Artist Talk with Konrad Hanke

TH: Your life without art would be….

KH: Well, I don’t know. Different, I think. I’d probably have less time to read and catch up on things that interest me.

TH: Where do you get your inspiration from?

KH: It’s hard to say. I just collect different things that interest me to start with. Something will come to me and eventually it will turn into something like an idea. Lately I’ve been getting some ideas from different jobs I’ve done over the last few years to pay my rent. That kind of gives me some insight into things outside of my own bubble. And of course people who are close to me, other artists and talking to them are always a very big source of inspiration.

TH: When did you start with the project Informal City Park and what attracted you most?

KH: I started thinking about it at the end of 2019. I’ve known Gabriela for quite a while and I was excited when she asked me if I wanted to be part of the project. Because I found the idea of combining the concept of theme parks and informal living very interesting. I was particularly attracted by the opportunity to explore the topic and was very curious to see where my subjective process would take me. I was also attracted to the idea of bringing artists from Egypt and Germany together to see what these different positions would bring to the overall project.

TH: What literature did you study during the lockdown phase of the project?

KH: I read some texts about simulation, amusement parks, and urban space. What I really liked was the small collection of essays by Norbert Loacker (“Was Massen mögen”) and the book “The City as Theme Park and the Theme Park as City” by Stacy Warren. The contents of both books became important during my process of creating the artworks for the exhibition.

TH: What is your work about?

KH: At the moment, I am interested in simulations, for example spatial concepts in video games. These always need translations between the world you experience as real and the model of that world. Translations that make sure you identify the model in the right way. In this context, I ask myself what details are needed to construct something that gives the feeling of “reality” and which are superfluous. Therefore, my work now physically revolves around these questions.

TH: How do you see the interplay between amusement park and slum?

KH: Well, I only know as much about slums as you can if you live in a Western European city. So I focused on the concept of amusement parks. What I can say is that amusement parks have to strongly control their space in order not to lose control of the narrative that is served in them. They have to prevent random things from happening in order to keep the story stable. Which in a way puts them at odds with urban areas. However, urban spaces always seem to me to be a big pile of disconnected and connected things happening at the same time. The staggering and layering of images in urban space, the eclectic about it has always interested me. Things happen and they look random – but they’re all part of a larger, more complex structure that you can never fully understand. I suspect that carries over to informal settlements as well, probably even more so because the state organizational structure is less present.

Amusement parks, on the other hand, always try to create seemingly complex narratives/images that take place under controlled conditions. In this, I see amusement parks very much related to gardens, artificial spaces that try to simulate something that could also be scary or over-complex in real life. They try to turn that chaotic element into something appealing, domesticated. It is this shift that catches my attention the most.