Born in Munich in 1965, Julian Rosefeldt has become renowned for his multi-channel film installations, which transport viewers into surreal worlds where protagonists are often trapped in the intricate rituals of everyday life. Now based in Berlin with a studio in Kreuzberg, Rosefeldt’s major works include Manifesto (2015), starring Cate Blanchett, and the ambitious installation Euphoria (2022), a sweeping meditation on ideology and social structures.
He is a professor of digital and time-based media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich – an artist with an international profile, he stands out for being both celebrated by cinephiles and the art world.
The exhibition at C/O Berlin spans 30 years of your work. What can visitors expect?
A fairly tight exhibition! It’s not the biggest museum in Berlin, so we only have room to present one film installation in its full immersive form – American Night (2009). The rest are shown as single- or double-channel works in small screening cabins. But what’s special about this show is that we also focus on the making of the work: sketches and behind-the-scenes photography. It offers insights into my process – how I generate work and how my production strategies have evolved.
You’re worried works might lose their impact in the condensed space?
The worry is that it becomes fragmented, more of a “tick-box” exercise. Take Detonation Deutschland (1996): it’s a seven-channel installation, but also includes a series of photographic works. It’s important to include it in the show, but we can only present one of the photos, so it’s not ideal.
That installation shows astounding footage of the enormous swastika on the Zeppelinfeld grandstand in Nuremberg being blown up…
That work shows how buildings are not only built and created following ideologies and the zeitgeist, but also destroyed because of the zeitgeist. People don’t always realise this in the moment. Look at the Berlin Wall, or the demolition of East German Plattenbau. In the 80s, even beautiful industrial buildings from the 19th century were torn down – and then five years later, everyone said, ‘Wait, that was a monument, we need to have it somewhere and fill it with culture.’ Our view of architecture evolves. The same goes for Das Schloss, the fake, rebuilt imperial palace [now the Humboldt Forum].
My grandfather was a typical Parteibuch Nazi opportunist. My other grandfather was anti-Nazi. Those two poles existed in our family.
A lot of your work deals with national identity and the idea of Heimat. Where does that focus come from?
I grew up in the suburbs of Munich: a very glossy, superficial city. It always felt a bit like living in the Truman Show. Something wasn’t quite right. And that discomfort stayed with me. My parents thought it was modern to live in a high-rise, so I grew up on the 10th floor of a 15-storey building. It was horrible for a child. But I think my appreciation for nature came from living in such a hostile environment. We also had a family house in the Alps where my father’s side took refuge during World War II when Berlin was bombed. So I’d escape there, but even in that idyllic setting, I never felt I belonged socially.
That discomfort has had a significant impact on you…
It has. My father was born in 1936. His father – my grandfather – was a typical Parteibuch Nazi opportunist. My other grandfather was anti-Nazi. So those two poles existed in our family. And yes, I believe a bit in epigenetics. I admire my parents deeply – they confronted that past and became politically and culturally aware people. I remember them crying while watching the Holocaust miniseries on TV. They were the generation facing what their parents had allowed to happen. Actually, it was my grandfather who changed our name from Rosenfeld to Rosefeldt; he was told his name sounded too Jewish, after he had to prove that he had no Jewish ancestors when doing the obligatory Ariernachweis [Aryan certificate].
Did you ever talk to your grandfather about his past?
He died when I was still a child. But my father, who was just a kid during the war, always tried to believe the best of his father. My brothers and I would confront him with my grandfather’s letters and documents – he had a completely different reading of them than us. He was very open about it but came to understand. That’s the German story, in a way.
Your early diploma piece, Stadt im Verborgenen (Hidden City) (1994), confronts that silence around historical memory.
It focused on Hitler’s former NSDAP quarter in Munich – 6,000 employees at the time – but after the war, the function of all these buildings was completely non-signalised. Not a single sign was saying what it once was. It would just say, “Music School”… with no mention of the building’s past.
Manifesto (2015), featuring Cate Blanchett in 13 vastly different roles, brought your work to a wider global audience. Each scene draws from historical artist manifestos (Dadaists, Suprematists, etc.) to explore the artist’s place in society. Were you surprised by how strongly it resonated?
Fans expecting Lord of the Rings or Carol got something very different! But the film definitely found its audience. It was shown at 25 venues in the art world and at the same time – through the movie version – in cinemas worldwide, which kept me busy for years.
Is it true Manifesto was shot in just 11 days?
Yes, Cate shot all 13 different roles in 11 days, and we had one extra day for a scene without her. But Cate made it possible. She’s insanely good. Her first takes were often perfect. It felt like some outer force took over while she was acting. I wouldn’t call it method acting – it’s just this incredible cocktail of intelligence, professionalism, humour and instinct.
How did the collaboration with her take place?
Honestly, I never would’ve asked her to be in one of my works. But we happened to meet at an opening of mine in Berlin. We got talking, and something just clicked. At some point in the conversation, she said, “If you ever want to work together, let me know.” And when she said that, I had this fast-forward moment. I could see how amazing it could be, but also the risks. Because there’s always this danger of the piece being overshadowed by the star, but the possibility of working with a performer like her was too rich to ignore.
Did she memorise all the manifestos?
When you read these early 20th-century manifestos, you realise: anger doesn’t have to be stupid.
We had some tricks. But yeah, it was a lot. We met about six weeks before shooting in New York, locked ourselves in a hotel room for two days and went through all the text and character ideas. There was even more material than what ended up in the film. We had to make big choices.
Such as?
Well, for one, we cut all political manifestos, except for the line from Marx and Engels, “All that is solid melts into air” – which is incredibly beautiful but not a faithful translation. I’d often compare different manifestos, especially French or German ones translated into English, and it became clear how strikingly different the versions were. In the original German, Alles Ständische und Stehende verdampft, ‘Ständische’ refers to class. So Marx and Engels were saying that the social orders – class structures themselves – are dissolving. But in English, that whole connotation vanishes. It becomes metaphorical instead of political.
How does the work connect with the broader political context, particularly in relation to the age of populism we’re now living in?
Right now, anger is usually seen as dumb and destructive. It’s just fear-mongering – look at Trump and Farage, they’re selling fear. But when you read these early 20th-century manifestos, you realise: anger doesn’t have to be stupid. A lot of them are written in anger, but it’s a productive anger. It makes you want to do something. There’s always this tension between language as performance and language as politics – and how easily one slips into the other. Manifestos are the perfect site to explore that.
There’s also this mix of youthful idealism, no?
Most of these manifestos were written when the artists were really young. They weren’t written as finished, polished works of art. But art history has put them on pedestals, alongside the visual work these artists later became famous for. In reality, they were written by people who were insecure and trying to prove something. When you’re 21, you mask your uncertainty with bold statements. It’s part of becoming an artist. And yet those texts have become prisms through which we interpret the rest of their careers. That’s not necessarily wrong, but it can be misleading.
Many of your film works explore themes like greed and lust: insatiable desires that lie at the heart of capitalist society. Are you motivated by a desire to provoke awareness or is it more about processing these ideas for yourself?
More the second, of course. I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding about how art is perceived and produced. People often assume that artists make art because they have a message they want to deliver to an audience, and I can guarantee you that’s rarely the case. For me – and this is true for many artists – I have an idea, or I’m grappling with something internally, and then I want to see it materialise. Because I’m an artist, I think in images and experiences. So it’s like: okay, now I want to make this thing and see if it matches what I imagined. It’s selfish, really. I just want to see it become form, not because I want to tell people something.
You say “misunderstanding”. Do you think contemporary art risks becoming too didactic?
Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration
Some art today blurs into journalism – it starts to sound like reporting, just in another language. But I always think: leave that to the journalists. Often, what drives that kind of artistic production isn’t a profound interest in a subject, but more of a superficial outcry: a reaction to something that feels wrong or confusing. The results are presented to an audience that already agrees with the artist and doesn’t need to be convinced. Then you get these awful examples – I call it “refugee porn” – where important subjects are reduced to spectacle at biennials. And they’re supposedly addressing serious issues, but in ways that feel exploitative or performative.
Much of your work is difficult to exhibit – Euphoria (2022), for instance, won’t be shown in C/O Berlin due to its vast scale.
That work requires 18 projectors to create a life-sized band of singers wrapping around the space, plus another six screens. It’s a massive technical setup. But I’ve never produced work for the art market. I do sometimes produce photo works to survive, but my main works are generated the way they must be.
Coming back to the exhibition at C/O Berlin, you’ve called it “Nothing is Original.” Why?
That’s a quote of filmmaking rule number five from Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Golden Rules’: “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration…” I quote, collect and sample old footage, other directors, texts, visual stuff I’ve been obsessed with since I was a teenager. I also always come back to something Godard said and what Jarmusch quotes as well: “Es kommt nicht darauf an, woher man etwas nimmt, sondern wohin man es bringt.” [It’s not about where you take something from, but where you take it to]. It really is the foundation of how I work. Nothing’s original, only what you do with it – that’s where the creativity lies. So, I stole it from the thief himself.
- Nothing is Original, through Sep 16, C/O Berlin, Charlottenburg
