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After having talked to the artist Keren Cytter via Instagram – a platform that is both, medium and topic for her – we met for an interview at the opening of Tell me about yesterday tomorrow, a few days later. We talked about “The Smurfs”, remembering history and Fashions.

Cytter’s films tend to oscillate between documentation, visual storytelling and dream-like sequences. Her works can be understood as politically charged positions on current power constellations in our contemporary society as well as a reflection on the mechanisms of the media today. Fashions (2019) was produced for the exhibition Tell me about yesterdaytomorrow at the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism and premiered at the exhibition’s opening. The film raises questions about political positions that appear and fade out over time. It shows three generations of women, who are oblivious of the social structures that they find themselves within. Cytter shows ambivalent political positions as well as symbols that coexist in the midst of a media governed society. Through strong images and a few revealing punch lines, ideologies and their icons are disclosed as Fashions.

First of all, I would love to know if you remember one of your first memories ever? Is there something that stands out, or something that comes back to you?

“In general?”

Yes, in general. Or something that maybe comes back to you at times?

“There is nothing that comes back to me. And I have childhood memories, of course. But the first one that is strong for me and which I really like, is the ‘Smurfs’ book. It was a really shiny, big book that I had gotten after I left kindergarten. At the time, my parents were living with my grandparents, which meant that my former kindergarten was next to our house. I thought the book was so important, that I wanted to show it to the kids there. And so I showed it to them through the fence.”

Do you think that art can work with history in a different way than the academic discourse of history can? And would you say that we can see different people’s position differently through art?

“I think that art which works with historical facts has retrospectively been backing populism throughout history. What is then left, are opinions and they remain. When the fashion of such opinions is then gone, the art is demolished. Therefore I think it just strengthens popular opinions. That’s also why I think it’s good to have a science of history.”

Would you then think it is good to keep the two (art and history) separate?

“Yes, definitely. I think it is good to keep history separate from art. Art is very personal and not ‘true’. History is trying to reach the truth and I think that is important. Much more important than art!”

I think that’s very interesting concerning your new film [Fashions, 2019] because in the film you seem to tell some generic stories that women tell each other, about each other or that the media tell women about themselves. And the things we tend to overlook in our everyday lives.

“I also show things that people don’t talk about, because they aren’t popular at the moment.”

So would you say that this is one of the more forgotten topics in history?

“Maybe not in history, but it is presently forgotten. Maybe history can remember it later, but for now, people don’t care. The same can be said about most people’s relationship to the meat industry and so forth. Concerning the women in the film, I show women, because I think men are not specifically necessary for the story. Lately, I also been seeing many single women raising their children. In the end, every character had to be attributed with different things. At first I didn’t know though, whether there would be enough for a dialogue to exist, so I thought about a brother or something similar, but it was unnecessary in the end.”

I remember an interview, where you said that you weren’t too sure about how to deal with the topic of the holocaust, or whether or not to take it in at all. Do you think that you want the film to relate to the subject of the holocaust and the local context of the exhibition?

“I do have to say that the work was made for the exhibition. However, in the title it seems to me, that there is some sort of separation between yesterday and tomorrow. But I don’t think there is. I think that everything will just continue. It’s not as if there was a spectacularly bad thing in the past and now everything is okay. There are spectacularly bad things happening now, that nobody cares about. People don’t demonstrate. And this is something which also reaches into daily life, although in different nuances. The people in the film don’t care about these things either. Now, as well as ‘back then’, there are things that people don’t care about.”

Thank you. I think that’s it for now, even though I would have about thirty-three other questions.

By Camilla Langnickel, student of Art history at Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität Munich