-
Nathalie Djurberg: Art is like one of the
few places in society that is not so rigid,
-
which doesn't have to have one single purpose,
-
because where would this fit in otherwise?
-
My work, it's a looking for the answer,
-
but the answer itself is not so important.
-
It's more important what I discover during
the making of it.
-
I moved here around 2003 for the electronic
music scene.
-
I was just sitting at home making music for
myself, before I met Nathalie.
-
Berlin is like a free zone.
-
You live in a sort of bubble.
-
There's not so many social constraints.
-
Djurberg: Living in Berlin has had a big influence.
-
For me, it's more feeling very free.
-
I'm self-taught in animation, and he's kind
of the same with music.
-
Berg:
If you're self-taught, what's driving you
-
is the necessity to do it.
-
Djurberg: The best way that I can make the
idea is by making an animation.
-
It's just because that fits me.
-
If I could do it in a simpler way, I would.
-
So if I was a brilliant writer, I would write.
-
Before, I had been so frustrated in not being
able to tell what I wanted to tell.
-
I didn't find a way to do it in one image.
-
Then I made an animation, and that suited
me perfectly,
-
because I didn't have to be content with one image.
-
I could have a thousand.
-
In the studio there are no taboos.
-
Taboos exist because we are really scared
of being that ourselves.
-
So we don't look at it.
-
Bringing art into the light--to say that,
-
"No, that was just a thought"--
-
didn't really belong to me in that way.
-
I was just so terrified of looking at it,
-
because I was so scared of finding out something
about myself.
-
I never did something that was a maze before.
-
But this is pretty massive,
-
because usually I don't have to be inside
the set this much.
-
Berg: When we met, she didn't think I'd be
a good musical partner.
-
Djurberg: He was sharing an apartment with
my best friend,
-
and she suggested he would make music to me.
-
I gave him a finished one I wasn't happy with.
-
Berg: When I saw her films, I hadn't seen
anything like it before.
-
Like nothing.
-
There's nothing that looks like it.
-
It evoked something specific with me.
-
In the beginning, I was kind of scared to
make music for them actually.
-
Because I thought, I don't want to change
them too much.
-
Djurberg: When he gave it back to me, he had
flipped it so much,
-
that all the mistakes and all the crudeness
of it didn't matter.
-
It had made the flip that I hadn't been able to.
-
Even though images evoke emotions,
-
music or sound do it even more.
-
Hans is an expert manipulator in that way.
-
I don't really care about story.
-
It's the situation that interests me.
-
For me, it's not so interesting if I know
everything that's going to happen in animation.
-
I lose interest in it because then I've already
seen it in my head.
-
I don't write ideas up.
-
I never do because the one that matters stays anyway,
-
or they come back in another form.
-
Berg: It's more about letting things pop up
and just knowing which things to grab.
-
That's how I see ideas, a bit like I don't
make them.
-
I'm more catching them.
-
The best I can do is just catch the right ideas.
-
Djurberg: I am intrigued by what is hidden
and what it is trying to hide.
-
For the "Dark Side of the Moon," it's about
exploring a secret that you don't know what it is,
-
like your own secret that you expect to find
but you never find it because it doesn't really
-
exist.
-
Berg: For this film, which is in this enchanted
forest setting,
-
I wanted the music to be mystical.
-
It's more like a musical almost.
-
Because the characters are so clumsy, and
ugly, and a bit disgusting,
-
I wanted to make the music really beautiful.
-
Djurberg: There's always a distance when you
look at a screen or a projection.
-
I wanted to have this immersion of being with
this physically.
-
Berg: It's like walking inside an animation.
-
The forest, it's like a magical place.
-
I wanted to work with that.
-
Djurberg: Both Hans and I are very colored
by being Swedish.
-
The culture of the folklore, that was a very,
very big influence in my childhood.
-
That always went back to nature, like fables
where animals are representing different human
-
characters.
-
If I use an animal, I can show a personal
trait, a characteristic.
-
I was extremely fascinated with the folklore
that are not directed for children.
-
My art is not for children.
-
A child would look at the animation.
-
They might see a banana, but a grownup might not.
-
They will see a banana but also what it symbolizes.
-
My process is really long.
-
The animation that I'm working on now, I worked
on it for four and a half months.
-
I don't like post-production at all, and I
don't like editing.
-
There is no point in doing that afterwards.
-
Animating is for me to jump into the unknown.
-
Once that is done, there is no feeling or
necessity to work with it after.
-
Berg: Now I'm just trying out different basic ideas.
-
It's quite dark, and I want to keep it like that.
-
In this animation, the search that goes on
and on in this maze,
-
I want the music to be almost like it's rolling
forward all the time, almost a bit drunk.
-
That's what I want to emphasize with the music.
-
Djurberg: The film is about that you get lost
in your own mind.
-
Wanting to get out, you keep on going in this loop,
-
just going through these corridors like a maze,
-
never getting out.
-
Even if I'm not doing something that is directly
about me,
-
it's absolutely still about me.
-
Everything I do in art is a discovering of
who I am.
-
That is the search.
-
That is the fascination.
-
I don't think that emotions or feelings should
be controlled.
-
They should be felt and looked at.
-
It's when they're hidden that they are a problem.
-
I have nothing really to say to anyone because
I can't know what anyone else needs.
-
You can think that you know what someone else
needs, but it's impossible to know.
-
But since people are not that different and
I'm a human being,
-
some parts of me will really resonate with
other people.