Ai Weiwei - Human Flow

AW:

Whats the history of this building?

PT:

It has a difficult history, but its a very special place for me and for many people. Were in the main hall of the former Tempelhof airport, an incredible old structure that ceased functioning as an airport in 2008not a long time agobut, since then, many things have happened.

The building was constructed in 1938, during Hitlers time. Were in a space full of history, good and bad. When the airport stopped being an airport, nobody really knew what function it would assume. The first thing that happened was that we started hosting events here. We had a big fashion show and some smaller events, which was a good way to open up these spaces to the public, otherwise the building wouldve been closed. You could feel that something special was happening here.

Not being German, I always felt Berlin was very different from other German cities. I came here because I knew this place from about thirty years ago. At that time Berlin was still occupied by American, French, and British military forces, and the wall was still there. This airport was run mainly by the US Air Force, so in one half of the building, it was like being in the US and the other half of the building was a normal public airport. My parents were working for the military, so I was able to walk in all these spaces. Of course, if you come to Berlin as a foreigner, you want to know a lot about the city.

You probably know how and why the airport was built, what happened with it when the war was over, and how it was used for people coming from East Germany or East Berlin. At that time, the wall wasnt built yet. It was the only way to get to West Germany, an orderly way to get out of the city.

I came here because I knew that Berlin was becoming more of a truly international city. I was privileged to work in many huge cities all over the world before coming to Berlin: in South America, the US, the Middle East. Theres still a gap when you compare Berlin to other big cities outside of Europe. When talking about a city in Asia, youre talking about millions of people, but if you talk about a big city in Germany, its still small compared to the megacities in the world.

What I saw in all these citiesShanghai, Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, or even Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai, and Moscowwas the challenge of accommodating all these people in adequate spaces. This was the specific reason why I thought Tempelhof could become a special place for Berlin and for Germany. When you have a large, open space like this, you have the possibility of creating new things because you dont have to work within a framework. People can come here and decide what they want to do. They can create the space they want to have. Inside these larger spaces, things can happen that could probably never happen somewhere else.

AW:

Whats the current condition of the camp?

PT:

When I came here the objective was just to rent out spaces that could be used to earn a bit of money to contribute to its huge maintenance cost. We started by sponsoring commercial events. We had about eighty commercial events every year. The number and size increased exponentially. We had huge events that had never before happened in Germany. In the past five to ten years, weve seen more of a mix between commercial and cultural events. We have huge halls hereseven hangars where aircraft were maintained in the past.