s gone that quickly – but it becamone of our rituals. I live nearby now, still go often, even just to wander around.

Very much. They were in for all the irritation. And it works – if you hang around the storefront for 20 minutes, you’ll see all kinds of reactions from passersby and learn so much. Highly recommended!

Each window is a different case. Benjamin Heisenberg’s video piece, for example, runs on old TVs – like in a vintage electronics store. Isabella Ducrot’s large-scale painting functions like a stage set. Every window required its own approach.

You reach people who didn’t actively decide to look at art. Most come across this exhibition by accident. Sometimes one person stops and others follow, changing the dynamic entirely. That’s also why we wanted the windows to be as heterogeneous as possible.

Very thin – and that’s what makes it exciting and adds more potential to the works shown. Pamela Rosenkranz’s “Pour Yourself“, a set of Evian bottles could easily be mistaken for a product display. John Miller’s “Dress Rehearsal for the Revolution“ is a band consisting of mannequins, this band is entirely confusing in all their dead-pan glory. For this work, the project is a „homecoming“, somehow.

Some names and even works came to mind immediately – Josefine Reich, John Miller, Saâdane Afif who, with his ready-made approach, created a minimal yet effective work using reflective road sign foil – even the windowpane becomes part of the piece.

Artists like Warhol, Rauschenberg, or Jasper Johns worked with or for department store windows with creative freedom of sorts but always with products from the stores.

It’s a gift. The displays are especially striking at night – with movement, light, reflections. The city becomes part of the work. People are more focused, less distracted. The viewing experience is different at every part of the day.

New meanings emerge. Alexandra Bircken’s window shows a sculpture containing motorbike gas tanks, hair, fire – familiar but disorienting elements. It catches people and that tension between recognition and confusion creates engagement.

Optimism. The collaboration was smooth – with all the galleries, especially the artists and the store. And it’s a reminder: irritation is a good thing. It opens doors, especially outside traditional spaces.

People actually stopping, really looking – maybe even missing their bus. Or the father who came with his daughter three days in a row to pick a new favorite window each day. That’s the best thing that could happen.