At the Berlin Biennial, I tried to interview every artists whose work the Biennial had shown to me for the first time (whether I heard about the artists before that moment or not), as you see in my post below, Ahmet Ogut was one, and here Tris Vonna-Michell is another.

Perched in the top floor of the five-story Kunst Werke Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Vonna-Michell has rebuilt Detroit. Not in an architectural model (though there is a map), Vonna-Michell has rebuilt Detroit as a recording studio, a stage, and an installation. This Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art” in German) includes many different elements including the artist himself who will be on hand for much the exhibition, ready to perform at a moment's notice.

Composed of slide shows, sound, moving images, installations, and objects, the installation (if we call it that) takes up the entire top floor. Vonna-Michell uses Studio A as his point of entry into the imaginary of Detroit. In 1959 Motown Records created its first recording studio, the famous “Studio A.” It was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week from 1959 until 1972, recording some of the most famous Motown hits of that period from Aretha Franklin to Marvin Gaye. Although in 1968 the company moved it’s headquarters to a ten-story building in downtown Detroit, artists continued to record in “Studio A”.

“Studio A” acts as both a point of entry for Vonna-Michel but also a point of rupture for Detroit. Now Detroit is an abandoned industrial city, still struggling to find its identity after the automobile industry collapse. Berlin becomes and interesting contrast to the Motor City in a city that suffered its own set backs and identity confusions and seems to be bouncing back.

This interview as well as the last one was made with Luca Legnani and produced by Check-In Architecture.