An Interview in Motion

Simon Blume in conversation with TANN
A field report from Berlin's quiet corners

We meet Simon Blume in his studio on a cold weekday morning, the kind where the city feels half-awake and everything smells faintly of coffee grounds and damp concrete. Before we’ve even unpacked the recorder, he apologises for the chaos on his desk. It is, of course, the good kind of chaos – the kind that suggests something is happening beneath the surface.

What follows is not a tidy artist talk. It is more like walking behind someone who keeps pausing, pointing at a leaf, a window, a line in the pavement, and quietly saying: This. This is where it starts.

TANN: Before we talk about the work itself… how do you begin? Not the drawings, but you.

Simon Blume: My ritual always starts outside the studio. I leave the apartment, walk to a café, buy the newspaper – a real printed one – and sit with a coffee. It’s a moment of me-time, but it’s also about impulses. Headlines, photos, something overheard at the next table… it wakes me up. Then I walk to the studio.

That walk is important. Moving through Neukölln, letting the surroundings influence me. Plants in windows, old ceramics, a weirdly shaped Yucca tree in winter… these small things trigger ideas. I follow those impulses. The drawings begin long before I pick up a pencil.

TANN: You mentioned the sketchbooks. How central are they?

Simon Blume: Essential. I have a whole crate filled with them. They’re the motor of everything. When I draw, it’s like massaging the brain. A warm-up. You get this rhythm going, and then suddenly things spark.

Sometimes they become ornamental collages. Sometimes they evolve into larger abstract works. Sometimes they sit there for a year until I see them again and think: Oh… this is actually good. Time changes the meaning.

TANN: Your studio looks like an archive exploded in slow motion. Is the mess intentional?

Simon Blume: Absolutely. I rely on chance. Drawings lying on top of each other, overlapping accidentally – sometimes those coincidences start new ideas. Chaos is a collaborator.

And the archive helps. Old sketchbooks, forgotten drawings… they show me things I didn’t see the first time. You come back with a different perspective and suddenly something clicks.

TANN: Let’s talk rituals. Do you see your process as ritualistic?

Simon Blume: Yes, definitely. Walking is a ritual. Drawing is a ritual. Warming up the hand until the mind follows. Even the studio routine – putting on music, looking at the current pile of drawings, starting to move the pencil without thinking too much.

It’s very simple: these small repeated acts keep the creative engine running. Without them, nothing happens.

TANN: Your technique has shifted over time. What changed?

Simon Blume: I used to work with paper cuts – very flat, very graphic. Now it’s more line-based. More drawing, less cutting. The hand is more present.

Curretly, I share a studio with another painter who works very much from mood rather than intellect. He taught me a lot. Sometimes you need to let the atmosphere lead instead of the concept.

TANN: What about clothing? Many artists have… habits.

Simon Blume: Oh yes. I have one pair of work trousers covered in years of paint stains. It’s its own abstract painting at this point. When everyday clothes reach their end, they become studio clothes and keep living a second life.

And I always carry this plastic utility sling. In summer I have no jacket, no pockets… so this bag carries everything: pencils, sketchbook, tools. A silent companion.

TANN: How do you know a work is finished?

Simon Blume: It’s like music. A composition reaches balance at some point. A kind of inner click. You see the relationships between the shapes settle. The beginning, middle, end: they’re all there.

TANN: Do you need other people for that moment of clarity?

Simon Blume: Exchange with others is essential. Studio visits, exhibition openings, talking with friends… it changes everything. You need solitude to work, but you need people to think.

Sometimes someone sees value in a piece I had completely dismissed. That can shift everything.

TANN: And what’s next?

Simon Blume: I want to move from smaller ideas into larger works again. Same methods, same impulses… just bigger breaths. I have visions of these large pieces in my mind. It’s time to give them space.

And so the conversation ends the way it began: with a quiet gesture. Simon places another sketchbook on the table, flips to a page filled with quick, nervous lines. They look like beginnings. Or endings. Or the warm-up before something new moves through the hand.

Whatever it is, it is already in motion.