by Annalisa Giacinti, studio photos by Olivia Noss // May 30, 2025
Often working on location, Julian Rosefeldt calls himself a “lazy studio-goer” when he’s in Berlin. The space he shares, part of a larger Kreuzberg studio collectively used by fellow artists, is quite neatly divided in two. His half features tall shelves along one wall for storage and stacks of books, which he read as research for his film ‘Euphoria,’ organized beside his computer on a wide desk. They range from philosophy, to narrative fiction and essays, from Antonio Negri to Virginie Despentes. In the middle of the room there are two low sofas where we sit for our conversation. It’s 11am, the day after May 1st, and Rosefeldt has already done one interview, yet he’s got energy to spare.
‘Euphoria’ is Rosefeldt’s most recent endeavor, a multi-channel film installation through which he investigated the history of human greed and the genesis of neoliberalism and capitalism. Though it premiered at the Ruhrtriennale in 2022, Rosefeldt had begun working on it long before the TV series of the same name came out, so when he saw the latter promoted on a billboard coming out of the subway in New York he was initially frustrated. “Stuff like this happens,” he says, amiably, now, taking the coincidence as a demonstration of what he describes as “a certain sensitivity” shared among artists “for things that are going to happen, that we feel a little stronger than other people because we work a lot with our senses.”
His practice feeds on this sensory openness to the world. When an idea springs to mind, or he is drawn to a new topic, he researches it thoroughly before developing it visually. In a self-aware way, Rosefeldt specifies that it’s often his own ignorance that guides his attention, intrigued by the subjects he feels less knowledgeable about. “When I read the paper, I would always skip the economy page thinking ‘I don’t understand it anyway,’” he mimics a gesture of indifference. Until, one day, he decided it might as well be his next project.
The most productive time for the visual artist, he tells me, comes while watching a bad theater play, or on an airplane; when he feels stuck and in need of intellectual stimuli. He also rereads his old notebooks and builds upon knowledge he’s gathered over time. “Everything we say and do and produce is echoing things we have consumed, read, observed on the screen or in reality,” he claims, sounding like a Derridean bricoleur. Correspondingly, he named his current solo exhibition at C/O Berlin ‘Nothing is Original,’ borrowing the statement from Jim Jarmusch’s manifesto ‘Golden Rules of Filmmaking’—which Rosefeldt enacted in his ‘Manifesto’ (2015), a 13-channel film installation starring Cate Blanchett. In the text, the American director exhorts the reader to “steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination”; a quote that remains poignant for Rosefeldt to this day. As his creative process finds its momentum in “the idea of appropriation,” the products it yields are visually and thematically dense, collages of found footage, phenomenological observations, theoretical research and filmic references.
He abstains from working within a specific theoretical viewpoint, which may be why his films—despite almost prophetically treating critical subjects of the present, like the history of capitalism in ‘Euphoria’; hegemonic US foreign policy in ‘American Night’; the rise of right-wing nationalism and the ideological charge of the German landscape in ‘The Ship of Fools’ and ‘My home is a Dark and Cloud-Hung Land’; the impact of neoliberal thinking on society in ‘Penumbra’ and ‘In the Land of Drought’; or gender fluidity in ‘Deep Gold,’ among others—don’t come off as didactic, but maintain a sense of ambiguity, thanks to which sociopolitical critique and opulent aesthetics can coexist.
“People often think that artists make things because they have a message for the audience. I don’t think that’s true at all. I think we’re very selfish. We just want to see how the ideas that we have become formed,” he says, tactfully, like he doesn’t want to disappoint me. Indeed, Rosefeldt further explains that when he can already envisage exactly how an idea will materialize, he will not be as inclined to execute it, as it’s the process of discovery that propels him forward. As for his work ethics, commercial success is never the motivation behind any of his works: “That’s probably why I’m such a loser on the art market and a winner in an institutional way,” he says, grinning.
In his practice he does, however, have a penchant for deconstruction, as he tackles film genres, cinematic tropes, social conventions and political ideologies with a distance that leans towards incredulity. Along with intertextuality, bricolage and a quasi-meta outlook that exposes and exaggerates the artifice of filmmaking and performance, humor is among Rosefeldt’s preferred tools to demystify life and art. He merges high and low references, tradition and parody with desecrating yet inquisitive eyes. In ‘Manifesto,’ whose tone was quite humoristic, there was no sense of ridicule; “I actually fell in love with all the texts we worked with, especially those that don’t make sense.”
Rosefeldt was an architect before self-training as a film director, which made accessing the industry extra hard: from learning to use the camera—he works with the same equipment as narrative cinema—through obtaining funding, to finding the right people to work with. “Filmmaking is hard work,” he remarks, especially if you don’t start from film school. While he enjoys the initial solo research phase, which consists of reading and writing in cafés, at home or in his studio, being on set is a different creative experience altogether: “Once you agree to work with so many people, you want to be open to their inputs too, so in the end it becomes a bit of a collage of multiple views at once,” he says enthusiastically, likening himself to a music director who “would be nothing without the talent of each musician.”
Music shapes his work not only metaphorically, but on a formal level, too: since his films are multi-channel installations, for the artist, editing resembles multi-track recording. In ‘Euphoria,’ the role of music was made even more conspicuous when the 24-screen installation was presented in an arena-like setting at Park Avenue Armory in New York, and had viewers surrounded by projections of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and acclaimed jazz drummers—the sumptuous culmination of a very challenging production (the crew was filming in Kyiv until a few days before the Russian invasion, and had to flee mid-shoot to relocate to Berlin).
To varying degrees, Rosefeldt is involved in all stages of his projects: from pre-production, including budgeting, casting, set and costume design, through filming and post-production, with editing, color grading, sound design and sound mixing among the most time-consuming tasks. He currently doesn’t have a studio manager either, so for the C/O Berlin exhibition he took part in every step of the planning too, including the making of the accompanying catalog. The show spans 30 years of the artist’s career, and brings together storyboards, sketches and behind-the-scenes material, along with ‘American Night,’ a five-channel film installation shown in its entirety, and several less space-demanding films, videos and photographic series.
More interested in creating an immersive experience than displaying his work linearly, Rosefeldt achieves the former in ‘Nothing is Original’: thuds and screeching cars from ‘Stunned Man’ and ‘The Swap’ punctuate Cate Blanchett’s chameleonic voice in the epilogue of ‘Manifesto’ playing at the entrance, in a choreography of voices, movements and sounds that is the very hallmark of Rosefeldt’s style and methodology. A comprehensive exhibition aimed at giving an insight into the artist’s idiosyncratic image-making practice, it shows the mise-en-scène of his world and what happens when you take it apart.
Exhibition Info
C/O Berlin
Julian Rosefeldt: ‘Nothing is Original’
Exhibition: May 24-Sept. 16, 2025
co-berlin.org
Amerika Haus, Hardenbergstraße 22-24, 10623 Berlin, click here for map
