Jörn Hintzer is the Keynote Speaker at the TRACKS+PRACTICES Symposium 21.-22.8.2026 in Oulu, Finland. Jörn is one part of a Berlin-based artistic duo called Datenstrudel formed with Jakob Hüfner. Together they also hold professorship for Cross-Media Moving Image at Bauhaus University Weimar. Read about their playful artistic approach, discover their unconventional art projects and explore the connection between railway and filmmaking.
You are part of an artistic duo called Datenstrudel. Together with Jakob you juggle with different media formats such as television, theatre, cinema, the internet, music videos, viral content, art installations and mixing different media. How would you describe your artistic process? What drives you in artmaking?
That is a big question. Both Jakob and I, when we left the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, struggled with being between two or more disciplines. In German it is called “sitting between the chairs”. That was during a time when all our friends wanted to be professionals in something: a professional filmmaker, professional artist, a professional sound guy and so on. Times have changed and nowadays I think many artists find themselves between the chairs.
I can’t compare myself with a classic artistic person. I studied art, but I always had the feeling that I’m not going into a field where I am doing art only. I was always interested in public communication. I always wanted to have a negotiation with a kind of average audience.
In Datenstrudel, we are two people working together with different agendas. We always have to find a solution together. That is an important aspect in how we work. Working in a duo, things get mixed up. The artistic approach that is underlying a duo is difficult to explain because a duo is a vivid, sometimes complicated, and sometimes stable situation. That has advantages, but you always have to communicate what you want to do. You need to do this in a way that is very hands-on, and not theoretical. What I like about films and theatre is that you have to do something that is in communication with an audience. You have to make it clear.
How did you discover your way of making art?
When we both graduated, around the year 2000, we thought okay now we have to earn money and work. We tried to do that. We were a bit annoyed trying to write for TV, applying for funding for stupid books, screenplays or other ideas.There was a kind of dead end after finishing university. I think a lot of people can relate.
Then we discovered the internet as a creative playground. So, we started doing livestream shows on the internet. A new technology led to a new idea. It was so great to find a medium where you can have your own TV station. Prior to this, we had all these struggles with people at TV stations telling us that we can’t do this or we can’t do that. We made out of the box proposals and they were turned down. It’s so frustrating. But then there was the internet, and we did shows of our own.
The first show we did was called “WHAT CAN YOU DO SHOW” In the beginning we had only a dozen users who watched the show online. After a while there was just one user left. We did not know where this person was or what language he or she spoke. So, we tried talking in any language to keep this last user with us. It was so fun to be in contact with an audience. It gave me a good lesson: you simply have to think about this one person in the audience. You want to do something for this last user.
Art forms connections between people. Art is the glue of society. If you have nothing to glue to, you just have a one-sided glue.
It sounds to me that you are fighting against a type of formalism that there can be in the art world. For instance, you came across this formalism in the TV industry that you have to make a TV-series in a particular way. What I hear you saying is: but what else is there? How can we mix something and take an unexpected route?
Yes, there are all these rules about how this has to be for cinema, and that has to be for TV. But we have the freedom to think what we want to say, which medium we want to use and where we want to show it. Is it for people who are sitting in their bed with a laptop? Is it for an audience with 300 people? Is it on a smartphone? Is it horizontal or vertical? Sometimes our students come in with an idea for a film, and we might say “that’s not a movie, that’s an app – make an app”.
Talking about different and surprising media, you have made a few projects for people travelling in trains. There was a concert for passing trains during Covid times as well as a performance project called “Bewegtes Land / Moving Landscapes” where people made short performances, or events outside passing trains. I have understood that you see trains and railroads as a close relative to film. What is exciting about trains? And what is the relationship between trains and film?
The idea for the train projects popped up while I was sitting in a train from Berlin to Munich. The train is forced to slow down due to the curves of the river in a narrow valley. I was looking outside and daydreaming. We passed by a medieval farmhouse and for a second, I saw inside the courtyard that was totally messed up with old cars, trash and several barking dogs. If that had been in a movie, it would have been a moment of surprise. Just from that one second glimpse, I got the idea that it could be a great stage. I called Jakob and he thought it was a great idea
Sitting in a train and looking out the window you see, for instance, a distant village, and you might imagine living there. This act of changing perspective is basically the same that happens when you watch a movie . So, that is where the connection between a train and film emerged from. You look out a window and are forced to see what you see. It is not a self-driven form of perception. Also, the train and the camera were invented more or less around the same time. Even mechanically the old steam engine train is a sort of twin to the early film-camera.
When trains were first invented, they completely changed the world. Something similar happened with the internet. They both have a relationship to speed, time and travel, and in a very similar revolutionary way.
I think now we are living in a time where the internet is almost a past phenomenon with the AI revolution and robots coming. That will have a super impact. Similarly, imagine being a farmer in the late 19th century and suddenly, trains travel through the landscape, filled with strangers who wave as they pass your fields at 30 miles per hour. It must have been a shock for people, and perhaps we can relate to that shock today.
Another project that you’ve been collaborating in is called Standard Time by Mark Fomannek. There’s a literal wooden clock made from huge wooden numbers that are being built and changed every minute by real people. This clock can be bought as a screensaver. I find the train projects and this clock project do not intend to be particularly funny but there is a lot of humour. Do you actively incorporate humour in your work or is it a kind of accidental side product that might appear?
While building the clock you see how the people have to struggle. They are fighting against time but also struggling with the big wooden numbers. I believe we like to see people fighting for something and really struggling to get somewhere, giving their all, especially when the task is as pointless as building a digital time display by hand. This adds a layer of humour. But for Mark and for us, there was no doubt; We have to take it seriously.
What you’re saying made me think about the importance of scale in your work. For me, the people working on the clock appear as miniature people working on a regular sized clock. And the people outside the train windows making performances also appear as miniature people in a large landscape.
Do you know this feeling? Now the holidays are starting, and I am sure I will be at the beach somewhere at some point. You are engaged there with the people who are laying around, talking, bathing, half-naked. Then you swim out to the sea, and you look back at the beach from 30 to 40 meters away, from an outside perspective. This change of perspective on the same beach is so interesting to me. I like changing between two perspectives: inside and outside.
You work on your projects together with many people. Who are these people that you work with and involve in the artworks?
Both Jakob and I like to engage with people from every part of society. We try to convince them to join our projects with great passion, not with money. When we worked on the train projects we wanted to work with local participants on their own fields and streets, and to engage them. We got in touch with people with simple tricks, chatting them up. It was really hard, but that is what both me and Jakob want to do: to engage with different kinds of people. It is a basic, underlying idea in our art form.
What do you see that your “unconventional, mixed-media” artworks are doing in the world? What kind of feedback do you receive?
I receive a lot of positive resonance. One example is a documentary film project I do with students every summer. We spend a week in a small village where people are getting older and older, there are beautiful landscapes, and the young people are disappearing.
First, I am looking for protagonists from different workplaces in the village. On the first day of the workshop, the protagonists will be assigned to the students via a lottery. The first two days the students have to help the people on site. The students often get close with the people and get offered summer jobs and so on. Some weeks later, we show the films at the village. It’s great when you see the town halls full of local people and they applaud every movie.
What kind of advice would you give for young students or other people who are starting out with making art and trying to find their own expression?
To get rid of the smartphone for hours. Go without podcasts or sound in the ears, and without a friend for a long walk, let’s say two hours or so. The brain will start to work after an hour. If you are creative, you will see that there’s a firework of ideas and approaches that are coming. Then you have it come from inside your mind and not from outside influence. That is, I think, the best advice I can give to people.
Jörn was talking online with Silja Tuovinen.