They emailed each other and then Ben arrived in Berlin by me staying for a month in this
flat, which is the artist flat.
And we just kept our fingers crossed that they got on because the last show, for example,
the two artists, one of whom was from Berlin and one of whom is from London, which is always
the pattern that we have in love, which is the organisation that I've started with other people.
And it was a little bit like a blind date, they didn't know each other.
And then I emailed both of them and I said, you know, I want to do a show with both of you
and you're going to have a month in a space and it's not curated, I put you together
and then that's it, you're on your own.
And fortunately, the space is unrenovated, so you can really take it apart, do what you want.
This old building, I mean, the people live in old buildings and they really don't know
what's going on behind the walls.
They've got the history.
The history of, you know, that existed, how cables used to be installed in buildings
and what they existed from the materialistic of cable.
I mean, all the sockets are still in use.
But I also thought that's really interesting to find all the different cables still supplying you
with electricity every day.
Electricity, to brush at night, to blow dry your hair or whatever.
Just like this old building, I mean, people live in old buildings and they really don't know
what's going on behind the walls.
I think this is very interesting.
I think this is the most interesting one where I started off with this socket down here
and it went on and actually I found this old socket which was plastered away
and I went on and I actually found this cable.
This cable, well, you can see that.
What I said in the 50s, they diagonally put the cable on the wall.
At that time they didn't have the worries about people hitting cables when they put nails in the wall.
And then this cable, as you can see, leads like this.
Here you can see I cut the cable and I found copper and two different plastic isolations.
In the 20s, the first cable I found was just pure cloth around the cables
which means that they didn't have any more isolation.
Nowadays they have two or three layers of isolation.
As an artist, you just do this work here.
You don't know where you end up.
You don't know where your work will end up.
So actually, literally, the most interesting cables ended up being around the entrance door
and next to this, what is it called, the electric supply box.
So here I found those cables just at the entrance.
I think that's very nice that you end up with a show where really the apartment or the building determines
your work so much that you end up showing your work next to the entrance.
Also, the visitors coming to the space, they are in the same position as me.
You have to go around and find the hidden cable here next to the door.
Not obviously exposed for visitors, but also you have to go around and detect them yourself or find them yourself.
Basically, I've been here for months.
I sort of made the deliberate decision not to bring any work with me.
For me, it was much more interesting to just sort of be here and react to the gallery, react to Berlin,
react also to Antonio's work.
I like to challenge institutions, gatherings, I like to challenge the viewers.
It was really very interesting, something being given free reign to sort of almost make as much mess as I possibly wanted.
I called the Health and Safety Violation Series, which are works that deliberately set out to either be dangerous or sound dangerous.
So people who want to do the work have to sign a liability waiver form.
As is common with those legal documents, read about it. They're all on random timers, but I will forget that it was on.
And then it will switch on and I will jump.
Basically, they're sort of affecting the space and affecting how secure people feel with the work.
I also show all those colours when people walk in and quite constantly tell people they are.
