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Jeden Monat nähern sich unsere Kolumnisten, die Berliner Filmemacher Dominik und Benjamin Reding, dem jeweiligen Heftthema
auf ihre ganz eigene Art und Weise. Geboren wurden die Zwillinge am 3. Januar 1969 in Dortmund. Während Dominik Architektur
in Aachen und Film in Hamburg studierte, absolvierte Benjamin ein Schauspielstudium in Stuttgart. 1997 begann die Arbeit an ihrem
ersten gemeinsamen Kinofilm „Oi! Warning“. Seitdem arbeiten sie für Fernseh- und Kinofilmprojekte zusammen.

Each month our columnists, Berlin-based filmmakers Dominik and Benjamin Reding, approach the respective issue-specific theme
in their very personal way. The twins were born on January 3, 1969 in Dortmund. Whilst Dominik studied architecture in Aachen
and film in Hamburg, Benjamin graduated in acting studies in Stuttgart. They started working on their first joint motion picture “Oi!
Warning“ in 1997. Since then they have tightly collaborated for TV and cinema film projects.

T he flat was tiny. Only one room, actually, with a square mini window, a ceiling bed, the bitten-into pizza on the kitchen table, the aluminium-black square of the
window, the empty, wet-grey sky behind it. Suddenly, she cried. Hid her face in her
luminaire from the hardware store, a bathroom in a niche, another niche with
the kitchen, a beige tiled floor and a television set attached to the wall. Rai 2 was flick- hands. “My girlfriend has left me, after five years, Beatriz from Bilbao, do you know
ering on it. Tom, my director colleague from Berlin, had described it in such a quaint her?” I nodded. Yes, I had seen them together, once at the closing celebration of a film
way: “My small, cute apartment. As long as I am teaching at Columbia in New York, festival. Julia, my former fellow student and avantgarde-filmmaker and Beatriz, her
you can have it for two weeks, write your new screenplay or whatever … inspired by camerawoman, dancing in a tight embrace, till the very end. “We had a real fight,
Venice!” I boarded the train and exchanged the snow in Berlin for the rain in Venice. even broke some china.” I looked at her incredulously. “Yes, I threw a coffee cup at
And I read while the Alps were slipping by, in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited: the wall …” She grinned, apologizing. “On Corfu, I will sit on a beach and forget every-
“When the doors of the palazzo in Venice opened, the piano nobile was in full sun- thing, her, me, everything … good idea, isn’t it?” I looked at her, thought about it, saw
shine, ablaze with frescoes of the school of Tintoretto. I was drowned in honey. Stin- that she saw that I was thinking and looked – pretending incidentally – at the televi-
gless.” Was it any wonder that I had expected more? After three quiet days in the sub- sion set: Brasilia again, once more the parliament building, enraged demonstrators
urb of Mestre, alone with a TV set and Rai 2 (on a whim, Tom had arranged for the te- who rushed towards the gigantic glass panes of the entrance hall and … no! But yes!
levision set to always turn on together with the ceiling lamp – always Rai 2, invariably Smashed them! “Oh, shit!” I couldn’t help it. “I was there once.” “On Corfu?” “Nope,
– and could only be turned off together with the ceiling light), and without even one in Brasilia.” I watched on the telly how the sprinkler system of the entrance hall tur-
page of a screenplay, even having lost the idea due to the lonely brooding in the ned the architecture by Oscar Niemeyer into a lake scenery. I could not look away:
murky waters of the lagoon city, I took the bus into the centre. Venice in spring, no A Now they were throwing the furniture out of the windows: Niemeyer’s futurist arm-
Taste of Honey, more of Don’t Look Now with the gondolas chairs, office chairs by Charles Eames, at last also one of
in mourning of the German title of the film. At the train sta- the Bertoia chairs, this filigree thing of wire and white lac-
tion, I got off, without a destination. Maybe to the Guggen- quer. “My aunt had one of those!” Julia was still standing
heim Collection or Santa Maria della Salute or the Palazzo next to me, stared, like I did, mesmerized at the screen.
Grassi? In the end on foot all the same, to the Piazza San “My aunt was modern, lived in a bungalow, everything
Marco all the same, the holiday postcard turned into a rea- was angular and edgy and this chair stood in front of the
lity or, rather – the deceptively genuine 3D copy of the desk. It was the first thing where I felt that it is more …
square that used to be reality there at a time. St Mark’s Ba- more than simply a chair or a table. In our home, there
silica, the Doge’s Palace, the Column of Marcus Aurelius, was only what is ironically called Gelsenkirchen baro-
the Florian café. Everything was as usual: crowded, loud, que.” “When do you notice that something is more?” I
noisy, fluttering pigeons, craning necks, raised cell phones. asked her but meant me, my memory. I searched and
Latte macchiato for 12 euros. I fought my way diagonally gave her and me an answer. “It was an interior. Interiors
through the surging crowd, across to the four Roman Ce- are much stronger anyway. As are the cathedrals: Out-
sars, the Tetrarchs. Hewn around 300 AD from Egyptian Foto: Benjamin Reding side, it is high art, but inside, this is where it has a more
porphyry, carried off by the crusaders in 1204 from Con- intensive effect, the spatial experience, there it becomes
stantinople to Venice, and the stony emperors where put …” I looked for a word, didn’t find it, said “architecture”.
up at the corner of the cathedral where, since then, they have been watching over “But what is architecture?” She asked it very earnestly, like a schoolchild in the art
themselves and the times with a grim gaze. Whenever I am in Venice, I go to see them, class. I had to smile. “Hey, what are we talking about …? Tell me, why did you break
touch their sandals to reassure myself that I still exist and they still endure in their off?” She wanted to reply, turned around towards the wet square window, delibera-
mysterious long-time existence. “No!” Terrified, I pulled back the hand I had extended ted. And I also deliberated: What is architecture? When does one feel that it is more
to touch them. “No, that cannot be!” Julia looked at me. She was more astounded than four walls and a roof. More perhaps than die “primitive hut” of Vitruvius? More
than pleased. I beat her to her first question: “What are you doing here?” She briefly than Gropius and his “social question”? More than Le Corbusier and his “play of vo-
looked at the wet stone emperors, then: “Nothing”, and, after a pause, “And you?” lumes gathered under the light”? More even than Mies’ “Less is more”? It was a con-
“Nothing as well”. She laughed, relieved. “Good, then we will spend the day together, crete church in Essen. They had integrated chunks of glass into the window walls,
yes?!” Julia shouldered her backpack. “My ferry to Corfu only casts off in five hours, I blue, red, yellow, fist-sized, that immersed the room into a mysterious twilight. Heavy
still have a bit of time.” “Corfu? What are you going to do there?” She suddenly shook and rough and beautiful. I raised my child’s arms, touched the surfaces, their edges,
with wetness and cold. “Forget”. I wanted to ask her “What?” and said: “Hey, it is their shine. And felt it: A sudden elation, a rush of happiness. This connection of
freezing, let us sip a cup of coffee somewhere!” She nodded. And I pretended so- everything creative with the world that is constantly creating itself anew, with the bey-
mewhat that I knew my way, went ahead with determination down a winding side ond, with what cannot be explained. An overwhelming feeling which I could hardly
alley. Of course, nothing cosy was to be found on our way, only tourists, guides and endure. “Feeling!” I called it out, loudly, enthusiastically. Julia looked me over. “Yes
humid façades of old buildings. I came to a stop in front of a heap of blue garbage … feeling.” She first said it softly, then again and again: “Feeling! That is why: out of
bags: “Come on, we will take the bus to my place, okay?” “Done”. With the ceiling a feeling.” Then she suddenly laughed, wildly, was shaking with laughter, became
lamp, the television set came into action, Rai 2, mercilessly. “You cannot turn it off, quiet, cowered on the tiled floor and went to sleep, from sheer exhaustion. The next
just ignore it.” Julia looked at it. The news broadcast: Brasilia. Demonstrators on the morning, I had lifted her onto the bed and then slept in the bathroom, she was gone.
ramp to the parliament building. Julia turned away, looked at my room, the unmade On the kitchen table was a note: “Gone to Bilbao! Thank you!” “Thank you,” I said.

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