00:00We are at Berlinomarkt at Frankfurter Allee in Berlin and I have two guests,
00:06Kili Birgisson from Iceland and Sebastian Zummer from Germany,
00:12two young designers who are producing together for quite a while
00:17and as far as I remember they met each other the first time in Berlin.
00:21Is that right?
00:23Yes, that's right. I came here in 1995 to study.
00:27I studied in Saarbrücken in the south of Germany at the art academy there,
00:33product design, and after my studies I moved to Berlin
00:39where we soon met and started working together.
00:45I studied in Saarbrücken with Grandolini and other professors too.
00:54They were teaching there. It was not like we only had one professor, we had several.
01:00But there was a special concept behind the design studies in Saarbrücken.
01:07It was really a flow between different departments.
01:10The art was kind of crossing the design and you could do courses
01:17and you could make performance even as a designer.
01:21It was a totally new concept and Grandolini was really into this.
01:26He appreciated this concept.
01:30Not every professor did at the school, but he really wanted to make something out of it.
01:36I really liked his approach a lot. I think he influenced my work definitely.
01:45For example, the idea to pick up the local manufacturers in Berlin,
01:59not to think so global, to think more local.
02:04That's the idea of Vogt and Weizner, for example.
02:08And also to think about the social aspect of design,
02:18not only the function or the production, but also the social context.
02:33Coming to your products, we have here some glasses, cups, whatever.
02:41Can you tell us a little bit, you were talking about the connection between art and design.
02:47The idea has its roots during my studies in Saarbrücken.
02:58It was a short project, a day or two day project.
03:05The idea was to create a coffee cup with at least two functions.
03:13This is what came out of it.
03:16I think this process I was already interested in,
03:21to combine an already existing product with a new process or a new material
03:31and to make a new product out of it.
03:33The cups are recycled cups from European flea markets.
03:40There are thousands of them.
03:42Every day there are thousands more.
03:44Old lady dyes.
03:47It's different areas.
03:49It reminds me to my grandmother, to my mother.
03:52It's a different epoch.
03:56This could be the 40s, this is probably the 70s.
04:03Everyone finds a different character in the cups.
04:11It works really well as a product.
04:16People that already have one cup, they see it coming to the shop some weeks later
04:26and then they see a totally different cup.
04:28They don't want to have it in the row of cups they already bought.
04:41It's a mass product.
04:43Originally it's a mass product but processing it again with this recycling idea,
04:54you have a unique object.
04:58There is a continuity of course.
05:00This cup turns up every 400 cups.
05:06It might be this one again.
05:08It has a unique feeling.
05:13This is one of the products you are selling here at Berlino Mart.
05:19I think there is a second product, a baking form, which is a little bit newer.
05:26Maybe, Sebastian?
05:28We found a very nice small factory here in Berlin.
05:35It's a 100-year-old factory.
05:40It's a family-owned company.
05:44They are producing metal products out of metal sheets.
05:54They are using a process, they call it spinning, metal spinning.
06:01The metal sheet is pressed above a wooden mold while rotating.
06:11You need a wooden mold, one piece, and you can produce a lot of metal products with it.
06:21They have these wooden molds in stock since...
06:27100 years, I guess.
06:29Very old, thousands of them in stock.
06:33You can always use them again.
06:36I think that's one of the most interesting aspects of the workshop.
06:46They make the products in the same tool as they make the molds.
06:53In the lathe.
06:56You make the tool, and then you put it again in the workbench, the lathe.
07:04Then they put the metal sheet over it.
07:06Then they press the metal sheet over the mold, the wooden mold.
07:10Then you have a shape like this.
07:12They can make it in wood, but they can also make it in metal.
07:19We like it in wood because...
07:21The molds, yeah.
07:22The mold, right?
07:23Because the wood...
07:26You see the structure, yeah?
07:28You see the structure of the wood in the aluminum.
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