Tangible Futures

Holitopia Festival for Arts and Future

My name is Elisabeth Helldorff, and I’m about to read something to you. I find it quite charming to read something out loud. Especially since you’re all sitting on furniture that was designed and produced just around the corner in Adlershof, at the company I work for. The company is called System 180. What you see around you is basically my PowerPoint presentation turned into objects. I hope you’re sitting comfortably. And no, we don’t have cushions. After all, you’re not supposed to fall asleep while I’m reading – though if you do, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I could offer to wake you up at the end of the reading. Feel free to let me know now if you'd like that.

Why no PowerPoint? Why reading?

You know, I’ve broken up with classical music. I don’t need to perform perfectly anymore. I’ve broken up with science. I don’t need to cite perfectly anymore. I’ve broken up with hipster companies. I don’t have to wear white sneakers anymore (okay, since Rainer Brüderle wears white sneakers, that trend is pretty much over anyway), and I’ve broken up with cons. I don’t need PowerPoint anymore.

Isn’t that great? And of course, I know as well as you do that all of this is a lie. Of course, I need every single experience I’ve had in all those jobs for whatever I do now or in the future. Of course I integrate all the skills and tools in my work.

Speaking of the future – it’s exactly what our future should be about. It’s about integration and collaboration. It's not about excluding certain ways of working. And that’s what I want to convey in this little reading. Oh yes, I’m reading, and I enjoy it so much, as I was never allowed or felt empowered to do so. Or maybe I just never came up with the idea of doing it because it sounds a bit like… church?

While I’m writing this text, I'm sitting at home on a mustard-yellow sofa. One of the legs broke off years ago. My father replaced it with a misshapen block, which eventually fell off after years, and is now replaced by a stack of books. Every few months, the stack has to be adjusted so the sofa doesn’t tip over as the books shift.

This is wildly irrelevant. For this conference, and also for the lives of my fellow humans in general. Still, I think about it, and I regularly laugh at myself. Why don’t I just put a proper leg on it? Well, because it works like this too.

The top book is titled "Realities and Visions – In Honor of Hilmar Hoffman." I just checked. Isn’t that hilarious? Especially when I consider that this slot here is titled "Tangible Futures." I don’t see much of a future left for that book, but there’s definitely a lot of tangibility in the form of physical pressure from the edge of the sofa.

You probably wanted to hear something about artistic interventions. After all, that’s what I earned my PhD in. But I have to be honest: the idea of intervention itself currently gives me a terrible feeling of discomfort. At least for now. I no longer feel like intervening. I’d rather integrate. And combine. And collaborate. And include. We need that more than anything else. Or, to quote the book under my sofa: we need realities and visions. And my current reality is that my home country is holding elections in nine days, it’s simultaneously flooded, and yet it’s very likely that a far-right party – the epitome of division and the opposite of integration – will win. That’s reality, and for that, we need visions, not interventions.

Political rant – over.

Being artistic without intervening – now that’s the highest discipline! And to develop visions through artistic thinking and action that are tangible. Concrete. Visions I can see, believe in, and trust – visions that can be a driving force for collaboration and integration and so on.

You already understand what I mean because I’ve already said it. Except maybe for those who’ve fallen asleep. But I’ll wake them up later and gladly give them the text to read on the replacement bus, as I assume regular tram service is disrupted. That’s another reality.

Anyway. I started working for System 180 after going through everything one does when in Berlin. Zalando, hipster agencies, pwc. But as you know, I wanted to integrate, collaborate, and so on. I wanted, for example, the freedom to sit on my mustard-yellow sofa and write a text that starts with me sitting on a three-legged sofa, without being bothered by the fact that the text is meant for a highly interested and educated audience that probably wants to hear something about artistic interventions. And don't get me wrong: It's not my aim to be a clown. I was looking for a combination of physical production, future proof visions and creative collaboration.

I found something unique in this company. The vision to create products that allow users to sit down or stand up and just start designing. With no guidelines. No prestige. Timeless. Modular. And also somehow cool. I have to admit.

The principle is simple: stainless steel tubes, flattened at both ends, screwed together, and you build whatever you want – as long as the statics hold up. Physics is non-negotiable.

The principles of artistic thinking fit perfectly here. We work with material, space, acoustics, time, warmth, light. We collaborate, cooperate – and sometimes argue – across disciplines. Since I left the machine rooms of concert halls, I’ve once again felt what production really is: the collective work on something that can be experienced with the senses.

Back to the sofa. Why is it so important to me? It’s something I learned during my artistic education. I sit, stand, or lie somewhere, and I begin my train of thought in the here and now. It doesn’t matter if I’m sitting on a sofa or lying in the bathtub. I develop something that can only arise from my surroundings. This way of thinking and working is so foreign to many people. Or it has become foreign to them. That’s a real shame because the tangible space around us lets us feel who we are and how we’re doing. For example, those without a cushion certainly feel that.

It sounds banal. But we often forget it.

So what if we started our thought processes quite simply? By looking under the sofa and finding Hilmar Hoffmann. Until last night, I really didn’t know he was stacked there all along. Without this book, the thought wouldn’t have arisen that reality and vision are two central components of my work. That Artistic Intervention is maybe something for times of peace. But Artistic Thinking and Acting can be the driver for new thoughts which can eventually inspire people to come together and feel empowered to collaborate.

I had a plan for this lecture, and I allowed myself to break it by experimenting with what pure experience of tangibility does to me and my thoughts. Completely open and spontaneous. I originally just wanted to show a video in which I did something similar before. Only not with text, but with music. I took a video from System 180 and composed, recorded, and mixed the music for it. In the moment I saw it. The melodies came to life.