Moritz Lindur – ZERO is everything.
- Jonas
How could the “Working Class Hero” become the “Working Class Zero”? And what can we do about it? Moritz Lindur deals with these questions in his current exhibition “ZERO” at Gegen & Lücke, Berlin. At its center: a call to action, a manifesto written for those who live precariously. I met the artist ahead of the opening to talk about this practice, the new exhibition, and how he uses art to his advantage.
Hi Moritz. You’re self-taught and never studied art. How did you find your way into art?
Art has always been a part of me. I did a lot of drawing and painting as a child. My father studied music. We had a studio at home. I also spent a lot of time in museums with my grandfather. Every Sunday was culture day.
Although art was a very natural part of my life, I always saw it as something untouchable. Painting at home was fine, but I couldn’t imagine actually becoming part of this culture for a long time. I thought it was something for the upper classes, not for ordinary working-class people.
And how did you develop the themes you explore in your art today?
The way I work in art has a lot to do with how I grew up. My grandfather worked at Deutsche Welle for over 40 years, and my mother has been working at Westdeutscher Rundfunk for 25 years. Whether we were talking about art or other subjects, facts and statistics were always given a lot of importance. The question was always: “Which part of this is your own feeling, and what’s actually going on?” That certainly laid the foundation for why my work is often based on extensive research and conversations with other people. I’m always very careful not to rely solely on my own perception, but to incorporate as many different perspectives as possible.
Has the socially critical aspect always been there?
The older I get, the more it plays a role in my art, but looking at the system critically has always been part of who I am. I’ve always felt like I was somewhere in a grey area. My parents were never together. My mother’s side of the family is very analytical, with high moral standards and a very academic outlook. My father is the complete opposite. His attitude has always been: “Don’t let the system tell you what to think.” He was a conspiracy theorist long before COVID.
Nowadays, that’s become a source of shame, but I think it’s very important to think critically about the system and not believe everything immediately. For example, my mother always told me to look at the traffic light and stop when it was red. My father told me to look left and right to see whether a car was coming. Those were the two worlds I grew up in.
You’ve dealt extensively with crime in the past. In your current exhibition, you’re focusing on the working class, or the working population. Do you see yourself as an activist?
I see myself in the mirror every morning. Beyond that, I find it difficult to define myself. I think an activist is something else. Through my art, I reflect certain situations in society, sometimes exaggerating them, sometimes simply placing them in a different context — with or without language. But defining myself is difficult. I think that’s better left to others, because I’m too close to the subject to see it objectively.
Do you think there are things only art can do? Things that “traditional activism” can’t?
One thing art is good at, in my opinion, is informing people. I think that when someone enters a gallery, they’re usually open to learning something and taking something away with them. That idea is also present in my current exhibition, ZERO. It is, amongst others, a reference to the artist group Zero, founded in Düsseldorf, which back then defined a zero point for art in post-war Germany. They wanted art to purely focus on aesthetics, without politicisation.
Eighty years later, the situation has changed, and I’m trying to do precisely the opposite. For me, aesthetics definitely come second. Information and ideas come first. I don’t think we’re at a moment when we can focus purely on aesthetics. Instead, we should start engaging with things on a more substantive level again.
So, if I have the opportunity to talk to people in the gallery or give them something to think about, I’m happy to take it.
How do people respond to your art?
I’d say I use art to my advantage a little. I don’t need art to have conversations about these subjects in my neighbourhood in Neukölln, for example. That’s quite interesting. There, we can simply talk about these topics without any art involved.
In Berlin’s more elitist circles, however, I have fewer points of contact with people who actually have the power and resources to change things, such as politicians or property owners.
I’ve managed to get some of these people to walk down Hermannstraße with me and talk about certain issues. But I’ve always gained access to them through the gallery or my work. I feel that people are much more open to discussing these subjects when they arise in the context of art and culture than if I were simply to approach them out of the blue.
So art acts as a door opener, in a way.
Exactly. A gallery is a place where people from different social backgrounds come together. There’s usually no entrance fee, and anyone can attend the openings. These places are disappearing more and more. Ten years ago, techno clubs were still places where I felt there was a real sense of connection, where everyone was equal, regardless of whether they were rich or poor.
And how do the people you portray respond to your work?
Usually in much the same way. There’s often a sense of disbelief, as in: “You actually turned that into a work of art?” Since I’m dealing with people who are essentially ignored by society, they sometimes doubt whether what they have to say is worth anything.
The response, however, has been overwhelmingly positive. At the same time, I’m extremely careful to protect their anonymity. In the end, only the essence of our conversation remains, so that nobody feels exposed or put on the spot, especially since these are people who are going through, or have gone through, difficult periods in their lives.
For many of them, my work has also been their first point of contact with art. Perhaps the last time they visited a museum was on a school trip.
I’d like to learn more about your process. A lot happens before a work ends up on the wall.
I usually work in blocks. It starts with a situation or an idea that has affected me personally. In the case of drug dealing, for example, it was a situation in which a close friend of mine was sentenced to prison. Burnout, the subject of my current exhibition, has also affected me personally. After finishing my studies, I ended up in a clinic because of it, and since then I’ve seen several people in my personal circle experience burnout and require inpatient treatment.
I then start researching and try to learn as much as possible about the subject. After that, I conduct interviews. For the current exhibition, I spoke to people who were on the verge of burnout, in the middle of a breakdown, or had already overcome it. I also spoke to social workers, therapists and people who work in clinics.
Last year, I visited prisons and spoke to inmates who had either already been convicted or were still awaiting trial. Naturally, these kinds of conversations require a great deal of respect and sensitivity.
These “research blocks” last several months, and the process ends with the conceptualisation phase. How do I want to present all this? What kinds of works could emerge from it? Finally, comes the production phase.
Some works are produced in my studio. Increasingly, however, I also work collaboratively, partly because specialised expertise is required, but also simply because I enjoy working as part of a team.
At first glance, you can’t tell what process lies behind the finished works. Ultimately, they seem like a very intuitive culmination of an extensive engagement with the subject matter. How do these two things fit together for you? A lot of information gets lost along the way, too.
I’ve always found it interesting that, in art, something can appear very simple, even though the work behind it is incredibly demanding. As a young child, I was fascinated by Yves Klein, particularly those striking blue sculptures. But what fascinated me most was the story behind them.
Klein spent a year researching the subject and worked with a pharmacist and a chemist to figure out which binding agent would allow him to apply the pigment to his canvases or sculptures without diluting it and losing its effect. And in the end, you’re standing in front of a blue artwork. Unlocking that information made the work much more valuable to me than the fascination with the colour blue alone.
My glass phones, for example, initially seem very simple: a pane of glass and a screenshot of a conversation. But when you begin to understand what lies behind them — that this conversation actually took place and that it first had to be found — I find them much more interesting.
If I told you everything I had done to produce a work before you saw it, you’d probably feel completely overwhelmed. I think an artwork can be like a door into a world that you feel curious about exploring, perhaps because you were initially drawn to its aesthetics or technique. Suddenly, you want to know where it comes from and why things are the way they are.
Do you ever worry that this next step won’t happen? That your concrete guns, dealer iPhones or almost abstract paintings might simply be aestheticised or romanticised?
Of course, that can happen. Not everyone is going to engage with the subject matter. But I feel that a good idea can set off a chain reaction.
What I mean is that if you manage to get one person to think deeply about a subject, to see it in a new way and question their assumptions, there’s a good chance that person will share the idea with others. Perhaps you don’t need to change the world. Maybe all you need to do is make one person think a new thought.
Do you believe in good and evil, right and wrong?
I believe in right and wrong, but I find it difficult to categorise people as good or evil. Our behaviour doesn’t emerge in a vacuum. It’s shaped by our childhood, our socialisation and the societal conditions in which we live.
I think we live in a kind of lottery world. Nobody chooses the family they’re born into, the conditions they grow up in or the opportunities available to them in life. Some people grow up without a secure home, without running water and with hardly any prospects, while others grow up in great affluence. It’s obvious that these different starting points influence our lives and behaviour.
Of course, people develop differently, even when they grow up under similar conditions. That doesn’t mean our behaviour is entirely predetermined or that personal responsibility doesn’t matter. But I think we often underestimate how much our circumstances shape us.
I’ve met good people and bad people. Nevertheless, I find it increasingly difficult to judge people too quickly. I think we need to look much more closely at the system and the conditions under which people act, rather than placing all the responsibility on the individual.
That brings us to your current exhibition, in which you explore the working class, inequality and burnout. How did you arrive at this subject?
Originally, I wanted to explore burnout. What actually is burnout? How does it happen, and why have so many people around me experienced it?
During my research, a thought quickly came to me: Why did we once have the Working Class Hero, and why does it now feel as though we have the Working Class Zero? Why is it such a problem for us even to say that we come from the working class?
There was a time when workers were seen as something very positive, as people who contributed to society and took pride in doing so. If you listen to music from the past, for example, there are so many tracks celebrating the working-class hero.
Today, however, the more obvious your contribution to society is, the less you earn. Jobs that provide virtually no added value — and perhaps even harm our society — are extremely highly paid, and their holders are among the winners of the system.
Why is there such an enormous gap? Why do we simply accept it without questioning it anymore? Why are we ashamed of working? I recently read that society was as unequal during the French Revolution as it is today. More and more people are really struggling, while at the same time, more superyachts have been built in recent years than ever before. It quickly became clear to me that this was a subject I wanted to explore further.
One of my first interview partners was a single mother with two children and two jobs who was clearly overwhelmed. While we were talking about her situation, she said: “I should really have exercised in the morning, because I saw on Instagram that if I exercised more, I’d have more energy, and then maybe I could manage everything.”
The question wasn’t whether the system was unsuitable or no longer working. Instead, she looked at herself and concluded: “I’m the problem, not the system.”
I kept thinking about that interview for days. In our world, self-optimisation has won out over criticism of the system. We’re constantly comparing ourselves to others and thinking, “Oh, this person is in the same situation and they’re managing just fine.” But that’s far removed from reality.
You deal with this issue in the manifesto, which is presented as the central work in your current exhibition. You describe the working class as the people who do the work without which nothing would function, yet who are now completely overlooked — the “Working Class Zero”. One sentence particularly struck me and fits perfectly with what you’ve just said: “You did not fail. You adapted.”
This refers to one of my favourite authors and thinkers, Erich Fromm, and his book The Sane Society. He believed that the system has a much greater influence on how you behave than you yourself do.
The ability to adapt is certainly a strength of human beings, but I think we’re taking it to the extreme at the moment, especially when it comes to the way the Western world views work, jobs and self-fulfilment.
I found it interesting that you don’t use the term “working class” anywhere in the manifesto, but simply say “we”.
That was a very deliberate decision. No matter who I talk to, nobody wants to be seen as working class anymore, because the working class works for someone else.
We all want to be individuals. We want to be our own bosses, independent and free, without identifying with the lower class. That’s why it was so important to me to remove the term “working class” and create a new identity.
The idea is that if we’re all Zero, perhaps being Zero isn’t so bad anymore. But this term shouldn’t be imposed on us. It should come from us, so that we might find common ground again. This is particularly important because there are hardly any trade unions left. The manifesto is signed “Welcome to the Union of the Overperforming”. That’s something we all have in common.
According to Guy Standing, based in London, more than 50 per cent of society belongs to the precariat. Some estimates put the figure closer to 70–75 per cent, although these precarious living conditions are difficult to capture in surveys. So we’re certainly not a minority. We’re the majority.
No political party comes anywhere close to representing a class this powerful. Yet groups of people are pitted against one another: right against left, Green against Red, men against women. Anything to keep us fighting each other instead of looking at what really matters — the divide between those at the very top and those at the very bottom.
When I was growing up, there was still a traditional middle class, and most people felt they belonged to it in some way. Nowadays, even if you’re part of the precariat, you can own a flat and even a car — things that were long associated with the middle class. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t in an extremely precarious situation. You might still have no pension and no safety net if you stop being able to function. That threat hangs over the precariat like the sword of Damocles.
People may find themselves in very different situations, but they all have only one option: “Keep going, keep going, keep going.”
I wouldn’t necessarily have categorised you as working class. How do you see it?
Just like many people, I find it strange to identify with the term. But I definitely come from the working class. I have no inheritance, no assets, and I spend as much as I earn. Nobody is going to come and rescue me. If I stop working for a month, I have to move out. So yes, I see myself as being in a precarious situation.
There’s a statement at the beginning of the manifesto that I found particularly interesting. You write: “The old gods died. What remained was the market.” Which gods have died?
The manifesto was originally very, very long and referred to a wide range of concepts. I kept shortening it until almost every line came to refer to a specific concept.
The line you just mentioned is one hundred percent Nietzsche. He said that we had “killed God” and replaced faith with the Enlightenment, but had never established new moral values to replace those that religion had provided.
For thousands of years, people believed that if you did good, you would go to heaven, and if you did bad, you would go to hell. This idea has now essentially been replaced by the free market economy, which has no moral values at all. It only demands that you assert yourself within the system. Perhaps we should start looking for a different value system instead of relying solely on the free market economy. By now, it should be clear that it isn’t making us a better society. At least, I think the idea that capitalism is the only possible form of society has become outdated.
With my manifesto, I want to invite people to question what our system could look like. What could make it a little more humane again? When everything revolves around capitalism and numbers, many things fall by the wayside. And we can see right now how much is lacking in all kinds of important areas of our society. Anyone who has been to America knows that the “best” country isn’t necessarily the one that generates the most revenue.
After all your research, regardless of the subject, do you still feel a certain sense of optimism?
I’m glad you’re asking that. Actually, yes! Because I can see that people are aware of the problems.
We’re constantly being told that everything is inevitable and can’t be changed. But when you start talking to people, you realise how many of them think alike, whether they’re on the political right or left, at the top or at the bottom. Inequality isn’t good for either side.
We’re very social creatures, and I believe that people are fundamentally good. Nobody wants to go to war. Nobody wants to kill. People become radicalised, but we aren’t born that way. Of course, after a while, we might become completely fed up, depressed and start seeing the world in very dark terms. But overall, my experience has been that when you genuinely talk to people, they’re much nicer than you might expect — in every direction, across the many countries I’ve visited and across all social classes.
Basically, people are actually pretty okay — much more okay than we tend to think. That’s why I’m still optimistic. Of course, I can also be very pessimistic. It always depends on how I’m feeling that day. We all know how that is.
Conversations like this also remind me how important personal exchange is for understanding other people’s realities. Unfortunately, we seem to be talking to one another less and less in our society.
Yes, we’re conditioned to be individualistic, to focus on our differences and distance ourselves from one another. But when you sit down with people on a street corner, everyone’s friends with everyone else. The truth is, we all have to take a shit anyway.
Moritz Lindur “ZERO” is on view at Gegen & Lücke, Berlin until November 21, 2026