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Hiwa K: People tend to forget,

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this amnesia which people are having, especially 
now with the return of the right wing.

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Sometimes artists work more into the 
future and show them what could come.

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But sometimes you have to remind them 
just what happened yesterday, you know,

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because people tend to forget more and more.

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Baruther Strasse is the name of my street.

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I go to the studio here. “Barut” 
in Arabic means explosive powder.

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Anything I do is an archeological act.

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You start to dig, and the material 
starts to tell you who you are.

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The material tells you, "Okay,

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you are doing quite well. I like you 
like this. Go further. Stop here."

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You play and you test your borders 
as a small Chihuahua, or dog.

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You try to see who is the master and 
the material always talks to you.

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Mostly, I take my works from 
anecdotes, like my own childhood.

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I was born Kurdistan of Iraq. Kurdistan is 
a minority in Iraq. Color TVs didn't come

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to Kurdistan, because the government's not 
investing always in those minority areas.

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So my father was putting color foil on the TV.

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One week we had it red, one week we had blue.

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The whole city was doing that. 
It's a very silent protest.

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I think my works are very Kurdish.

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Kurds is about being formless, 
because you don't have a country.

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You exist but you don't 
exist on the map officially.

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After the first World War, the French and the 
British decided not to give the Kurds a country.

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They gave a part to Iraq, to Iran, 
to Syria, and then to Turkey.

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So we are just cut in four pieces like pizza.

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Yeah, as a Kurdish person, you are twice unsafe.

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Like as Iraqi, you are unsafe once as Arab.

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But when you are Kurdish, you are unsafe twice.

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This work ["The Lemon Tastes of Apple"] happened

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2011 when I went back to Kurdistan 
and it was the time of Arab Spring.

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I don't like to hide behind my camera.

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To jump in front of your own camera, 
you make yourself vulnerable,

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and you are not looking at things 
as an object, you are a part of it.

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And this engagement is very important for me.

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I say it was very stupid to do it, because I ...

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I wouldn't do it now.

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It was very dangerous moment where 
you walked towards this militias

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which are shooting you one by one and playing 
Ennio Morricone’s music while inhaling the gas.

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The absurdity of the whole thing, it's a big joke.

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You brother is shooting you, 
what do you have to lose.

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You just have to do a gesture.

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I’m using the mechanism of a joke.

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You wouldn't expect somebody stupid 
coming with a harmonica and playing.

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You experience things differently 
with a joke. It has a twist.

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It has a way of stimulating your thinking.

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A joke always wakes us up with a slap, 
which comes from somewhere you don't expect.

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I have very rational part of my practice, 
but also have a very irrational part.

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I want to bring something what doesn't fit; what 
doesn't fit, and it's a bit strange, you know.

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Since many years, I knew Bakir 
Ali, the Kurdish philosopher,

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was based in Berlin working as a taxi driver.

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We had the long-term discussions in Kurdish.

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I wanted to interrupt his thinking.

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So I just started to attack him physically.

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Wrestling interrupts us from this 
kind of linear intellectual debate.

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When we're out of breath and 
somebody's holding your throat,

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you can't verbalize what you want to say.

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You sometimes experience the most existentialist questions.

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Hiwa K:
Very often,

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people say, "You are visual artist." 
I say, "I'm a blind visual artist."

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I search blindly for tools.

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I'm more like having a begging bowl and knocking 
at doors, "Do you have anything to give me?"

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I'm just borrowing disciplines from 
dance to marble game to music to cooking.

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They are the language of the people.

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I think if art had some chance, it should 
change completely this intellectual language.

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When you are trying to balance 
something, you are in a panic.

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You are swinging all the time, you don't have 
a center. You are not anchored somewhere.

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So very often, people say I'm based in Berlin.

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I'm never based. I'm based on my feet, you know.

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I came walking.

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I tried seven times to leave my country, and I was 
even in a few prisons, because I didn't make it.

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The wave of refugees itself is a statement.

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It's a performance art actually, like people 
are performing and coming here saying,

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"You see what happens to me 
because of your ignorance,

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because of you not caring about the system."

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I would be very happy to go back to my country,

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because I want to spend some time with 
my mountains, my people, but in peace.

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And this peace, I say the 
West has ruined it for us.

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I remember we had always war. I don't 
remember that there was no war in Iraq.

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I went through three wars 
before coming to the West.

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During the second World War, Kassel was destroyed

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and now Kassel is producing so 
much weapons and exported many,

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many weapons to my country and other countries.

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Kassel is forgetting it's own past.

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In Greece, there was a structure of five 
water pipes to be used for construction.

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Refugees are living there, so it was like 
a kind of refugee camp or hotel for free.

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It's not about patronizing, but 
it's just about reminding people.

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The refugee which we see, they come just 
because you've export wars to those countries.

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The works I do is very much about reminding 
how many fingerprints we have onto each other,

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how much we are embedded into each other.

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Sometimes you call your work political, but by 
overdosing it, you kill the political in it.

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So, for me, it's important 
to make this soft connection.

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And here I call it to refer with 
your pinky, not with your index.

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Instead of telling all these white people,

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"You guys, look what you are doing 
to my family and people are dying."

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No, make them get it by themselves.

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I think it's our responsibility, 
people from dominated countries,

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educate them about politics. Educate 
them about knowing about our pain.

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The major changes should happen here,

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because these countries are 
countries who are in charge

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of making big decisions about the whole world.

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People here, they live quite 
well and they don't care.

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They don't want to change anything.

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We are stuck somehow. I'm in a 
quite stress situation for now.

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Free thinking what I'm doing, whether 
that's helpful or just decorating the

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façade of the system with this democratic color.