Hiwa K in "Berlin" - Season 9 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

Hiwa K: People tend to forget,

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

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

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

because people tend to forget more and more.

Baruther Strasse is the name of my street.

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

Anything I do is an archeological act.

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

The material tells you, "Okay,

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

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

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

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

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

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

So my father was putting color foil on the TV.

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

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

I think my works are very Kurdish.

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

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

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

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

So we are just cut in four pieces like pizza.

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

Like as Iraqi, you are unsafe once as Arab.

But when you are Kurdish, you are unsafe twice.

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

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

I don't like to hide behind my camera.

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

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

And this engagement is very important for me.

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

I wouldn't do it now.

It was very dangerous moment where 
you walked towards this militias

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

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

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

You just have to do a gesture.

I’m using the mechanism of a joke.

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

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

It has a way of stimulating your thinking.

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

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

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

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

was based in Berlin working as a taxi driver.

We had the long-term discussions in Kurdish.

I wanted to interrupt his thinking.

So I just started to attack him physically.

Wrestling interrupts us from this 
kind of linear intellectual debate.

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

you can't verbalize what you want to say.

You sometimes experience the most existentialist questions.

Hiwa K:
Very often,

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

I search blindly for tools.

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

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

They are the language of the people.

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

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

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

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

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

I came walking.

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

The wave of refugees itself is a statement.

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

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

because of you not caring about the system."

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

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

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

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

I went through three wars 
before coming to the West.

During the second World War, Kassel was destroyed

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

many weapons to my country and other countries.

Kassel is forgetting it's own past.

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

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

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

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

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

how much we are embedded into each other.

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

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

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

Instead of telling all these white people,

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

No, make them get it by themselves.

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

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

The major changes should happen here,

because these countries are 
countries who are in charge

of making big decisions about the whole world.

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

They don't want to change anything.

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

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

façade of the system with this democratic color.