Interview by Edie MuskerPortrait by Jochen Wisotzki

EM How does your film The Tailor of Ulm (1979) stand amid your early animation work in East Berlin?

LD During my studies, my dream was to move away from classical art forms and towards a mixture of art and life. This meant using graphics and imagery from advertising, posters, film and even exhibition design. I am not a classical animator: I am self-taught. I started with animated films in Dresden at the DEFA Studio for Animated Films, a state studio specialising exclusively in animated films. In 1978, I was invited to make The Tailor of Ulm in Potsdam-Babelsberg, based on a poem by Bertolt Brecht. The poem was an opportunity to describe my situation at the time: the dull conformity of the masses and their sinking into the “sweet porridge”, as told in Grimms’ Fairy Tales (1812–58). Astonishingly, the film is now almost 50 years old and speaks of life in the GDR, a state that considered itself an Ordensstaat [a religious or monastic state]. This seems to be repeating itself today: an Ordensstaat with the blind conformity of the consumerist masses. My work with animation gradually developed into classic documentary and essay films, which then led me to experimental films. After the state banned the production of my film Herakles (1984)because it didn’t suit the cultural officials in form or content, the question arose: what now? Give up, or empower myself? I decided to illegally turn it into what I called a “media collage”: to present it live, improvising with musicians, film and slide projections, a dancer and myself as the performer. This began unnoticed in peripheral locations such as abandoned dance halls or youth centres. Each screening was also a rehearsal and served to test the performance, which was then modified for the next show. It was an experimental laboratory in which I developed my own visual language without ideology or intention, simply trusting the material. I work in cycles and intervals consisting of phases between film and visual art. I follow the media without intention. The research replenishes my material store, which is then processed into collages, photo series and installations in museums or galleries. The films belong in the cinema, as long as they still exist. But of course, almost all the films are also available online.

EM How do you feel about autonomous creative output? Is that myth over?

LD The autonomy of art is not given to you; you have to take it. Today, we are talking about works of art, paintings, sculptures and films that have stood the test of time because their creators did not surrender themselves to their clients. They kept an indissoluble remnant that still interests us today: a secret. But the autonomy of the internet is passé, and many people know that. But what to do with this knowledge? This became clear to me early on, when I started researching for the film The Net around the year 2000. The film later became The Net: Unabomber, LSD and The Internet (2003). My research started with the new myth of the “free internet” and Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron’s essay “The Californian Ideology” (1995). One of the major topics at the time was the so-called “world government of the internet”, represented by the US company ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), founded by then-President Clinton and his advisor Ira Magaziner. The company was supposed to guarantee US control over the backbone of the internet. But my research in the US also showed me a different reality. In connection with the publisher John Brockman and his magazine Edge.org in New York, I came across Ted Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber – a fundamental critic and enemy of the scientific-technological system. I began a correspondence with Kaczynski that lasted for several years. I was interested in the difference between an alleged myth and the reality I was seeing. There had to be a new reality that was not immediately visible to my eye. If that was the case, how could I make this visible on film? That was the question for the film I completed in 2002. Regarding the control and steering mania of all technologies with which the “open society” necessarily operates, “authoritarian” corresponds to the nature – or rather, the source code – of the technologies used. This has created a workhouse through which millions of golems wander today. Admittedly, this sounds a bit metaphorical, but in practical terms, film production has now been automated using multi-camera technology, where the software automatically programs the camera settings and editing. At first glance, this sounds like a dream come true for tech geeks and the logical extension of a system that knows no limits. But this system also includes the development of drones for long-range warfare, and that’s sickening.

EM When did you first make the shift in your career from documentary film to art?

LD Since the late 1970s, I have been working on a total work of art titled Herakles-Konzept [Heracles-Concept] which brings together all my films, collages, installations, books and radio works. Since childhood, I’ve been fascinated by the Auwald, a forest south of Leipzig. During one of my walks in 1980, I stumbled upon a plaque which commemorated the illegal communist resistance in Leipzig. Members of a KPD [Community Party of Germany] resistance group had been holding secretmeetings in rowboats, disguised as day-trippers. I liked it: the forest, the river with its extensive network of tributaries and canals, the conspiratorial and mysterious atmosphere of the scene, and the irony that I, of all people, had become interested in the founding principles of the GDR. My questions at the local SED [Socialist Unity Party] headquarters met with confusion and helpless shrugs. The plaque in the floodplain forest seemed unknown. I was told that hardly any evidence existed from the years of illegality, and what did exist was imprecise and incomplete. It was impossible to prove what was written on the tablet in the forest. What was reality; what was fiction? Could historical fiction also become a “scientifically proven” history that served a dictatorship? My interest was piqued, and my work began on An Archaeology of Memory, which continues to this day.

In 2028, the Herakles-Konzept will be shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig and then at several other museums. The working title of the forthcoming exhibition is SOUTH – An Archaeology of Memory. The title is inspired by The Drowned World (1962) by J.G. Ballard, which describes the path back into a geophysical past and provides the backdrop for my pictures, installations and films. Through these media I act as both archaeologist and artist. .