The complete artist

Filip Markiewicz is almost over-punctual, namely five minutes early, when he meets us in front of the Grand Théâtre at Rond-Point Schuman. As usual, he is dressed all in black. His black-painted fingernails and an impressive skull ring give us the opportunity to tell our conversation partner an old story: a long, long time ago, we had actually sold such a ring, via a Luxembourg gallery owner, to the German artist Markus Lüpertz, who was to become really famous shortly afterwards. From then on, he was seen in public with our skull ring, for which we received a considerable 1,000 Luxembourg francs at the time.

Markiewicz was of course aware of Lüpertz' fondness for skull rings and was impressed. We meet the artist, who was born and raised in Luxembourg but has been living and working in Hamburg for some time now, at the theatre in Limpertsberg of all places because Markiewicz is currently staging the Sophocles tragedy Elektra here (the last performance took place on 30 March).

The cast includes Luc Feit, Luc Schiltz, Anouk Wagener and Lisa Schützenberger and, as musicians, Markiewicz himself as well as Raftside drummer Lars Neugebauer and Einstürzende Neubauten legend N.U. Unruh. Markiewicz is not only responsible for the direction, but also for stage, costumes, video and music, making Elektra a total work of art à la Markiewicz, with references to Andy Warhol and Valérie Solanas, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, the Joker and Hanna Arendt.

The reactions to the piece are downright enthousiastic – rightly so! However, we don't meet Filip Markiewicz to talk about Elektra, but about his complete works, especially the music and his Raftside project.

When we admit right at the beginning of our conversation that, with the exception of performance artists such as Florentina Holzinger or Anne Imhof, we don't actually like theatre at all, but that Elektra had really excited us for precisely that reason, he smiles and takes note.