Pawel Althamer

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Paweł Althamer The Neighbors

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Film, 2000–04

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ÂŠ 2014 Skira Rizzoli Publicatons. All Rights Motion Picture, Ljubljana, 2000 Reserved

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ÂŠ 2014 Skira Untitled Rizzoli (Observer), Publicatons. 1994All Rights Reserved

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ÂŠ 2014 Skira Rizzoli Publicatons. All Rights Self Portrait in Suitcase, 1996 Reserved

Beatrice, 2013

Davide, 2013

frustrating. The first thing I remember about Bródno was that nobody smiled; it was tough and very tiring. It was as though sadness was the everyday practice, and I wondered why. As children, you are supposed to be happy—happiness should be a natural consequence of living together—but my basic impression of this neighborhood was one of sadness. There were some friendly people, of course, but there was always a lot of fighting and tension. It took a while before I could find the inspiration to do something different. I was in a tough school system with forty pupils in one classroom—very packed and very intense. I wasn’t comfortable in school and I didn’t like education, but eventually I discovered I had a talent—I was good at getting to know others and connecting with them. I became friends with almost everybody in my class. I got to know them better and it became a deeper kind of study. It was an amazing discovery and that was when the moment of change occurred for me. I decided that the goal was to create social relationships, to create friendships, to integrate people, and not to embrace competition—like trying to determine who the better pupil might be. This competitive approach, which had been my experience

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in primary school, didn’t work anymore. I liked going to school particularly to meet my friends. Of course, if you have good teachers and it’s not boring then you can learn something as well, but for me that’s just the pretext. The program of school is just the pretext for meeting people. I saw so many friends lose enthusiasm for school and education because it was an experience of exclusion. We should find more interesting pretexts and motivations to create interesting social groups and encourage people to come together. MG: Bródno is also the neighborhood where you collaborated with families and individuals living in the surrounding housing projects to create the light sculpture Bródno 2000. Do you think it’s a happier place now through the work you do? PA: I don’t know if I can take that much credit, but we are now at a point where people in the neighborhood are starting to ask questions like: “Is it just bad fortune that I live here? Can I do something about it? Does it depend on me? Is there a relationship between my feelings, my decisions, and the reality around me?” That’s when you realize that you are becoming part of a common experience. MG: You’ve mentioned in the past that

Beside Our Selves

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