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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. Ja nuar 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.

An Essay by Dominik Reding
A s we remember them, summers used to be long, warm, calm and sun- was quiet, quiet and cool and dusky like in a large, old church. And it even smelt like
drenched. Well, the summer of 1986 was warm, the sun smouldered above the
that, this mixture of the scents of candles and incense and stone and mortar, as if the
Ruhr region, the evenings were calm and the wind blew softly, almost tenderly. walls were heavily breathing out in the heat. And then there were noises after all, the
Oberstudienrat Vierthaler could be ruthless: “You don’t know any English, you have further one ventured into the dusk of the exhibition halls, the more noticeable they
no idea about physics, you cannot even understand biology, you are no good at any- became. A whirring, a buzzing, a bubbling. “Sssrrr-sssrrr-sssrrr, buzz-buzz-buzz, bub-
thing.” He said it to Lars, my pal and classmate, and he said it in front of the whole ble, bubble, bubble”. The whirring came from a serving trolley which, remote-con-
class: “If this doesn’t get better, you have to leave.” It didn’t get better. Lars had to trolled and tirelessly, jogged up and down a cordoned-off section; the buzzing from a
leave. His parents owned a petrol station but there was no vacancy for an untrained ceiling fan at whose ends were no wings that turned but antlers and the bubbling
car mechanic and so he started an apprenticeship as a locksmith. “That’s great, then from a triangular aquarium where a shoal of neon tetras serenely made their rounds.
I can build better skateboards.” Lars skated and made his own boards. His whole Shy, almost reverent, we walked around, the coolness in the Kunstpalast was pleas-
room was full of them. And of department-store teen furniture, a small black-and- ant, we had sunburn from waiting all that time at the petrol station. “This doesn’t
white television from the seventies, dozens of Depeche Mode posters, which he lov- support my 100 kilo dad,” Lars came to a stop in front of a tubular-steel chair with a
ingly stuck into IDEA frames, and Opel car parts seat consisting of wafer thin, bright yellow plas-
since an authorized Opel workshop belonged to tic threads suspended like a balcony curtain
the petrol station and he was given the discard- between the backrest and the chair’s legs. Lars’
ed parts which couldn’t be sold. voice sounded loud, unfamiliar after the quiet,
At the end of August, the month remained hot almost rebellious: “Wow, is this awesome!” He
and cloudless, he called me. Would I like to pulled at my sleeve. In the next hall, he had
drive to Düsseldorf with him? It had been writ- discovered a chair consisting of no more than a
ten up in all the newspapers, shown on televi- concrete slab and seven armouring irons insert-
sion, reported in the Spiegel, even our Ruhr ed into it and bent to form a seat. A kind of
region home town hardly touched by the con- end-time Bauhaus-Madmax-cantilever chair. It
cept of design had heard the news: There was looked uncomfortable but not as if it couldn’t
going to be a totally wild, weird, bizarre exhibi- be used. “We have these in our petrol station
tion of current furniture design in Düsseldorf. as well!”, Lars ran towards it. A chair complete-
And design, that was the “in” topic of the “styl- ly covered with car-wash cleaning fibres in
ish eighties” – from Superstudio to Memphis, azure blue. Lars pondered the construction and
from neo-constructivism to neo kidney-shaped how it felt to sit in it. Maybe one would sink
tables, from Philippe Starck to Ettore Sottsass. into it and be outright swallowed up by this
And if, as it was the case for us, the money for animal from the deep sea? But trying it out was
the original was lacking, then a cocktail chair prohibited. At the very end of the tour through
from the fifties found among bulky waste and a Abb.: Benjamin Reding the exhibition, Lars stopped in front of a super-
set of Leonardo glasses would also do it. Lars market shopping cart whose metal basket had
slid in the Depeche Mode cassette, turned the been turned into a television chair with a few
car radio to full volume and rolled the side windows down. “Convertible feeling”, he clever bends and cuts. “I can do this as well”, Lars said. It wasn’t clear whether he
said. After the first stop for petrol, his dented Opel Kadett would not start again. meant it to be derogatory or serious. On the drive back we kept quiet. From the auto-
Those in the know call this “warm-start problems.” While he waited, waited for a bahn we saw the lights of the Ruhr region, blinking lights on the tops of the power
long time, for the motor to cool, I heard him mumble: “I’m no good at anything.” stations and the blast furnaces. On. Off. On. Off. On. Off.
You can see the Düsseldorf Kunstpalast already from a distance. A massive, stone rec- A few weeks later, I visited Lars. He had rearranged his room. The skateboards had
tangle, positioned dramatically close to the bank of the Rhine, full of lofty gates, axes disappeared, so had the furniture for teens. A shell chair now stood in the middle of
and symmetries. The gravel of the inner courtyard crunched under our gym shoes, a the room, artfully bent from an old Opel trunk lid and a little table in front of it which
fountain was splattering, giving the walk to the enormous entrance portal a touch of only consisted of the softly curved rear windscreen of an Opel Kadett and two perfo-
Italy, of market squares in Siena, Arezzo or Lucca, with their severe burgher palaces rated metal sheets bent into triangles as the legs. “You made this?” Lars nodded. And
and heavy cathedral doors at the end of marble steps which had been much trodden he had painted his television from the seventies yellow and mounted a Saturn
for a long time. “Wohnen von Sinnen” [Crazy living] – the buoyant letters had been consisting of Styrofoam and plastic onto the antenna. “Way out! Man, you can make
mounted diagonally across the Kunstpalast façade. It looked a bit like the advertising things which are at least as good as those in the exhibition. At least!” Lars burst with
lettering of a cinema from the fifties. And this was probably how it was meant to look. pride. Then he turned around, took the television from the table and gave it to me.
We didn’t need to open the heavy entrance doors, they stood wide open. Inside, it I still have it.

AIT 9.2017 • 063