April 2004
Class Act
Talented pupils at the Bavarian International School turn writers for a day
BY MARISA BERKESCH, ROSANAGH EVANS, AMY GIBSON, DAVID GOLLES, OLGA KHMEL, DIANA KUCH & ELIZABETH PRESTON
This month MUNICH FOUND is pleased to present a group of talented young journalists from the Bavarian International School (BIS). In three separate interviews, ninth-graders (average age 15) from BIS spoke to the director of the Haus der Kunst, Chris Dercon, Viktualienmarkt stallholder Hans Hollweck and members of the Munich-based boy group Natural. Read on to find out what our roving reporters managed to find out.
INTERVIEW: Chris Dercon
“Curator is a kind of sexy word, though the job itself isn’t very sexy.”
This is not the type of comment you would expect to hear from the director/ curator of a major art gallery. But when we went to interview Chris Dercon, who was last year appointed director of Munich’s Haus der Kunst, we discovered that he is not your average art “producer” but a radical who says what he thinks. Dercon is also funny, charismatic, outgoing and claims to be the world’s worst artist—though he didn’t show us any of his work. He would like to have been an artist, but when he failed to achieve this dream, he decided to become a curator and help other artists realize their dreams instead. After studying in Holland and teaching in Paris, Dercon moved back to his home city of Brussels and worked for a while as a freelance broadcaster, curator and critic. He then moved to Vienna, and later to New York, before being hired by the Haus der Kunst, as its new director.
Dercon says he was attracted to the gallery because of its rich and controversial history. He recounts that in 1937, Hitler, speaking in this very building, stated that art was not about feelings, but propaganda. “This place once posed an enormous threat to civilized art,” explains Dercon. Completed in 1937, the gallery was designed by National Socialist architect Paul Ludwig Troost—the original name was Haus der Deutschen Kunst—and was used to showcase Nazi art. “Now,” says Dercon, “it is a place of liberation, concerned with freedom for artists.” The director knows plenty of artists on a personal basis and stresses that when organizing an exhibition he likes to give visitors a sense of who the artists really are.
“A director does not, of course, put together an exhibition all by him- or herself. It takes teams of people, sometimes only two, other times as many as 50,” Dercon explains. And the average cost of putting together an exhibition is about € 150,000, though he says this is a relatively small amount and mentions that he has worked on shows that have cost double that amount and more. When we asked Dercon how an exhibition can be so expensive, he explained that insurance is an enormous cost factor, especially if the artist is no longer alive, making their work irreplaceable. For Dercon, one of the best aspects of his work is that he has the chance to try out lots of new ideas and he hopes that artists will want to work with him because of this. He says it is important for him to take an interest in concepts that are hard to understand. “Ideas and concepts that not everybody accepts or understands are not necessarily unacceptable,” avers Dercon. He says that for this reason he tries to teach his own children not to be afraid of people, how they live, how they dress and what music they listen to etc., and that it’s important to be open.
Dercon enjoys listening to a wide variety of music, including Mexican folk music and, unexpectedly, Dizzee Rascal—an 18-year-old British hip-hop artist who won this year’s prestigious Mercury Music Prize. Of course we would like to know what qualifications are needed to become a museum director: Dercon smiles and replies, “an amazing address book,” and then adds, “a strong stomach because you always have to have drinks.”
So how does Dercon come up with new ideas? “The best ideas come in the morning during breakfast or they come late at night during dinner,” he says. Actually being a director seems to be a very hard job, with very long hours. He starts early in the morning “…because I have come to an age when I can store my memories much better in the morning than at any other time of day …” and works, on average, 16 hours a day. For anyone who hasn’t been put off by that information and still wishes to become a director or curator, remember these wise words by the Haus der Kunst’s very own celebrity director: “Don’t be afraid, and try to make that which is difficult popular … not populist, but popular, which is an entirely different thing. Don’t work to achieve an effect, but try to affect instead.”
INTERVIEW: Hans Hollweck
Munich’s Viktualienmarkt is always buzzing with customers, groups of tourists and local shoppers who stroll from stand to stand, looking at all the wonderful things on display—everything from exotic fruit to expensive wines. Rottler GmbH, a popular stand, lies on the east side of the market, opposite Café Nymphenburg, and is run by the gregarious, open-hearted Hans Hollweck. Hollweck, 52, takes pride in his homemade products, which include marmalades, jams, pestos, syrups and all kinds of herbs and spices. Recently we—four ninth-grade students from the Bavarian International School—decided to visit Rottler GmbH for ourselves and learn more about its friendly owner.
We’ve heard that this stall is pretty old. Can you tell us more about its history?
The actual store, as far as I know, was first entered in the books of the Grossmarkthalle in 1951. It’s as old as I am, because I was born in ’51. Actually, a lady started the stall. Her name was Frau Landsmann. Then along came a Herr Rottler, who married Frau Landsmann’s daughter and that’s how the shop got its name. Afterwards, Herr Rottler became popular for the jams and marmalades he made. Apparently, it began when he had some berries that he didn’t know what to do with. He didn’t want to waste the fruit and couldn’t sell them, so he decided to turn them into jam.
Why did you decide to take over the stall?
I’ve always wanted to be self-employed and originally I trained as a master baker and intended to open a restaurant. But then I had to cook for some people who didn’t know the first thing about what they were eating. When people told me, “It’s good, it’s very well made,” then I didn’t mind, but when people began saying, “you could have had a little more of this here, and that there,” I thought, “Hey, you know, I’ve had enough!” It wasn’t for me, so I didn’t open my own restaurant in the end!
Is it hard running a stall? Have
you ever experienced any disasters at work?
Nothing goes according to plan and nothing turns out the way you think it will. What you have isn’t always what you need. We had planned on having fresh horseradish on Friday. On Thursday I called the company and they said it would take a day to get here. By Monday, it still hadn’t come, so I called the company again, they said, “Sorry, we dropped all the jars and they broke.” So in the end, they had to reship it.
You have so many products. Which one is most popular?
It depends on the time of year! Funnily enough, when it’s strawberry season, strawberry jam sells. It’s crazy! Actually, the top product of the house is rosehip and elderberry jam.
What’s your most creative product?
We have a type of marmalade called Caipirinhia. If you go to a night club, you can order a Caipirinhia drink!
Was becoming a chef a childhood ambition or a decision on a whim? My best friend became a chef, so I had to become a chef too! My apprenticeship took three years and after that I worked at the Bayerischer Hof and in Frankfurt, before going to England. I got a job in a restaurant in the U.K., even though I didn’t speak a word of English—actually the chef was German. I was 19 and I met a 15-year-old girl who taught me to speak English. Actually I later married her.
Is it true that the market community is “gossipy” and competitive?
Oh yes, that’s very true! There are nice colleagues who help each other and there are the other ones who it’s very difficult to get along with. If
you have something, then they have to have it too. The outcome would be much better if, instead of rivalry and fighting with each other, people tried to help one another. And of course, it’s the same as everywhere else, there are some people who are very negative and never have anything good to say.
What other aspects of your job at the Viktualienmarkt aren’t so enjoyable, apart from the gossip and rivalry?
I consider myself a modern slave. I mean, I carry the responsibility, I carry the costs, do the work, but it’s the city that has the final say in what I can do.
What do you like about the job?
The fresh air! I’m outside all day long!
It seems that you are as well known as your stall. Do people ever recognize you when you are out of the shop?
All they ever recognize is my hat. It’s really funny! If I take off my hat I’m just like anyone else. That’s the way it is!
If you had to give one piece of good advice to our readers, what would it be?
It’s not my job to give other people advice, but my philosophy is this: you don’t get anywhere if you think you are too good to do the little jobs. It’s a saying: The one who is too big for the little things is too small for the big things! That’s what I’ve learned.
INTERVIEW: Natural
Finally, we’ve made it. Here we are ready to do our interview with the boy band Natural. We meet at the offices of their agents and after being shown through various rooms and sent along corridors we suddenly find ourselves shaking hands with Marc, Ben, Michael, Josh and Patrick. The guys are really friendly, relaxed and as we settle down to do the interview our nervousness disappears.
We begin by asking the group when they discovered they had a talent for singing and the boys answer in unison: “Still waiting.” We all laugh. Marc continues, “most of us have been performing all our lives, not necessarily singing. For instance, Josh and Michael used to be dancers. Michael did ballet. Ben, Marc and J did more musical theater. I think a lot of us were in high school bands. Being in a band isn’t just singing, but many different things together. You perform for live audiences, you play an instrument, you sing. Being in a band is 95 percent work, 5 percent being on stage playing. You must love what you do.” And do they get along as a group, we want to know? Marc answers thoughtfully, “We’ve learned to get along with each other very well and our group has a lot of fun on the road. Of course, we fight like brothers, but that’s what we’re supposed to do.”
Natural have had phenomenal success in the last two years: their album “Keep It Natural” went straight to number 2 in the German charts, and their second album is set to follow suit. Did the group ever think they would do this well? The answer from all with a laugh: “No, no, no,” though Marc adds, “a lot of us had the feeling that the band was going to be successful somehow. We just kind of knew. I moved down from Boston with no money, nothing, just left one day and said I’m going to go find my dreams.”
It is hard for us to imagine what it’s like to be on TV and the covers of magazines all the time, but Marc, Ben, Michael, Josh and Patrick seem to have gotten used to it. “When we first started this whole thing, I thought I was going to keep every magazine that I was in and every picture of myself,” says Marc, “but that’s so not true. We haven’t seen anything. We never see ourselves on TV. I mean, you see a video once in a while, but we really don’t see live shows. We’re always working or doing something else and there’s no way you can get every magazine article.” Michael adds, “We do so many photo shoots a day, we don’t even know what magazines they’re for, really. We just keep doing more and more photo shoots and then we do TV interviews. It gets really confusing. It’s good to keep a journal, because then you remember. Otherwise everything just kind of blurs. So if you ever travel, write journals and take pictures and video tapes because that kind of stuff’s fun to look back at.”
The guys from Natural have a lot of experience performing, but are they still nervous before performances? Michael told us, “We’re more worried about technical things, like if the guitars and mikes are going to work, but we’ve done so many shows now that we know each other as a band really well and we know if one thing goes wrong we can cover for that and it makes it more fun.” And what about accidents? Marc answers, “we were playing once when Ben jumped off the stage and he couldn’t get back on. He was still playing because we could hear it and he ran out in the hallways and through the back door and everybody was saying ‘Where’s Ben gone?’ and at the end of the song he came back on stage.”
How has becoming a pop star changed your life? Ben answered, “I would say one of the best things is just the free stuff. This jacket was given to me. I think that’s really cool.” Josh joins in, “I think everything I’m wearing today I’ve gotten for free.” Then Marc adds more seriously “The best thing about being in a group like this is spending time with our fans, we love them and like to do stuff for them. We get in trouble for leaving our shows, going to the back of the audience and saying hi to our fans.”
We asked the band about their plans. “We’re going to be touring in Germany in April,” says Michael, “and we’re really excited to be performing a lot of our own songs.”
Details of tour dates and information on Natural’s new album can be found at
www.naturalmusic.de.
