As a writer and text practitioner, Robert Krokowski deals with the creation of words, characters and the decoding of messages. He also carries out performances and installations in rural and urban spaces. Robert Krokowski lives and works in Berlin. In this interview, he provides insights into his artistic work.

The Writing of Angels is one of your central projects. The works around the project are often connected with collaborations with other artists. What appeals to you about collaborating with other creatives?

“For me, the exciting thing about collaborating with artists is always being confronted with the surprising and being challenged by something new. I appreciate experiences that I might never have had on my own. I’m not a lone wolf, I’m always interested in doing projects that I do together with others. It’s like dancing. That’s why in my art projects I like to work out individual steps with one partner at a time, improvising, like in tango dancing for example.”

Is there an artist collaboration that has remained particularly memorable to you or has challenged you in your work?

“Special was and is the collaboration with the American artist Anjolie York, whom I met many years ago during my project “Self-Descriptions”. At the time, I was looking for people on the Flickr platform who liked to take self-portraits. And Anjolie was one of those who got enthusiastic about my project. We had a very long email correspondence over many years and actually only got to know each other through this email correspondence. Much of what happened during this time was an intense experience for me. And I got a lot of suggestions, which in turn led to further projects.”

In contrast to your work as a text practitioner and writer are your land art works. How did you come to do that?

“Yes, it seems at first that these two fields are opposites. Landart is something completely different from working on a text on paper or on a computer. It’s just fun to go out and make art in the landscape. Land art is a very exciting field for me. I really like working on the beach, the transition zone between the sea and the land, because I’m particularly interested in transition zones, interfaces, in-between zones and thresholds.”

If you had only one word or phrase at your disposal to describe your artistic work – what would that word or phrase be?

“Inframince.”

What is/are Inframince?

“It is a word invented by Marcel Duchamp. This word refers to an event of friction. He said, for example, that inframince is what happens when two velvet trouser legs rub against each other. Then there is a gossamer sensation, an aesthetic process that takes place. Such gossamer interfaces, contact surfaces, friction surfaces between things and processes are very interesting and important for me in my work. Inframince production is a very nice word to describe part of the results of my work.”

Questions: Anne Wonneb, Berlin 2014