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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.

O UT OF HERE AT LAST! Away from the living room with its “everlasting light”, the ters are pop-art cool, tile-yellow, baby-blue and mint-green make a statement, typo-
glowing, babbling television set, the sofa cushions, the three-piece suite, the
graphies by Neville Brody, films by Derek Jarman, photographs by Cindy Sherman
kitchen, with the placemats and the flowered curtains and the Sunday dishes, the are eye-catchers, plastic-colourful globe chairs and inflatable sofas from the sixties
Dutch oven, the cake forks, the fish cutlery, the children’s room with “youth-room” are stylish (and unaffordable), the Flash coffee cup by Dorothy Hafner is garish (and
furnishing, the rituals of cleaning, vacuuming, dusting, dishwashing, tidying, the reduced, with a defect, just affordable) and an exhibition in Hamburg currently
bathroom with the guest towels, the toilet deodorizer and the bath mat, the daily fer- shows zig-zag Resopal tables, sofas made of ironing boards and chairs of rusty re-
tilized, neatly mown, accurately pruned front gardens, the glances and the whispers bars. Yes, DESIGN is IN! And so are three, actually four, painters who are quasi desi-
by the neighbours, the suburb, the terraced house, the development on the outskirts, gners: Keith Haring with his logo stick figures, Gilbert & George, with their ultra-
parental supervision, away as well from arguing about trivia and the silence when it smooth giant formats and Andy Warhol, of course, who screen-prints his soup cans
comes to real problems. Finally, away from home! And into one’s first, own room! in the Factory in New York. In the Factory, there is not much that stands around and
No matter whether in a shared flat, student digs or even a one-room flat, it is your what stands around has been painted over with silver paint, from the walls to the
OWN! And then? HOW TO LIVE? Not the way the parents did! Not like in advertising! bed. Living LIKE THIS, working LIKE THIS, existing LIKE THIS. But what do you do if
Not like in television series! Not like in furniture catalogues! Not in a prestigious flat, your course of studies does not feel like at night spent dancing at Studio 54? If, from
an exhibition piece, a symbol. No cult of cleanliness, tidiness, showing off. No rooms, your small room, you do not see Central Park and your rent already eats up the
no furniture, no household items that are whole side-job salary and the parental allo-
NEVER used (or one is NEVER allowed to use), wance? Then go and INVENT your own world!
no umbrella stands, hat racks, bedside tables, Go to hardware stores that offer cheap base-
bedside rugs, spice racks, bedspreads, door- ment furniture that your parents wouldn’t
mats, no furnishing at all and no news on the even buy for the basement: steel racks, sheet-
telly at 8 p.m.! But then what will be IN metal boxes, aluminium lockers. And yet all
THERE? Thoroughly thought through, only two these items shine as beautifully silvery as do
options result: either NOTHING! Your self-de- the walls in Andy’s Factory! You can also
termined room as a place of the strictest asce- FIND things, in bulky waster, in building con-
ticism as to appearance and content: white- tainers, in the parking areas of department
plastered, emptied, non-designed, except a stores: discarded billboards, rickety rummage
mattress, a few pieces of clothing on the bare tables, bent racks and construction lights,
floor, a solitary lightbulb under the ceiling shopping carts, euro pallets as well. Or you
and one, two posters (of bands only known to could – as an exception, only if the things are
insiders and never listed in the charts) on the absurd enough – also BUY something: a
walls. One’s first, very own room as a deep shampoo bottle in the shape of Miss Piggy, a
exhalation after the agonal respiration at metal-sheet Lenin from East Berlin, a duvet
home, as silence after the permanent white cover printed with the Stars and Stripes. Or
noise of the telly, like a monk’s cell after the you can also borrow something from mum’s
department-store chic. Here, it will no longer Bildgrafik: Benjamin Reding household: egg cosies looking like chicken,
be possible to hide behind a wardrobe, under cut liqueur glasses, or the 3mix 3000, an
a bed, behind da sofa. Or the alternative: electrical mixer that looks like a space ship.
EVERYTHING GOES IN THERE! Overfull, over- Or you could, because buying is boring, fin-
flowing, overexcited, more than beautiful and dirt cheap, messy, deliberately ugly, ding often not successful and borrowing almost always results in quarrels, do some-
seemingly useless but always being used for something. Equally valuing everything: thing that makes you happy: you can DO something YOURSELF! You can turn a wind-
well-thumbed comics and worn socks, three-legged chairs and torn mattresses, chil- screen from an Opel car and two pieces of perforated metal sheet into a glass table;
dren’s toys and motorcycle tools, concrete panels and records, Metallica and Beet- use a plastic street post and a neon tube for a luminous piece of pop art; or produce
hoven, bookcases and shelfs constructed of books, hemp plants and ficus benja- a mysteriously meaningless miracle thing from dad’s old miniature-train landscape
mina, incense sticks and sweat bands, Coca and Cola. Everything of all that and far with yellow varnish – the culmination of creating your room, the ZEITGEIST ROOM.
too much of it! Your first room in a flat-sharing community as a room full of chaos, And once everything has been positioned, the light pillar shines, Miss Piggy has
as a stage, as a place for wasting time, for being dirty and for making love, as a rest- found her place on the Opel glass table and everything smells new and of paint, ad-
less-libidinous antithesis to any scholastic, governmental, domestic order mania. But hesive, freshly cut plywood, then put yourself in front of it, look around you, breathe
what will you do if you want to live neither in a bare asceticism room wanting to be- in deeply and feel it: the heart flutter in the zeitgeist room! Yes, you have probably
come a “better person” nor drowning in a chaotic room and yet in any case different noticed: Miss Piggy, Derek Jarman, Flash coffee set? The call for one’s first own room
from all the others, in any case different from your parents? And if you perhaps also is already a few days old. I was/am the 19-year-old. (Including his tendency to CAPI-
have a weird sense of aestheticism? Will you reman at home? On the sofa in front of TAL LETTERS). In essence, however, the statement still holds true. With just one dif-
the family television set? NO! Music by Velvet Underground sounds good, neon let- ference: Today, the young caller would no longer be able to find a flat.

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