project – that it brings not only the artist himself in front of the people but also graphic designers, motion designers, Dagmar herself, and that drives me. I think that’s very cool.
WE_MAGAZINE What is actually your understanding of art?
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JUSTUS BRUNS: It’s a very personal thing for me. I think we don’t have a definition for art first of all so I don’t have one either. The best explanation I can give is that it’s really, really about giving people the child-like imagination that they ...
WE_MAGAZINE The child-like imagination?
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JUSTUS BRUNS: Yes, like if you put a class with 20 people together, say 20 kids and then ask them, “Who is an artist?”, they all would raise their hands. If you asked, “Who is a musician?” they’d all raise their hands. If you asked them, “Are you a singer?” they’d all raise their hands. But if you put the same kids 30 years on in the same class and asked the same questions, almost none of them would raise their hands. And I think what art is capable of – and art in general, it can be music, it can be performance it can be literally anything – is to bring back that moment when you felt you could do literally everything. And that is for me one of the biggest reasons why I’m doing this project. But besides that, I think that art is a very abstract thing and I think it’s personal for everybody. So, I mean I’m sort of implying my own definition of it.
> WE_MAGAZINE The project you’re working on Time Square Art Square is a very complex thing. And you’re quite a small team. How do you think this is going to pan out?
JUSTUS BRUNS: It is going to happen. Of course it’s a small team, but it’s a big dream and a big conviction. The thing is I started this two and a half years ago so I’m quite used to hearing a lot of people say, “Ah, this isn’t going to work”. Luckily, I’m also very experienced with hearing people say, “I want to see this happening” and that sort of excites you every single day. The fact that you came over from Berlin to do this interview is one of the reasons why we are actually still running it and it excites us. That’s one reason. The second thing is that it excites others too to join the team, and the people who work here are very talented people. They are people that have experience with working with the type of companies that are in Time Square. And having that and having these people around you and also people advising you.Of course it’s a small team but there’re also a lot of people around wanting to help, wanting you to connect with all these people and so on which makes it feasible ...
> WE_MAGAZINE So what is your vision with this project, how would you describe your vision?
JUSTUS BRUNS: My personal vision is very much about having more people think and having more people come to a point where they say, “Hey, life is not all about working very hard and getting a safe and secure job”. Life is also just about being here and now and looking around you and just literally watching. There’s this quote of Oscar Wilde who said, “We’re all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars”. And I think the main goal of this project is just simply having more people looking at the stars. And so basically, having people think and question – question themselves but also the environment we’re living in. I think when people do that, they actually see sometimes that they are making wrong decisions or they’re making the right decisions and they will continue in that way. In that way we can actually create a world that is more sustainable and also start re-thinking ... We should re-think about the way we produce and consume goods because the current economy is literally based on waste. I have an iPhone 3G, for instance. But I need to have at least an iPhone 3GS because the updates make my iPhone so slow that I can’t use it anymore. So that model doesn’t work for the future because we keep on needing more and more resources. To repair a product nowadays is much more expensive than to buy a new one and that is so weird, it doesn’t fit. So, really, I think I want to make people think more, thinking not only about this but also about bigger issues and get them sort of started with that. INTERVIEW BY ULRIKE REINHARD
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