I almost don’t mind suffering from the conditions they describe. Some of the so-called ‘beautiful diseases’, perhaps. But I exaggerate: for most of my life everything was normal – I only realized I was in trouble when I went to Berlin. Berlin gave me my name and was the making of me. Before Berlin everything was conventionally straightforward: I was born, I became a child, I went to school then college (media studies), then film school – nothing about my life was particularly interesting. In film school I wanted to be an editor (I yearned for control), but then changed my mind after a year and decided to become an art director (I was good at drawing). How do you know when your life is intrinsically uninteresting? You just do. Some people live quietly, unhappily, with this knowledge, others do something about it. At a film festival in Hamburg, where a short film I had art-directed was being screened, I met my first husband, Georg. He was an artist and, after the festival, I suddenly, spontaneously, went with him to Berlin.
