A few weeks ago we presented our first creative partner project and our first short film, the result of a cooperation between Berlin-based composer and music producer Robot Koch and the photographer Sabrina Theissen. For “In a Creative Dialogue – Robot Koch x Sabrina Theissen for IWISHUSUN” our ambassadors got together to take a look at the topic of sight, which IWISHUSUN has dedicated its work to.

The process and the thoughts of the two IWISHUSUN ambassadors are documented in intense imagery in Editude Pictures’ short film, “In a Creative Dialogue – Robot Koch x Sabrina Theissen for IWISHUSUN”:

On the occasion of the upcoming Berlin Fashion Week our friends from Style.de met our co-founder Cathy Boom for an interview and chatted about her fashion week must-haves etc. Read her replies here (only in German).

Also, The renowned German online magazine ArtSchoolVets featured our latest project “In a Creative Dialogue – Robot Koch x Sabrina Theissen for IWISHUSUN” - a cooperation including a track, three photos and a video which were created by two of our friends, the composer and music producer Robot Koch and the photographer Sabrina Theissen. Together they took a look at the topic of sight, which IWISHUSUN has dedicated its work to. Head over to ArtSchoolVets to read the entire article (only in German).

A few days ago we presented our first creative partner project and our first short film, the result of a cooperation between Berlin-based composer and music producer Robot Koch and the photographer Sabrina Theissen. For “In a Creative Dialogue – Robot Koch x Sabrina Theissen for IWISHUSUN” our ambassadors got together to take a look at the topic of sight, which IWISHUSUN has dedicated its work to.

Here you can see Sabrina Theissen at work:

The result: a photographic tryptich which is shown below. The sky and the sun are the determining motifs, which, in a similarly minimalist way as the song by Robot Koch, are captured only indirectly by reflection, allowing the greatest possible space for the unexpected aspects of ones own interpretations in their complete reduction – a playing field for one’s own way of seeing and perspectives.

The process and the thoughts of the two IWISHUSUN ambassadors are documented in intense imagery in Editude Pictures’ short film, “In a Creative Dialogue – Robot Koch x Sabrina Theissen for IWISHUSUN”:

Wir freuen uns sehr, das erste kreative Partnerprojekt und unseren ersten Kurzfilm vorzustellen, der aus der Zusammenarbeit zweier Botschafter aus unserem immer größer werdenden Netzwerk entstanden ist: „In A Creative Dialogue – Robot Koch x Sabrina Theissen“.

Der Berliner Komponist sowie Musikproduzent Robot Koch und die Fotografin Sabrina Theissen haben sich zusammengetan, um das Thema des Sehens, dem sich IWISHUSUN verschrieben hat, von kreativer Seite aus zu betrachten. Dafür stellte Robot Koch seinen brandneuen Song „Jupiter“ zur Verfügung, von dessen Melodien sich Sabrina Theissen inspirieren ließ und mit dem obigen Triptychon fotografisch darauf antwortet. Der Himmel und die Sonne werden hier zum bestimmenden Motiv, das in ebenso minimalistischer Manier wie Robot Kochs Song durch Reflektionen nur indirekt eingefangen wird und in aller Reduktion dem Unvorhersehbaren, der eigenen Interpretation den größten Raum einräumt – ein Spielraum für das eigene Sehen und die eigenen Sichtweisen.

Diesen Prozess und die Gedanken der beiden IWISHUSUN-Botschafter dokumentiert der gleichnamige Kurzfilm „In A Creative Dialogue – Robot Koch x Sabrina Theissen für IWISHUSUN“ in intensiven Bildern:

Unser Dank gilt Robot Koch, Sabrina Theissen sowie Frederic Leitzke und Andreas Lamøth von Editude Pictures, die den kreativen Austausch filmisch eingefangen haben!

Die Interviews von Robot Koch, Sabrina Theissen und Editude Pictures mit IWISHUSUN können Sie hier nachlesen.

Frederic Leitzke & Andreas Lamoth

filmmakers & co-founders of Editude Pictures – Berlin

Together they are strong! Frederic Leitzke and Andreas Lamoth co-founded their own film production company Editude Pictures in late 2010. What started as a more or less improvised coalition of five friends, slowly but surely evolved into a young promising company. While music and art are definitely prioritised, both of them have also corporately worked for brands like Coca Cola, Levis, Red Bull and Converse. Nevertheless what we love the most are their urban films which are filled with their passion for street art, illustration, urban culture and music. No surprise that they are best-known for these kind of interactions. Their documentation of Berlin’s creative scene, “In The Belly Of A Whale,” is their first film and at the same time a foundation for many video works that followed.

While their first documentation strung together various filmic portraits of Berlin’s art scene members and is still complemented by new episodes, Frederic and Andreas also worked for our friend and music producer Robot Koch in the past. To unlock the exciting potential which arises from our creative supporters we teamed up with Editude Pictures and two of our other dear ambassadors – beautiful project which we will showcase very soon. Stay tuned!

In the meantime welcome Editude Pictures as one of our supporters!

You are filmmakers and therefore sight must be a very important sense to you. What other sense couldn’t be missed in your life? Why?
Andy: It’s really hard to imagine a life without any of my senses, but besides my eyes I would miss my ears the most of all I guess. For me vision is strongly connected to hearing which you can see in almost all of our films: Sound and especially Music is so important to set the right tone for moving images and are unseperable in my eyes.
Fredi: That’s for sure. Besides that I would probably miss tasting the most, because my hobby cooking wouldn’t make much “sense” anymore I guess.

What is your vision for your personal work? 
Andy: I hope to be working more in the field of documentaries in the future. There are tons of lives and people out there who are worth being banned to film and who’s stories are worth beeing told.
Fredi: Documentaries are very important to us for sure. Since our first film “In The Belly Of A Whale” lots of good things happened and we got great feedback for our work. That’s definitely a vision. Always try to do stuff that makes people happy, that entertains people, that has a purpose, that somehow “remains” in that crazy fast moving digital world.

Your personal opinion: what makes a good film? 
Andy: Authenticity. Most of the big blockbuster movies simply have no heart and are only produced for making money. So I really prefer movies with smaller or even no budgets for which the filmakers had to make a big creative effort to get it done.
Fredi: The story. Always the story. In the past, the story was the most important thing in a movie. Movies were made because writers and directors had things to say. Today it’s more about pleasing the market, the industry, the crowd with crazy effects, pompous settings, big stars, telling the same stupid stories again and again, using every cliché available. Of course today still many nice movies are made, but really good and innovative screenplays are definitely more rare than in the last century.

What filmmakers have inspired you lately?
Andy: I love Wes Anderson and am really looking forward to his new movie in January. Besides that I am really into short documentaries about everyday life, which you can find very easily by independent and hobby filmers on Vimeo.
Fredi: Yeah, Wes Anderson for sure. The filmmaker who inspired me the most recently was Malik Bendjelloui, director of the masterpiece “Searching for Sugar Man”. A man with an – again – absolutely amazing story, without a big budget, with lots of struggles during the production but with a strong vision and impressive skills succeeds in the end, brings his vision to the screen and creates one of the most beautiful documentaries ever made.

What themes do you find yourself exploring over and over again?
Both: We have a really strong bond into Berlin’s art scene, so it’s almost natural that we are exploring themes like creativity, making a living from what you love and collaborations between different kinds of people in our films. Besides that we are planing a new documentary about the new age of making music – hopefully we will start filming in 2014, watch out!

What is the most beautiful thing you ever saw?
Andy: That’s a tough one. I believe when you look close enough you can find beautiful things happening around you everyday, even (often mostly) in the most random and trivial situations.
Fredi: Impossible to answer.

Sunrise or sunset – what do you prefer?
Andy: Sunrise.
Fredi: Sunset.

As a seeing person it is hard, if not impossible, to imagine the world from the perspective of a blind person, and the same applies in reverse. How would you describe our world and surroundings to a blind person?
Both: We don’t think it’s fair trying to tell a blind person what the world looks like. We would rather try to find advantages which blind people have. For example we believe they have no problems with prejudice and are able to experience the world in very different but also exciting ways.

What would you like to see more often?
Andy: Justice.
Fredi: Humility.

What is your tactic for making the world a better place?
Andy: There is so much screwed up stuff happening around us that one person really can’t handle all types of it. So I guess you just have to concentrate on 2 or 3 things that matter most to you and try to make a change. Lately I am trying to boycott mass animal farming by not eating any meat no more; it’s really hard to see animals suffering because of massive exorbitance in our ways of living.
Fredi: Making the world a better place is a hard task. I rather focus on little things in my daily surroundings, that you really can influence and that make a small difference. Treat people nicely and with respect, be honest, be humble to the environment and in my daily life. Things like that.

When was the last time you gave back and what did you do?  
Andy: I am trying to support Unicef on a regular basis to help them fight the problem of stranded refugees all over the world.
Fredi: The last time? I guess that was some money I gave to the fantastic street musician on Warschauer Straße, that I pass every morning.

Tonight Boiler Room Berlin will host a new edition of their underground music shows and our ambassador Robot Koch will be part of it! Along with Kyson, Perera Elsewhere and Sarah Farina the Berlin-based music producer and composer will be spinning tonight. Tune in tonight and watch his live music from home.

If you haven’t already done so, check out Robot Koch’s interview with IWSHUSUN here!

Once again Robot Koch makes our skin crawl: the Berlin-based composer, music producer and first and foremost a dear friend of IWISHUSUN whose songs like “Don’t Wake Me” casted a spell on us before presents a very new song. Not yet released, his track “Here With Me” was co-written and co-produced by Susie Suh and brings together a positive undertone, melancholy and yearning at the same time. Enjoy!

This summer Robert Koch popped in for an interview and showed his colours for IWISHUSUN. You can read the results here.

Last Saturday we had the pleasure of listening to Berlin-based composer and music producer Robot Koch who has recently been introduced to you as a friend of IWISHUSUN (read the interview here) when he played at Torstraßen Festival 2013. Not only a kindred spirit but also visually, Robert looked fantastic in our logo tee.

Get your own IWISHUSUN tee here and finance a pair of glasses for a school child in Bangladesh through the National Childhood Blindness Project (NCBP) from ORBIS, true to the motto “Buy a T-Shirt, improve a child’s sight”.

Photo: Julia Zierer / style.de.

Robot Koch

composer and music producer – Berlin

Under the name “Robot Koch” Robert Koch, who was born in Kassel in 1977, has recently attained international success and acclaim as “One of Europe’s finest producers of the beat generation,” as Low End Theory stated from Los Angeles. “Don’t Wake Me” immediately cast a spell on us: a positive undertone, melancholy and yearning at the same time. The sound is accompanied by haunting lyrics, written by Robot Koch, John LaMonica and one of our favourite Berlin-based singers, D E N A. But Robots Don’t Sleep is only one of many projects that keeps the music producer busy.

Whenever Robot Koch is not working as a composer and producer with both indie and major artists internationally, he is the mastermind behind the critically acclaimed band Jahcoozi and Robot Robinson with John Robinson. It’s self evident how diverse his own tracks, DJ sets, mash-ups and his collaborators are, but the same is also true of his style, which explains why Dazed and Digital once described his music as “a gothic galactic aesthetic of ten ton beats and space age melodies.” In short, to put it in music guru John Peel’s words: “Wonderful and strange — pop music from the future.”

Robert Koch supports IWISHUSUN and popped in for an interview. You can read the results below, but first we want to give him our warmest welcome!

What is the most important sense to you?
I want to say hearing because music and sound is such a big inspiration to me, but even more than that I think seeing is what inspires me the most. I’m a very visual person, I even see sounds sometimes and think of images or landscapes when I make music.

You are a creative person. What is your vision for your personal work?
I really want to touch people with my work. On different levels. I think music is a really strong means of communication; sound waves are energy. If you manage to touch people on different frequencies, something resonates in them. Emotionally and subconsciously. This may sound vague and hippie-esque but I do believe everything is connected by the same universal energy.

John Peel once described your music as “wonderful and strange — pop music from the future”. When you think of the future, what will it look and sound like?
I’d like to be optimistic, but I’m afraid it’s going to look a lot less pretty and sound more polluted. But I hope I’m wrong. Maybe it’ll be really quiet actually. Kind of post-reset-quiet.

You have been compared with artists like Jamie Lidell, who is also a supporter of IWISHUSUN, The xx and Jimmy Edgar. Where do you position yourself and your music?
I don’t really like comparisons like that. I do respect the above-mentioned artists, but I guess every artist strives for their own musical identity. Of course there are parallels, and artists you are closer to than others musically, but I prefer describing music without genre tags or referring to other artists. My music is trying to find a balance between organic and digital sounds. It’s human and mechanic. The balance between nature and technology. It also has a bittersweet taste to it, sometimes dark but still with some warmth and light to it.

Blind people and those who can see surely experience the world in different ways. How would you describe the world, to someone who suffers from an irreversible loss of the ability to see, in one sentence? 
That’s a hard one. I’d say: try to imagine an almost limitless amount of shapes and colours. And a lot of beauty.

When was the last time you gave back and what did you do?
I adopted a bear in Asia. Animals are treated very badly over there and some moon bears in certain areas of Asia are kept and mistreated in bear farms under horrible conditions for some very questionable medical profit. I adopted a bear through “Animals Asia” to set him free.

What is your tactic for making the world a better place?
I try to act responsibly and treat nature as the highest good. Material goods are way overrated. If people perceived themselves as what they are, part of nature, then they wouldn’t be so destructive, which in the end is self-destructive.

What is the most beautiful thing you ever saw?
A lot of landscapes come to mind, places I’ve been to. Nature usually has the biggest impact on me in terms of beauty. Hard to just single out one event or thing. There are too many.

What would you like to see more often?
Balance.

Sunrise or sunset – what do you prefer?
I guess sunset. Sometimes when I see a sunset and I feel all nostalgic I hum this melody from star wars to myself quietly, from the scene when Luke is watching the binary sunset on Tatooine. That scene had a big impact on me as a kid and it still resonates to this day.

Who is your personal hero?
It’s hard to just mention a single person. There are some iconic figures in music like Moondog, Rick Rubin or Lemmy from Motörhead who I respect for who they are. I also find comic writer and shaman Michael Moore a very interesting personality. I watched a documentary on him and some of the stuff he said blew my mind. But really everyone who cares for and protects the environment has my biggest respect; even for little everyday type things they do, it all helps to make a big difference.