I'm operating in the gap between the trajectory of modernity and the trajectory of modernism. So what people think is design is not design, it's my attempt to engage with the trajectory of modernity.

As an artist, it's been clear that the price of art has nothing to do with you, it has to do with an idea of what the market will tolerate.

The bourgeoisie are the only people who want to help me. The enlightened bourgeoisie are the only ones who ever buy anything, look after it, and don't ask for a discount. They want to look after you.

Contemporary art for me is a kind of historical term that describes the 40 years between the Berlin Wall going up and then coming down. I'm not sure who will come up with a better term to describe art, but I think contemporary art is actually done for.

No one born in the 1950s took much interest in my generation, and all we've done is try to fix it by talking to the people who came after us. I don't hang out with anyone who is 10 years older than I am, but I hang out with a lot of people who are 10 years younger.

What people in the U.S. have to understand is that there is sometimes a deep political content in my work that's rooted in the postwar reconfiguration in Europe. I'm still a foreigner in America. I'm someone who's bringing nuanced stories from somewhere else that will always be harder to take.

I remain interested in the potential of art, except I've always been more struck by applied modernism than high modernism. It's partly because of feminist theory and being brought up in the '70s, with questioning who is speaking, and why, and what authority they're carrying.

Lying on top of a building, the clouds looked no nearer than when I was lying on the street.