Ingo Niermann, Alexa Karolinski
Oceano de Amor, 93’, 2020

Under capitalism, even love has become a commodity and desire has become the driving force of a market obsessed with growth. The idea that violence is the last taboo of the modern welfare state is the antithesis of ‘Army of Love’ –– an open and international project, which radically reconquers the body and consciousness of its participants and asks: can love be a new kind of work? In Cuba, we meet 10 members of ‘Army of Love’, who give it a try. These include, students, pensioners, transgender sex workers and people with disabilities –– an inclusive group of people who we meet at work and at a beach in Havana, where they perform a ritual in the sea of love. Ocean of Love is part of a continuing multidisciplinary project, which in an open and participatory form recruits new soldiers in the name of love for training programmes and workshops.

Alexa Karolinski was born in Berlin, Germany. She received her bachelor’s degree in art history. She worked for Vice in Germany as an editorial assistant. She also produced pieces for Arte, featuring the work of various artists. She relocated to New York City to attend the School of Visual Arts and mastered social documentaries. Karolinski’s first major film was Oma & Bella, a documentary about her grandmother and her grandmother’s friend and roommate. Both women were Holocaust survivors. She moves between the worlds of fine art, cinema and commercial video. In 2016 she premiered the film Army of Love at the Berlin Biennale, as part of an ongoing collaboration with writer/artist Ingo Niermann.

Ingo Niermann (Bielefeld, Germany, 1969) lives in Berlin and Basel. He is a writer and editor of the book series Solution. His debut novel Der Effekt was published in 2001. Recent books include Solution 247-261: Love (2013), Choose Drill (2011), The Future of Art: A Manual (2011, with Erik Niedling), Solution 186–195: Dubai Democracy (2010), Solution 1–10: Umbauland (2009), Solution 9: The Great Pyramid (with Jens Thiel, 2008), and The Curious World of Drugs and Their Friends (with Adriano Sack, 2008). Niermann co-founded the revolutionary collective Redesign Deutschland, and has invented a tomb for everyone, the Great Pyramid. Together with Rem Koolhaas he has been building Vote, a tool for public ballots, in Gwangju, Korea. In cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin) Niermann started the international digital publishing project Fiktion.