In the winter of 2000, shortly after becoming the first non-British Artist ever to be awarded the Turner Prize, the German-born photographer Wolfgang Tillmans went to a disco to celebrate. He likes discos, not just for the dancing – which he does a lot of, in a vigorous and teutonically upright style – but also for their play of light. For a long time he had one of those quintessentially kitsch dancefloor accessories, a revolving mirrored globe, suspended from the ceiling of his studio. Now disco has entered his work in another way. For part of his new show at Interim Art – his first one-man exhibition in London since winning the Turner – Tillmans is making a documentary/art film on the unlikely subject of dance lighting systems and the people who design them. “I love the rhythms and the patterns created by the disco light-designers, the ‘light-jockeys’, as they’re called,” he says; “I love the strange sense of community they create, drawing everyone into the experience of whatever music you might be listening too. I want to get some of that sense of rhythm into my own work. I feel a kinship with those guys. As a photographer, I work with light, so I’m a kind of light-jockey too.” He talks about this idiosyncratically retro-groovy project with such enthusiasm that it is impossible to doubt his commitment to it; who knows, perhaps the result will turn out to be some strange kind of masterpiece.
An affable and distinctly fresh-faced 33, Wolfgang Tillmans is clearly enjoying his moment in the limelight. He moved to London ten years ago, and says that being given the Turner Prize “sort of put an official stamp on the very warm welcome I had already received here. I was very touched by it, and also...
