Why are we creative? What makes an idea a good idea? Wherein lies the genius of creative people? For more than thirty years, filmmaker and author Hermann Vaske has been interviewing the most important artists, activists, and thinkers of our time. More than 1000 answered him – some in autographs or sentences, many with drawings or artifacts.

Visitors not only experienced what triggers creativity (and thus enriches and advances our world), but also the dialectic of creativity: Because everything that suppresses and prevents inventive spirit – censorship, self-censorship, compromises, prohibitions – often gives rise to the most brilliant ideas.

The exhibition therefore poses the central question: “Can we rely on our creativity and be hopeful despite the escalating existential crises on our planet?”

Writers such as Salman Rushdie, Sibylle Berg, and Michel Houellebecq, artists such as Shirin Neshat, David Hockney, Jonathan Meese, and Marina Abramovic, filmmakers such as Cate Blanchett, Dennis Hopper, and Billy Wilder, activists such as Luisa Neubauer and Masha Aljochina, as well as philosophers, scientists, and Nobel Prize winners provided some of the most original answers.

Visitors became part of the exhibition by answering the question: Why are you creative?