Anna Zimmermann

Y: Hello Anna, can you please introduce yourself ?

A: I am Anna Zimmermann and I’m 27 yo. I live in Vienna but I’m originally from Switzerland. I am half German, half Swiss. I am a designer but I also like to call myself an artist because my practice is between art and design. And I like to cook a lot in my free time.

Y: Do you have early memories of creativity ?

A: I feel like it already started in kindergarten. My parents sent me to a forest school where we will spend all the time outside. I would always build houses for creatures that in my imagination live in the forest. Back then, I already drew a lot and painted on everything i could find, even bowls at my parents house. So I think I’ve always enjoyed creating stuff with my hands.

In high school, i chose the art department and had six hours of art classes a week instead of two. then, i decided to pursue my studies in art. i enjoy so many different mediums so i could not really decide what i wanted to do, and did not know what i wanted to become in a sense of a very specific direction. so i read about this school in the netherlands, the design academy eindhoven, in an art magazine. and it sounded so perfect for me because it was very cross-disciplinary.

They embraced the idea of approaching design or art very conceptual view and choosing the media that fits best to your approach to what you want to convey or what you want to tell.

So yes i think creativity has always been a big part of my life.

Y: Where do you get your inspiration from ?

A: I definitely get inspiration from people I know that surround me. I have very inspiring friends who are creatives as well. And then the classic ones; reading a lot, being very curious and observing stuff in my everyday life. I think I’m genuinely a very curious person that maybe also explains why I’m interested in different mediums and do cross-disciplinary work because I’m just so curious to learn and experiment. I got a lot of inspiration from that and going to new places and trying new things, stepping out of my comfort zone even though it’s sometimes challenging, though I think it can be very inspiring.

Y: How inspiring is this artist residency for you (casa balandra)?

A: I met a lot of people who inspire me here. I don’t think there is one specific person. It was more the inspiration I got from each and everyone that was here. If i had to think of an example, the colours combination that Mary (artist Mary Herbert) was using or Pierra’s approach to just experiment and not always overthink everything. She was never afraid of doing something and I often find myself holding back because I’m thinking too much about it and i think okay I guess this is probably not going to work out then i’m not gonna try but often you get also a lot of inspiration on the process of doing something so it might be not an amazing output at the end but the process of trying out something else is very inspirational. I also think a lot of inspiration of the group in general, the daily life, how people dress, their way of cooking, how they talk so also tiny things, not just in their practice, but just being around them in general.

Y: How do you feel when you are creating ?

A: It really depends on which point of my creating process I am because generally, I’d respond great because I really like to create but I think it really depends in which phase I am in because the concept or the purpose of what I’m doing is really important in my work and like the conceptual phase, thinking about what I wanna do, or what the project should convey, or what’s the story about. Sometimes it’s a difficult process, because it involves a lot of thinking and research. In that stage, I feel very in my head, it does not make sense and I’m trying to make sense of it and then when I am at the point where I can see really clearly what I wanna do then it gets really easy and enjoyable and I love that part from knowing what I wanna do to the finished project, that’s the most rewarding phase of my creative process. And then I easily get bored by stuff i’m doing and just want to move on to the next one. That’s what I was mentioning earlier about constantly trying something new. I don’t want to be stuck in something I did.

y: How did you use this process while being here (at casa balandra) ?

A: I did a bit of research and thinking part when I was still in Vienna in my studio because I wanted to come a little bit prepared. While being here, i also wanted to listen more my intuition and not having too much rationality in my work because as i described earlier, often the first process involves a lot of thinking and it’s quite rational and i feel like i would love to have more balance in my creative process. i wanna keep the thinking part and the intellectual part but i also want to give more space to intuition and just go with the flow.

so i think one part of the project i’m doing here, so the fragment project i was talking about to you, that’s how i usually work but then this experimentation with clay and then suddenly coming up with the idea of making a side table or a bench or i would like to have a hand bag made out of ceramics, that’s stuff typically, something that is not new but i’m revisiting by giving my intuition more space, and just doing what i feel like, that gives me a lot of joy, that’s very liberating. and i definitely want to keep continuing after i get home because it’s simply very enjoyable.

Y: Can you talk about your current project “fragments” ? What do you want to translate with this ?

A: so i was really interested in fragments in a sense that i wanted to do a project that represents this space and the surroundings around that and there is like this essay from walter benjamin that speaks about fragmentation and photography, so basically a photography is always just a fragment from the whole picture, so just one moment in time that is just very small part of it and also in art history, there was this period in literature that was also called fragments and they were just jumping from one scene to another and I was just really interested in this idea of portraying a place with little fragments since i’m an object designer and a project designer but I have a background in graphic design and photography. I found it very interesting to approach this space and this residency with this perspective of fragments so I’ve been working with sourced materials from the island so for example clay and palm leaves but also found objects and I want to bring all these fragments together in one publication and play with photography like they were archeological findings.

Y: Do you feel having a responsibility as an artist towards society ?

A: I think I am a storyteller and i’m trying to like make people pay attention to certain things. this could be poetic things about life but it could also be questioning everyday life for example, how do we work, why do we work the day we do. this could be thinking about loneliness or thinking about time and sense. so yes I think just telling a story and giving people that are necessarily creatives, a perspective on certain things they didn’t have a thought about before. so yes, changing people perspective even if it’s a short moment, it’s really cool.

Y: Do you have any example of a previous work you did ?

A: So, in 2020, my friend and I did this project together which was called souvenirs of loneliness and it was basically about like the feeling of loneliness, which was obviously very present at that time because of the confinement, a lot of people felt very lonely. But then also like we were very interested in a historical point of view because actually the word loneliness is quite a young word. People start to use that word in the 1850s, because before that, people were really intertwined with theirs surroundings so people weren’t really living time alone, only the monks were but then it was not loneliness but more solitude, the meditative aspect. So the feeling and also the using of the word loneliness is relatively new so we were interested in that so we did defining ten situations of loneliness so for example during the pandemic, a lot of people were not having a lot of people with other people so there was this longing of touch and longing for interaction so we tried to come up with an aphrodisiac perfume that you could use on yourself, and be with yourself. We also did this key chain which was basically the void in your hands, it was make out of silver, it was really heavy, and we wanted to make them in a kind of souvenir shape because loneliness a transient experience, it often marks a period of your time and then it goes away and then eventually comes back so that’s why we wanted to work with these then souvenirs so at the end we kind of have ten different souvenirs. each of the souvenirs would represent that. I guess that’s quite a good example of storytelling. we exhibited it at the biennale vienna design week and it was kind of a good platform to have conversations with people about loneliness. it was really interesting because people don’t often talk about loneliness maybe in our generation more because I think we have a different approach to mental health but I think a lot of people are just shy about certains things. it’s a difficult feeling to feel lonely.

Y: do you think that social media is having an impact on this ?

A: Definitely, I guess social media has an impact on almost every aspect of our lives. As a creative, I think instagram is crucial, it’s so contemporary in a sense that everything is on instagram. As a designer, it’s very helpful to know what’s going on. It’s also a source of inspiration because you discover stuff that you wouldn't have if you weren’t on instagram for example this residency! So there are good aspects but then obviously there is also a lot of negative sides, the constant comparison to others even if I know that rationally I should not do that. And also the mutuality of everything. Everything happens at the same time, that’s what I’m struggling with because to me it feels as if everyone is doing so greatly but in reality one person is on a vacation, one person in having an exhibition and another is drinking coffee. But then what my mind does is, you should be on vacation, drinking coffee and preparing an exhibition and I think that’s the toxic relationship I have with instagram.

Y: What would you tell your five years younger you ?

A: I think I was already very courageous at that time but I think be more patient with yourself, it’s okay to not achieve everything in a certain amount of time and also life feels lighter the older you get because I was very self-conscious and was more unsure about myself back then. I feel like every year I grow older, I get to know myself a little bit better. So yes, I will tell my fives years younger me to be more patient with myself and prouder because I’m very self-critical lol.

Y: And the last one…how important creativity is for the world ?

A: It’s very important. I think when you are creative you find different solutions for everything. Curiosity can save the world. What would life be without creativity ?

Mallorca, March 2022