Robert Fleck: When you started to make the film installation Warte Mal! Was it the phenomenon, the people, or was it the very dense life situation? How can we let this happen…? It took a long time for me to get away from this project and to do anything else afterwards. And you refused the kind of decorative application of art to a Red Light District, which was the basic idea of the show in Amsterdam. Instead you started to work with a real situation. This is one of the things I wanted to stress in Warte Mal!
This was still so poignant that I chose to look elsewhere. Was the form in your mind at all when you started working? They even supplied us with certain contacts. But as you said I choose to go to the Czech Republic on the German border instead. I guess I had ideas about collecting more material, so that I could possibly write a script for a film.
But I returned to the motel over and over again and I spent a lot of time just sitting around in a bar waiting together with the girls. This time is reflected in my diary notes, basically things I could not film. I think I was very much like you, the audience, as you go through Warte Mal!. RF: When you began to interview people, in fact, you made portraits. And these people had never had a portrait done in their lives — you also see it in the diaries and in the transcription. They were never interviewed about their lives either.
Maybe someone would say yes. Vanja was still working there then and she had impact because she was in demand, and so after my interview with her she asked Petra who asked Eva and so on.
I was in this situation where I had a lot of time, and I returned many times. Then afterwards, I asked them if they wanted to see their tapes. It was really hard to witness how she encountered her own words, her life.
