Otherness Doesn’t Mean not Caring. An interview with the artist Saskia Fischer

Saskia Fischer’s exhibition ‘After Dark’, currently on view at the Drifts Gallery until 29 March, explores the fluidity of identity, time, and place under the cover of night. In her latest video work The Night Gardener, Fischer weaves together movement, myth and landscape to create a figure both familiar and estranged: a silent presence tending to spaces that are not quite theirs, yet deeply cared for. In this conversation, we discuss the possibilities that emerge after dark, the tension between proximity and alienation, and the ways in which storytelling, whether through film, folklore or memory, shapes our understanding of the world around us.

Rosana Lukauskaitė: Walking through this exhibition, I feel like the night becomes more than just a time of day: it’s a space of fluidity, uncertainty, and even transformation. What is it about night time that fascinates you? Is it something personal, or is it more about the way societies function after dark?

Saskia Fischer: What fascinates me about the night is that it seems to open up possibilities that don’t exist during the day. That’s especially true when it comes to experimenting with identity, whether through the way we dress or how we express ourselves. There’s a kind of freedom at night, a loosening of social boundaries, norms and expectations, that feels less accessible during the day. That’s why I find night time so intriguing. It also works as a metaphor: there’s an entire world that operates at a different rhythm, a different sense of time. And in a subtle way, or maybe not so subtle, we engage with the idea of time through the medium of film itself. We were very intentional about filming during the blue hours, that brief transition between day and night, or night and day. It’s a time filled with gradients, shifting colours, and changing moods, all compressed into a fleeting moment. That transience is something we wanted to capture.

RL: Watching the video right now, it reminds me of contemporary dance, or maybe even Japanese Kabuki theatre. There’s a sense of stillness to it, with these uncertain, cautious movements that feel deliberate and controlled.

SF: The movements of the actor Dani V. Keller were choreographed by the performance artist and choreographer Barnett Cohen. So yes, there’s definitely an influence of modern dance in the piece. I also love it that, at certain moments, it has the feel of a silent movie; not always, but in a few key instances. The Kabuki reference is great, though it wasn’t a direct influence on this piece. That said, Kabuki is something I’ve explored, particularly in terms of costumes and expressions. The actor’s hands are covered in silver body makeup, along with the face and neck. And in the final scene you can see how the costume emerging from the suit has a subtle glitter to it. The idea was to move away from a natural skin tone to create a different kind of presence.

RL: Your Night Gardener video reminded me of the famous 1960s hoax photograph where a father, capturing his daughter in a marsh, later claimed an astronaut appeared behind her; when in reality, it was probably just the mother at an unusual angle. This illusion fascinates me: how something intimately familiar can, through distortion, appear alien or unrecognisable. Your film seems to explore a similar sensation: how migration, borders and shifting perspectives can make people estranged from their own landscapes and identities. Do you see your work as engaging with this tension between proximity and alienation, between the known and the seemingly other?

SF: My main intention with the film was to explore the concept of otherness. Otherness can take many forms, but it always carries a sense of estrangement, distance, or even alienation, whether we perceive someone else as ‘other’, or feel that way ourselves. In this case, I wanted to create an image of otherness through a mystical figure, someone who embodies that sense of being different, a stranger to the place, and yet still deeply connected to it. Their otherness doesn’t mean not caring. There’s often an assumption that people perceived as outsiders don’t care about a place, and I wanted to challenge that. This figure represents otherness without a fixed definition. They are a caring presence, and yet remain at a distance, something we can observe, follow, and maybe catch glimpses of as they go through their rounds. But they exist in a mystical space, undefined and transient, leaving us uncertain of where they come from and where they will go next.

RL: It’s intriguing how certain symbols emerge independently across cultures, aligning in unexpected ways. Your Night Gardener evokes a figure both surreal and paradoxical, one that also recently appeared in the second season of series ‘Severance’, where a character fabricates a sighting of a ‘night gardener’ after leaving a controlled environment. The very idea of gardening at night feels impossible, when plants rest, when light is absent, yet this figure persists. Do you see The Night Gardener as a metaphor for something beyond the literal act of care and cultivation? How does this character reflect the themes of your work, whether in relation to labour, perception, or the unseen forces shaping our environments?

SF: Ironically, I just started watching this show’s first season. As for the title, I didn’t come up with it from a common phrase in English or anything like that. It actually goes back quite a few years, when I was still living in London, maybe five or six years ago. I had a dream about a night gardener, or more accurately, a nightly gardener, just going about their work. It was a strange dream, but in a good way, so I made a note of it. I revisited the notes, and while the dream itself was completely different, set in an urban environment and much less defined, something about the title stuck with me. It sparked imagination. Over the past year and a half, as I’ve been working on this film with that as the working title, I’ve noticed that people are immediately intrigued by just the name alone. I love that: it takes on a life of its own in the viewer’s mind, without me having to define it too much.

I assigned very little to the night gardener as a character. There’s the workwear-inspired costume by Melitta Baumeister, the silver-painted skin, the hand gestures, those exaggerated, choreographed movements, and the glass key that hangs across their body. That’s about it. There are a few lines, some of the night gardener’s own reflections, but they’re woven into the film’s third-person narration. At some point, it becomes unclear: is the night gardener speaking to themselves? But beyond that, very little is revealed. Who sent them? What is their actual function? Those questions are left open.

RL: You filmed The Night Gardener on the Curonian Spit, which has such a layered history of human presence and displacement. Was there something specific about this place that drew you in? Did it change the way you think about landscape?

SF: There were two key moments. On a broader level, the nature-culture divide is something that fascinates me, and I don’t know of a better place to explore it than Nida. What I find so compelling about this place is how it appears completely natural, yet it’s very much a human-shaped landscape. It challenges many of our assumptions about what nature is, and what we consider ‘natural’.

On a more personal level, I chose this location because, in a way, I’m an outsider there. And yet I care deeply about the place and wanted to explore how I could relate to it. The Curonian Spit, in particular, spoke to me the most: its history, its connection to Curonian culture, and the broader migration history of the region. It’s a place shaped by movement, where languages have intertwined over time through waves of migration. That, in many ways, reflects my own experience. English isn’t my first language, it’s actually my third. I’ve lived in different places, and every place you stay for a while leaves an imprint on you. You take things in, and at the same time, you let go of pieces from previous places.

That was my personal motivation for making this film. But I don’t want my work to be explicitly about me. I want it to be informed by my experience, but not autobiographical. It’s not about auto-fiction. There are, of course, moments when my personal perspective comes through, like when the Night Gardener says ‘I am a foreigner to this land.’ That’s a line I could say myself because it’s true. Or when the Night Gardener mentions spending their childhood in the mountains: that’s directly from my own life. These small details are in there, and if you know me well, you might recognise them. But beyond that, the film isn’t about me.

RL: This figure also reminds me of the Lithuanian legend of the giantess Neringa. It’s interesting to compare how giants are portrayed in different cultures. In many myths, especially in Ancient Greek legends, giants or titans are often seen as negative figures, beings from the past that battle the new gods. But in Lithuanian folklore giants tend to be benevolent. There’s often an orphaned giantess or a couple of old giants who help people rather than threaten them. Maybe this has something to do with Lithuania being the last pagan nation in Europe: perhaps there was a different relationship between the old gods, or a transition between matriarchal and patriarchal structures.

SF: For me, reading Algirdas Julius Greimas was a major resource, especially the chapter on the magic apple orchard. It gave me a deeper understanding of the symbolism of the apple; not just in a biblical sense, but in a local context. What does the apple mean there? That was something I really wanted to explore. Another key idea from Greimas that influenced me was his statement that mythology didn’t develop independently, it evolved alongside language. Mythology is a cultural expression that grew in the same way that language did. If we take that further, and consider that languages develop through migration, shaped by the influence of other languages, then mythology is also shaped by that movement. It informs how people imagine the forces that rule the world.

In today’s world, where we have access to endless information, I’ve noticed a growing return to mythology. I don’t necessarily think this has to be an esoteric pursuit, but I do feel a bit uneasy about it. In different cultures, mythology carries different meanings. I grew up in Germany, where mythology was abused by the Nazis, so I’ve always been hesitant to reference it in that way: it holds a cultural weight that makes it difficult for me to use directly. That’s why, rather than reproducing an existing mythological figure, I preferred to invent my own. Using a Lithuanian mythological figure might have felt like a form of appropriation: maybe that’s too strong a word, but it wouldn’t have felt like mine to work with. I can engage with the language, maybe draw from certain motifs as a nod to the place, but I’d rather create something new, something that doesn’t carry predetermined meanings I can’t fully claim.

RL: But I guess Carl Jung would still argue that this figure represents some kind of archetype: maybe a magician or something similar. Do you think we still think in mythology-adjacent ways?

SF: I mean, who doesn’t love magic stories, right? I find them just as intriguing as anyone else. But I also think our time calls for a different kind of mythology. Simply reviving something from the past feels anachronistic to me. We don’t need, for example, the image of the Moon chasing the Morning Star to explain celestial movements: we understand now why the Moon orbits the Earth. Instead, I think we have new questions that we need to explore and find meaning in.

RL: I guess now we create conspiracy theories instead.

SF: Oh, God, yes. But that’s kind of the antithesis of what I’m talking about. Conspiracy theories aren’t real; they’re mysterious fiction, often bordering on horror. What I’m trying to explore is pretty much the opposite of that. I wouldn’t necessarily call it an ode to otherness, but it’s about something we should appreciate and value more. Instead of fearing what’s different or keeping our distance because someone doesn’t fit into heteronormative expectations, we should engage with that difference in a more open way.

RL: The short stories are such an unexpected element in the exhibition. How did you choose the writers, and do you see the texts as explanations, echoes, or maybe even interruptions of the visual elements?

SF: The first text you encounter in the exhibition is by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, a curator and researcher duo, both named Francesco. They are film historians specialising in the work of Jonas Mekas, and have also worked with queer archives in Italy. I thought it would be wonderful to have them write about cinema and the cinematic as memory and utopia.

The second text is by Mirela Baciak, a curator and writer. I love the way she frames her curatorial practice as guided by the notion of hospitality as a process that captures one’s ethical relation to the unknown and the strange. There’s so much in that short statement that I find compelling: the idea of hospitality, but also the connection to the unknown and the strange. We asked her to write a text about nocturnal creatures, and that’s how her piece came to the exhibition.

The third text is by Edita Anglickaitė, who lives in Klaipėda but works at Neringa Museums. Edita was the one who opened up the library at the Thomas Mann House for me, where I found incredible resources on the Curonian language and culture. It was there that I came across a chapter on Curonian dreams and superstitions. This appears quite literally in the film: I took the original text and transcribed it into my own words. The passage describes how the Curonians interpreted dreams as forecasts of the future, with specific motifs linked to environmental changes. I found that incredibly powerful: this idea that they were so deeply connected to the land that their dreams could be seen as omens of what was to come. And honestly, when I was in Nida, I had the strangest dreams. It made me feel even more connected to the idea that people living there in the past would have experienced something similar, that their dreams were intertwined with the land itself. Edita’s text speaks to this beautifully, almost like a poem about being in that landscape.

The final text is by Goda Gasiūnaitė, who is a dear friend and the writer I’m personally closest to among those we invited. I know of her deep interest in women’s stories and culinary history, so we asked her to write something in response to the idea of cultivation; not just culinary cultivation, but the broader cultural act of cultivating something. She came back with this incredible text that transports us to Geneva, New York, tying the story of apples to colonial history. Her text explores how apples arrived in North America, what they symbolised, and how they were used to romanticise the idea of bringing ‘Europe’ to the so-called New World. And when you reflect on the history of the Curonian Spit, that, too, is a landscape marked by colonisation. In a strange way, her text became the one closest to the film, not in a direct, visible sense, but in how broader themes begin to intersect when you reflect on them.

For us, myself and J.L. (Liam) Murtaugh, who curated the exhibition, it was important to include more than just my voice. We wanted to incorporate elements that relate to the film, but not as explanations or commentaries on it. Instead, we wanted the writers to add new perspectives, opening up the work rather than defining it.

Liam structured the exhibition so that visitors move from one lantern and text to the next, with the lanterns guiding them along the way. They lead you into the film, but also guide you back out along the same path. That’s something I really appreciate about Liam’s curatorial sensibility: he understands that experiences of place and otherness are so multifaceted, and it would feel wrong to try to define them in a singular way. Including these texts in the exhibition was crucial to us. We treated them as artworks in their own right, not just as supporting material. Each text was given equal attention, standing alongside the other elements of the exhibition as an integral part of the experience.

RL: How do you see the role of an artist in times of political turbulence, both globally and in the contexts of Germany and Lithuania? In an era that often feels chaotic, how can artists navigate these tensions while maintaining a sense of clarity and purpose?

SF: There’s no good answer to that. I think one thing that grounds me is that I’m a very political person, and I see all art as inherently political. I’m conscious of the context in which I create my work, but at the same time I’m hesitant to actively politicise it, because that’s already happening anyway. The idea of otherness, for example, I prefer to leave it open without over-defining it. The politicisation of otherness is already taking place, but to me, it’s simply a reality. Otherness exists. It always has, and it always will. Instead of constantly framing it as a debate, I’d rather move past that and focus on the actual issues at hand. So while I don’t shy away from the fact that my work is political, I also don’t feel the need to force that point. It just is.

I think there’s this common misconception about social media, that it’s a space where real discussions can happen. I appreciate social media for what it can do: keeping up with friends and colleagues, seeing what people are working on. I love that aspect of it. But political conversations? I don’t engage in them any more, because I don’t think they can really exist in that space. Meaningful discussions require actual dialogue, a real exchange where people acknowledge each other as more than just usernames. Without that, conversations tend to get reduced to polarising taglines.

RL: You mentioned the political climate, and it’s interesting to see how these shifts play out. For example, in 2023, the director of the Venice Biennale, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, an Italian journalist and writer, made headlines. In an interview, he said ‘I’m not a fascist, I’m something else.’ That phrasing made a lot of people suspicious and uneasy. But then, the following year, he appointed a Black woman Koyo Kouoh as the artistic director of the next Biennale, the first Black and female curator in its history.

SF: Yeah, but you know, in Germany, we just had general elections and the far-right party AfD got over twenty per cent of the vote. And here’s the thing: the leader of that party is a lesbian woman, married to a Sri Lankan, living in Switzerland, with two adopted children. That’s the complete opposite of what you’d expect from someone leading a fascist movement. So I’m not sure the traditional image of the white male fascist still holds. If we look around, fascist tendencies are everywhere, and today they’re no longer exclusive to a specific demographic. And if you look globally, you see similar contradictions. It just reinforces the idea that fascism has evolved into something else. It’s no longer coming exclusively from the people we traditionally associate with it: it’s emerging from unexpected places, from individuals who seem to contradict its very ideology.

Coming back to your previous question, there’s a German word Sendungsbewusstsein. It roughly translates to having ‘a missionary consciousness’, this urge to preach a political message, or tell people how things should be. I don’t have that. I can make my position clear, but I don’t feel the need to convince anyone of anything. I’d rather keep my stance open and leave space for interpretation. Sendungsbewusstsein has a strong negative connotation: it was often used to describe the fascist idea of imposing a singular truth on others. It sounds neutral at first, but it’s quite a charged term. On a lighter note, my favourite German word is Luftschloss, literally, an ‘air castle’. It’s this beautiful idea of a dream, a vision that might never materialise but still holds meaning. This is a lingual concept I feel is relevant in holding space for our utopian dreams.