Britspotting film festival in Berlin. Ben Knight speaks to the veteran of the halcyon frisson of 1970's New York and economic downturn and creativity. "/> Britspotting film festival in Berlin. Ben Knight speaks to the veteran of the halcyon frisson of 1970's New York and economic downturn and creativity. " />
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Vivienne Dick: ‘Experimentation becomes an important way to resist’

Avant-garde Irish filmmaker Vivienne Dick is one of the special guests at this year's Britspotting film festival in Berlin. Ben Knight speaks to the veteran of the halcyon frisson of 1970's New York and economic downturn and creativity.

Published: 15 November 2009 12:42 CET
Vivienne Dick: ‘Experimentation becomes an important way to resist’
Photo: A scene from Dick's Visibility Moderate

A lot of people compare Berlin now with New York in the 1970’s. Do you understand what they mean?

It’s to do with the recession. Maybe it’s something to do with the city as well. But I think it’s more to do with the recession, or – I don’t know what to call it – the unemployment situation. People can’t get work, but they have to be able to eat, so they live here for less than you can in London or Dublin. But at the same time you’ve got more time to do creative things. That’s what happened in New York then.

Is that why you went over there?

I was following my instinct, I’d say. There was nothing for me in Ireland. I was interested in working in photography, and there was no way to get work because they wouldn’t employ women at the time. Plus you had to go to photography school to get work, and the course wouldn’t take women. And in London? I didn’t see much difference there.

All those people running around calling themselves artists were guys – it just didn’t have that energy I found in New York. I immediately found that city a very creative place on a level I’d never come across anywhere. Perhaps it’s like that here now.

What goes through your mind when you watch your films after 30 years?

I think they’ve stood the test of time, that’s what goes through my mind. They still have this energy that’s beyond me – it’s an energy that’s out there now. Creativity is not something you can own. If you start to believe you own it, then it withers. But the films do bring back a certain time as well. I mean I was younger, for a start. I look at them and think, “God, how beautiful we all were.”

One of the films being shown at Britspotting, ‘Visibility Moderate,’ is about travelling back to Ireland. Why did you make that film then, after you’d been in New York so long?

I love travelling, I love entering different worlds. Obviously I know Ireland very well. When you live away from home and you go back you see it through the eyes of a stranger. You have a knowledge of a place, and you’re more acutely open to the bizarreness of it. It was important to jump into making a film while I was still open to it. Part of the film is about the Ireland that Ireland is trying to sell, and what people kind of expect when they go there. Ireland’s become so good at capitalising on this, and selling the blarney and the craic to death.

How do you feel about that?

Well, it’s a load of nonsense isn’t it? But it’s interesting because everything is constructed anyway. You just get the feeling in Ireland they’d sell their granny if they had to. Things are collapsing in Ireland now though. Which is a good thing.

Is it, why?

It’ll give us a break, you know? From this mad consumerism. Let us pause for a minute and see what we want, exactly.

So why did you go back?

Lots of reasons. One – I got a job. Two – I was getting depressed. New York was beginning to close in on me. Three – I wanted to go back because I’d been away for twelve years. Four – I thought Ireland had changed, and I’d be able to go back. But I got a shock. I found out it was too soon for me.

Does the ‘experimental’ label bother you?

No, I’ve got nothing against it. We all have to be experimenting. We all have to discover new ways to describe the world. People who are successful making large-scale feature films are always experimenting and drawing on the avant-garde. They pick all those tricks up from the experimenters.

And I think in this proto-fascist world that we’re going into now at the speed of light, experimentation becomes more and more important as a way to resist.

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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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