Studio Visit with Ed Atkins

British, Berlin-based artist Ed Atkins’ HD videos and text-based works create worlds simultaneously hyper-real and undeniably artificial. His 2017–2018 exhibition ‘Old Food’ at Martin-Gropius-Bau was no exception: the video works presented in the show are without concrete narrative but evoke a melancholic emotional landscape built around purposefully generic characters and settings. The exhibition, which appeared as part of Berliner Festspiele’s ‘Immersion’ program, was populated by a collection of costumes borrowed from the Deutsche Oper, and featured reflexive information panels by Contemporary Art Writing Daily and a musical score by Jürg Frey. Berlin Art Link visited Ed Atkins’ studio to talk about his working process and how he culls through a mass of ideas to reach his final, holistic exhibition.