Art, Fragrance and Excess baggage

The pleasures of filming on location seem to diminish with each passing trip. Last week cameraman Chris Morphet and soundman Paul Nathan and I flew to Berlin via Heathrow's Terminal 2 and Tiegel airport.  Terminal 2 is now about as glamorous as Doncaster bus station but not as efficient.  At Tiegel passengers were herded through passport control in a way my father wouldn't have allowed his cattle to be treated.  We then waited thirty minutes while the single baggage handler got our luggage on to the carousel. 

The reason for our trip was to film the japanese artist Masanori Handa and his mentor, the famous sculptor and performance artist Rebecca Horn.  Masanori is living in the Turkish quarter of Berlin in what looks like an old music shop. Rebecca Horn arrived and we proceeded to film the two as they discussed Masanori's work.  In one room there was a huge decorated palm tree and in another a pile of waste cardboard up to the ceiling with a water sprinkler on the top - the water trickled down the side of the cardboard sculpture.  Masanori expressed slight concern about the weight of the wet cardboard and the strength of the floor the whole assemblage was sitting on.  After saying what a great piece it was Rebecca said that the smell of wet cardboard was quite overpowering,  Masanori agreed and said this was all part of it.  I asked Rebecca whether she had ever worked with smell, she said  "Not exactly but a well- known cosmetics company once asked me to develop my own fragrance....they came to my house in Spain and with a special fragrance catching machine captured the smells of certain plants in my garden....the perfume was never available commercially, I am the only person with a few bottles left".  Rebecca has worked in just about every medium from sculpture to performance and even feature films but I hadn't expected the fragrance, she is truly a three hundred an sixty degree artist who continues to exhibit startling new pieces.  Horn's energy and continual wonderment at the world around her, keep on fueling the work.  She confessed in our interview that she makes art mainly for her own enjoyment.  

In the evening Rebecca very kindly invited us to dinner at a fantastic Italian restaurant near Checkpoint Charlie, Sale e Tabacchi where we drank numerous bottles of her favourite wine with Gunther, the photographer, Patrick, her cleaner and her friend, the artist Kimsooja.  

I realised I had been in this same restaurant before with a miserable John Peel in 1996 (Liverpool had lost).  Anyway all in all I shouldn't complain about airports and travel, it was a pretty life-enhancing trip.