About the The Trip

by Malwine Stauss

From Berlin Art Link:

AD: The story of ‘The Trip’ dissolves into a meditative experience represented by shape and colour, how would you categorise the intention of the work?

MS: For ‘The Trip’ I thought about the possibilities of virtual connection in the forming of communities. I thought about the opportunity for virtual connection to create utopian spaces and transfer positive ideas.

I made this book in the winter of 2019/2020 and it feels like a premonition to me now, as the pandemic hit in Germany on the weekend the book was published in March 2020, and virtual connection became more important than ever.

The starting point for the book was my admiration for the conceptual artist Tabita Rezaire. I knew a lot about her work but had never experienced it in reality (and still haven’t to this day). I found it interesting how I could be so positively influenced by an artist whose work I had never experienced outside of the internet. In ‘The Trip’ I wanted to tell a story where reality and virtuality dissolve. The protagonists are going on a trip and it’s unclear if the journey happens in reality or virtually. They experience a positive space they have never experienced before. One of them meets an artist and the artist’s work dissolves into an intuitive space of color and love. When they come back into their own reality, they are changed in a positive way, thinking about other possible worlds.

Read the whole interview here.