HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT MAKING »HARALD NAEGELI – THE ZURICH SPRAYER«? 
HOW MUCH DOES YOUR APPROACH CHANGE FROM ONE FILM TO THE NEXT?

I always adopt the same approach from one film to another. I read everything I can get hold of and explore how things connect. My preference is for autobiographical elements and I carefully examine my protagonists’ work. All the time I keep asking myself, »What are they trying to say, what’s their intention, what importance does their work have for art and for life?« The film’s aesthetic is different each time: it negotiates with its subject and its artists. It inches towards the aesthetic of the object, of the art or the subject. What interests me is the concept. The aesthetic emerges automatically from that. As a filmmaker and artist I am constantly confronted with different aesthetics, and the great thing about that is how this opens up new avenues of thought. I want to do justice to my subject, show my respect. A level of trust has to be established between the protagonist and myself, the filmmaker. My aim here was to offer insights, not to disclose anything private. No scoop. I’m not interested in that.

AS THE FILM OPENS, WE ARE TOLD THAT NAEGELI REFUSED TO GET INVOLVED IN ANY NEW FILM PROJECTS, BUT THEN HE WAS NONETHELESS PREPARED TO DO AN INTERVIEW – AFTER YOU HAD WRITTEN HIM A LETTER, FROM ONE ARTIST TO ANOTHER. SO IT WAS FROM THIS DIALOGUE THAT THE FILM »HARALD NAEGELI – THE ZURICH SPRAYER« EMERGED.

After his refusal Naegeli added my email address to his mailing list. As a result I started receiving very powerful texts and images. One day he wrote that he couldn’t sleep due to terrible stomach pains and that night he created a number of drawings in his Apocalypse series.

SUNDAY, 27 JANUARY 2019, 4:05 P.M.

RE: NEVER-ENDING DANCE INTO LIFE AND INTO DEATH

DEAR FRIENDS,

EARLY THIS MORNING BETWEEN 2 AND 7 A.M. DEATH FURIOUSLY RATTLED MY BOWELS AND BONES. IN MEMORY OF HIS BONE MUSIC I DREW A LOVELY HOMAGE DEDICATED TO HIM. NEEDLESS TO SAY, THIS HOMAGE IS A PLOY, IF NOT AN INNOCENT BRIBE ON THE PART OF THE ARTIST!
THE AIM IS TO BEWITCH DEATH INTO DELAYING THE EXECUTION OF HIS CRAFT FOR THE SAKE OF UTOPIA AND ART. THIS IS THE KIND OF HUMAN BEHAVIOUR THAT IS ALSO RESPECTED BY DEATH!

YOURS CORDIALLY, YOUR OLD CLOUD HUNTER HN

I was impressed by the power of his images and words. At the same time I was deeply touched because I was seeing someone struggling with death. So I took the liberty of writing to him again – to the utopian in him. »We want to create an homage – to utopia«, I replied to him. What I realised here was that if we made a film, I also wanted to use this email correspondence.

AND THIS WAS WHEN HE AGREED. HOW DID YOUR COLLABORATION WITH NAEGELI CONTINUE FROM THERE?

When I visited him in his Düsseldorf studio I always went alone, between March and May, 2019. For three days at a time. And really to film him only for a couple of hours.

To begin with, we drew each other. That became a ritual. It allowed us to build trust. Because I am well versed in art history we were able to talk a lot about other artists – and with this, the film had already begun. My questions were always very specific, which he liked. At one point it became clear: we would be making a film together.

He left me on my own in his studio, so as a filmmaker I had plenty of time to shoot all the details in his studio, and later in his flat in Zurich, in order to understand his art. Naegeli is a very humorous and generous person. There is a lightness about his manner and he is very approachable – if he wants to be. This was something I sought to convey in the film. But at the same time I felt it was important to capture the moments when he no longer wanted to be filmed, when he became tired, made tea or ate chocolate, when he got really angry and threw us out – although always done with elegance!

The closeness in the film between him as the protagonist and me as the filmmaker requires explanation: I had to show presence but I tried not to directly appear in the film. But because he always draws people when he meets them I now feature in the film thanks to his drawing of me.

WHAT WAS THE KEY CHALLENGE IN MAKING THIS FILM?

To work with someone who is likely to die soon. Naegeli is a living artist but he is already 81 years old and at an advanced stage of cancer, something that for me personally and as a filmmaker is obviously not easy. You are always confronted with death. When I first met him I thought he only had three months left to live. That forced me to film as fast as possible, while also treating the protagonist with sensitivity. We knew we didn’t have much time. The Film Fund Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein quickly gave us emergency funding to secure footage. That was great.

Apart from that, it was a challenge pulling everything together: Naegeli is not just a sprayer, as most people assume, but above all an artist who works on paper as much as he does on walls. There is his abstract utopia, the so-called »Urwolken« (primal clouds), the graffiti, the drawings and, in between, the apocalyptic pictures. I wanted to present him as an artist. In our conversations I tried to bundle various strands together – which is how we arrived at the connection between the particles of spray paint and the Urwolke. An observation like that is a total gift for the film that I can pass on to the viewers, prompting them to think further. 

WHAT PERSONALLY FASCINATES YOU ABOUT NAEGELI’S WORK, AND TO WHAT DEGREE DID THIS INFLUENCE THE FILM?

All the diverse strands of his art that are nonetheless interconnected. It’s only through his thousands of drawings that he can so perfectly apply a line to a wall. 

Naegeli is emancipated. This impresses me. I am fascinated by the political aspects of his work. He is a rebel, just like his mother, for whom he has such immense respect. In the film I pursue this idea further. I am rebellious in the film’s language. The typography, the hard cuts, the voice-overs… It gives me so much to think about and angers me that someone can be sent to a high-security prison for his art, and what’s more, in Switzerland – this is something I try to subtly convey to the viewers.

NAEGELI SAYS: »WITHOUT RESISTANCE, WITHOUT OPPOSITION ART WOULD BE INCONSEQUENTIAL. IT WOULD BE JUST ANOTHER AFFIRMATIVE CONSUMER EXPERIENCE, NOT A SPIRITUAL DEBATE WITH LIFE ITSELF.« IS YOUR FILM POLITICAL?

I would subscribe to that. In 1979 Naegeli’s art was avantgarde, out of sync with its time. Outside artistic circles no one understood what these stick figures were about. »Criminal damage«: it’s always the same term. Today his art is still controversial but now it is increasingly acknowledged. 40 years resistance – and it still continues. The film is driven by the artist’s concept. Its political impetus grows from Naegeli’s statements. In itself the film is a rebel. There will be people who don’t understand the film. But there are people who will grasp this rebellious existence. We are currently living in a period of turmoil. Art offers the best remedy. As Naegeli says about Covid-19 in the film: »My Dances of Death  heralds the global catastrophe that is waiting to happen. The evils we know can be named. Those that are yet to come are unknown. We have to rein in the barbarian that keeps raising its head! In this, art is the best remedy!«

»HARALD NAEGELI – THE ZURICH SPRAYER« DRAWS A SENSITIVE PORTRAIT OF THE REBELLIOUS ARTIST. WHAT DO YOU HOPE THE FILM WILL ACHIEVE?

My hope is that Naegeli will be seen as an artist, that people will take notice of him, that viewers will become more aware and develop an understanding. If you come out of the film saying »I still don’t like what he does, but I see where he’s going«, then we will have achieved something. The film seeks to prompt debate and reflection. It’s about perceiving the various genres within his art as a Gesamtkunstwerk, as an artistic whole.

Personally, I hope the film will inspire, that graffiti can re-invigorate the city, that the city can re-invigorate graffiti.

THE FILM TIPS BETWEEN LIGHTNESS AND GRAVITY. HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT THE EDITING? HOW MUCH WAS PREVIOUSLY SCRIPTED, HOW MUCH CAME ABOUT DURING EDITING?

I tried to assemble various elements – without faking anything – in such a way that people would be able to reflect on Naegeli as an individual and an artist. His emails gave me the structure. It was essential for them to be spoken and to run through the film as a guiding thread. I realised this from the very outset. Which is why just after our first meeting I asked Naegeli to read out loud to me. What I needed was a female narrative voice that wouldn’t compete with Naegeli’s own voice, that would read out Harry Wolke’s emails and thereby become the underlying thread. I wanted to combine writing and voice. The written word is political. Writing is demonstration. Especially when it fills out the entire surface of the frame. This twinning of writing and voice gives the film rhythm.

Naegeli’s Dance of Death in the Grossmünster in Zurich was to be the leitmotif until – during lockdown – a series of Dances of Death unexpectedly popped up all over the city. What a fantastic gift for the film! This is why it became the key theme of the film.  Death, but also resistance to death, the threat of death from the pandemic drawing ever-closer. How would the city of Zurich and the Canton of Zurich react? How would institutions like the Kunsthaus or the ETH (Institute of Technology) react to Naegeli’s works? For me, from my perspective as a non-Swiss person, this was all very interesting to observe.

I always edit my own films. In the process I do a large number of drawings and diagrams, arrange lots of little notes all over the room, shift them to and fro, re-order them, make lots of to-do and done lists. All this helps me. This tells me what things I am still lacking and specifically need to ask for. During editing I found myself balancing between the struggle with the state apparatus and death, as well as laughter. Thanks to Naegeli’s sense of humour: »Keep smiling when everything falls apart.«

CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT HOW THE TEAM WORKED, HOW YOU CAME TOGETHER AND HOW YOU COLLABORATED?

Peter Spoerri had the idea for this film in 1979. Over the years he collected everything he could find about Naegeli, which is very special. I think it is important to reflect on film as a medium and material and to incorporate the viewer into this process. This is also how the drawing of Spoerri became part of the film. He gave me a great deal of freedom in my work. I am very grateful to him for that. He’s a utopian too!

For me it was important to have a lot of women on the team. Mieke Ulfig is also an artist and is extremely versatile in how she conceives the medium as graphics and animation. In a subtle way we broke the rules of typography. We opted against any party-political colour for the fonts and chose one that reminded us of the green hues of the first leaves after winter. A colour of renaissance. A colour of exclamation!

Because the film has so much written text, we later decided to do three language versions: German, English, French. Andrina Bollinger speaks the German voice-over, Anna-Katharina Müller the English one, Perle Palombe the French. Only the interviews have been subtitled.

I definitely wanted a woman for the music. This is still quite rare and we even managed to find two straight away, Andrina Bollinger and Sophie Hunger. Both are keen explorers of music and both are Swiss, from Zurich. And both of them are deeply warm-hearted rebels, both were familiar with all the Naegeli controversies from their youth.

With Andrina I immediately sensed she was right for Naegeli’s work. She uses her voice as an instrument. This provides a link to contemporary music, which Naegeli studied, and in its abstraction it relates to the Urwolke and to the rebellious approach of »Harald Naegeli – The Zurich Sprayer«. I then also chose her for the voice-over.

Sophie has an amazing voice that gets under our skin. And she has a battery of different genres at her command. She also sings so beautifully in Swiss German, even if it is not automatically comprehensible to non-Swiss speakers. She wrote the ballad we hear at the end of the film.

And then Covid-19 happened. Our cameraman in Zurich, Adrian Stähli, managed to film all the Dances of Death, during lockdown. Naegeli was as busy in the streets as hadn’t been in a long time and I received mails telling me where to find the new figures. I am thankful we succeeded in shooting everything we wanted to shoot.

The first springtime lockdown allowed me to fully concentrate on the edit. In fact, it was ideal. During post-production it of course got much more complicated, but mentally everyone was on board. The voice-overs were recorded by Julian Joseph and Kurt Human in their studio and I directed via Skype. It’s just that everything proceeded at a somewhat laborious pace. The only parts that require in-person presence are the mix and colour grading.

It was not easy making this film with its themes and working conditions under Covid-19. But we all got immense pleasure doing it. I was lucky to be working with a fantastic post-production team. I came to realise that a lot of Zurich artists in various genres identify with the figure of Naegeli. I believe the film helped us all rejuvenate our personal utopias. It certainly did mine. ( Laugh !)