Helene Hegemann, German all purpose Wunderkind, seemed the right person to have along for the first installment of a new venue of 60pages: 60hertz by Julia Zange, Armen Avanessian, Paul Feigelfeld and Georg Diez, generously hosted by Berlin Community Radio at their epic studio right on Weinmeisterpark, where Mitte meets Prenzlauer Berg, every Monday at seven pm and as a podcast for ever here on your very own 60pages site.
Helene had been all over town in the weeks before, she had been shooting the film “Axolotl Roadkill” based on her debut novel which had been first greeted with great enthusiasm and was then damned in a mix of envy and gloating over some allegations of plagiarism. It remains one of the best and most exiting and unique German novels of the last five years, and the filming itself was glamourous and fun enough to promise a movie which lives up to the morbid spectacle of the book.
She was kind of hesitant to talk in English, so we started with an exception to establish a rule of no rules, as is our overall principle. The beauty emerges out of a pattern of thought, ambivalence and fearless forging ahead, rules cannot really help you in that endeavour. The studio was small, it was our first show, so the quality might not be too good. We talked about k-hole and their latest manifesto, we talked about Helene’s work and much more. Enjoy, in German only.