Melanie-Jame Wolf
How would you describe your artistic practice and your experience as an artist in Berlin?
I'm a visual artist & choreographer who makes performances, videos, texts and soft sculptures about power, flows of capital, and the phenomenon of 'show business'.
Berlin has been very good to me. The complexion of the city is changing fast now due to aggressive gentrification, but I have spent 10 years here with a lot of time and space to develop my practice amongst a lot of very generous, clever people.
In what ways does your studio / place of work influence the way you work?
The scale of the studio tends to affect the scale of the work. I only started having a dedicated studio 4 years ago. It's changed everything. A studio allows you to let things cook in their own time while you're out of the room - you walk in in the morning and the piece tells you what it needs. Berlin must protect studio spaces for its artists.
What does it mean for you to exhibit at centrum and how do you relate to it as an exhibition space?
If I think of centrum I immediately think of the red tiled floor and then its beautiful square window. It's an important project space due to its longevity in Neukölln. I'm really happy to be showing there and I've enjoyed figuring out how to choreograph the elements of my exhibition - the text, the video, the fabrics - into a relation that sings in the petit space.
Photo Credits: Alexander Coggin, courtesy the artist.