Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg in "Berlin" - Season 9 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

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.