(L/Yu) How did you two meet each other? Is it easy to cooperate professionally and be friends at the same time?

We met at a mutual friend’s exhibition in Berlin shortly after we both had moved to the city. As we were in our early twenties and were moving in the same social circles, we ended up sharing many formative experiences together. Our current project is based on these experiences, so our collaboration involves a sort of reliving of our history together from a more mature point of view. In a way our friendship is essential to the success of our project.

(L) When did you first realize your passion for writing? Who were the writers who influenced you in your formative years?

Learning to read and write at a very young age, it somehow became a natural way for me to communicate my feelings, to express myself, my observations and my view of life. As a kid, I used to make up stories all the time, and I loved sharing those stories with my friends. To name a few writers I remembered that really struck me as extraordinary at an early age were writers such as Francoise Sagan, Virginia Woolf, Daphne du Maurier, Sylvia Plath and Shirley Jackson.

(L/Yu) You work as a translator and editor/music teacher. Do you think one day you will decide to dedicate your efforts just fully to your art?

Diverse experiences in different fields inform our work in a fundamental way. For example, translation involves a very analytical approach to language and literature that is beneficial to creative writing. And oftentimes, the act of teaching something is the catalyst for true understanding.

(L/Yu) You work across disciplines. Which media do you find most comfortable?

Related to the previous question is the idea of bringing multidisciplinary perspectives to bear on understanding and working with a variety of media. Especially in our current times, when traditional fields and artforms seem to be blurring into each other. The greatest danger to inspiration is getting too comfortable and complacent when dealing with any one medium.

 (L) In all your work there is an unsettling even disturbing feeling—as if everything is a little off-kilter. Does it have to do with your trauma?

The poems I have been working on for the past two years all deal with my trauma. I intend to illustrate the life of a traumatized person whose experiences are hard to understand, for whom time and space have lost their meaning, to the point that the person feels like they have lost their identity or even been de-humanized. They are trying to position themselves in a society where they are being questioned by authorities and where relationships – to people as well as nature – have been thrown into chaos due to their changed frame of references. It’s about an approach to the past that is so clearly defined from the present. It can be seen as a process of making the incomprehensible comprehensible, and simultaneously it can be seen as a story about life and death, and the subtle line between them.

(Yu) In your work you explore duality – reality and fiction. Is it harder to create fictional illusion of reality or to convince the public to believe in fiction?

I wonder if there was a time when either artistic accomplishment was easier than the other. In our current political and social moment, it seems that the notion of reality is becoming increasingly fragile, with powerful politicians and vast swathes of populists denying what seem to be incontrovertible facts and creating a shared fictional reality. At the same time, our perceptions and decisions are molded by an overwhelming consumption of edited images from all forms of media. More than ever, it is necessary to question the boundaries between reality and fiction.

(L/Yu) You come from Sweden/USA but you spent some years in Berlin. Do you believe in importance of your experiences of living and working in different places?

See above!

(L/Yu) How did you decide to come to Belgrade? Your impressions?

We are attracted to Belgrade’s history, which seems to be written on the surface of its architecture. Belgrade offers us an opportunity to disrupt our daily lives and work intensely on our collaborative project.

(L/Yu) What do you enjoy doing when you are not writing? Did you find some hidden beauties in Belgrade?

Brutalist architecture, 80-dinar pizza slices, stray cats in cafés and the many cultural events that Belgrade has to offer.

(L/Yu) Do you have any idea in mind of what would you like to create next?

L: I recently translated a book by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin published in Swedish. I have some more projects going on related to that, but I can’t reveal more than that at this point. Also, I am writing a script for a play based on a very interesting Jewish modernist writer’s short stories seen as a new literary-historical discovery in Austria that I really, really like!

Y: I am interested in exploring the idea of a love so unconditional and true that it destroys the beloved – in the vein of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Maybe a chamber opera or some sort of performance.

(L/Yu) Your message to artists who wish to visit Belgrade…

Embrace the disruptive and disorienting aspects of the city!