Dark Star: HR Giger’s World (Dark Star: HR Gigers Welt)

HR GIGER'S UNIVERSE

This is the oldest skull I have.

My father gave it to me.

It was sent to us

by Ciba-Geigy.

I was around six years old at the time.

It did scare me a little.

To hold death in your hands like that

is...

Well, it's not very pleasant.

So I pulled it along the street on a piece of string.

I guess

I wanted to prove

that I wasn't scared of death.

What's so fascinating

is his incredible sense of perception.

An incredibly keen sense of perception.

He has this ability to probe deeper into the human soul

than most people.

You see his pictures and feel like you've known them forever.

They represent the deepest depths of our souls.

Paul's here.

Hello, Mr Giger!

Hello. - Hi there.

I called you. - How are you? -Good, thanks.

Yes, exactly. Hi. - Hello.

Happy?

That's good.

Hello. - Are you okay?

Hi, Roger. - Hello.

This is Mr Grof.

Stanislav.

That's just great.

We can discuss everything in detail later.

They're ideas from the graphic designer.

There's the cover too.

The book will be in German and English. That's the idea for the cover.

And from that page on, you have examples of the content.

You can have a look.

Take a look.

This is how it would look. They're just ideas.

They'll need a bit more work.

This one isn't bad. -It just needs to be lighter there.

PSYCHIATRIST / AUTHOR

These ones here are really great.

They're the best I've seen so far. -True.

Sorry? - You want to use all of them?

We already agreed on that: to make ten different ones.

Okay.

So he can sell these over there.

We added a silver base to these two here.

It'll have a much finer finish. That one too.

Only those two will have a silver base.

Does it have to be black there? I'd use white.

Well, I really like that old-style patina.

POSTER DESIGNER

Waking up can be a bitter experience sometimes.

Especially if you're having an erotic dream

and you haven't finished dreaming yet.

And you desperately try to get back into your dream.

But you rarely manage to carry on dreaming.

Pretty much everyone has dreams,

but very few people actually dare

to tell people about them or to try and depict them

because of their inhibitions.

As you go through life, all sorts of things come to mind.

Some of these ideas ended up in The Passages series.

They were based on dreams I'd had

that were so frightening

I found it hard to breathe.

This is something

that's reflected

very strongly in my work.

His sister took him

to The Raetian Museum.

There was a mummy there,

down in the basement.

He was really scared,

but his sister Iris laughed at him.

This really got to him

and wounded his childish pride.

So in the end, he went there on his own every Sunday to look at the mummy.

It's part of Hansruedi's character:

he doesn't stop until he's reached his goal.

Either he loses his fear or he draws until he gets it right.

He keeps on and on

until he's overcome his fear.

It's obvious that this experience had a huge impact on him

because it's present in all of his work.

The feminine and the sublime. The figure of the princess.

Then you have the mummy: that's the Egyptian element.

And then you have death: the bones and sense of eternity

inherent in death.

I find the pictures erotic.

Firstly, they're beautiful images

and secondly, I see the pictures

as a kind of magical depiction of a primal force.

The phallus isn't really the focal point.

The pictures have this immense energy,

which makes them incredibly striking.

Hansruedi has a great talent for this.

He knows how to position things, how to use symbols.

If I ask him, "What does that mean?",

he says, "I just liked the way it looked.

It works well."

Hansruedi has had various assistants over the years.

I have the immense honour to be one of them.

It's always been like that in this house.

You deal with so many people from around the world,

and so many different topics: they'd never manage on their own.

We treated Giger's Necronomicon like a bible back then.

Hi, Hansruedi. - Hello.

Do you know about this? - Yes.

I was 19 or 20 and people here in Switzerland just laughed at us.

We were making really radical music.

MUSICIAN AND ASSISTANT

There was no extreme metal scene.

There weren't many bands that sounded like us.

I wrote to him in my scrawly handwriting

and told him what his art meant to us.

I found his address in the telephone book,

sent it off and never thought I'd hear back.

And then, to my surprise, he called me.

He said

he'd heard our music and could see the connection.

The record labels never took us seriously.

They said we had no chance: it was just noise.

The only person who took us seriously

was this guy who had just won an Oscar:

HR Giger.

He took it seriously and became our mentor back then.

It meant so much to us. I've often...

It's 30 years ago now and I've often tried

to tell him what that meant to us.

But it's hard to put it into words.

I hope he's realised it by now.

What he did for us back then was extremely generous,

a really kind gesture.

How important I am for Tom?

We're important for each other.

Wouldn't you say? - It's really great to hear that.

Müggi.

Good cat.

Yes.

Anything else you need me to do?

No, I don't really need anything.

Hello.

Hello.

Just a moment.

I'm going to get changed.

It took me ages to find it! A Linzer Torte.

It still has this wonderful old machine.

Here's a slice for you, Hansruedi. It's pear.

At least it's looking good for once.

Where did you get that?

I recently told someone

that Mr Giger was married to my daughter.

People are often curious when they hear that.

Not so much now, but back then, they'd ask,

"What's he like as a husband?" They think he must be...

They see his pictures and think of porn or something.

I said, "No, of course not! He's just a normal guy."

"No, no, no!" They just see his paintings and...

People asked me questions like that.

But of course other people would say, "I love his paintings!"

I'd say 50 percent love his paintings

and the other half either say nothing

or they don't like them.

But...

But my family in Spain are huge fans!

All of them.

They tell me,

"We saw Hansruedi on Spanish television!"

We have a lot of dealings with Twentieth Century Fox.

Simply because...

We have to keep track of the money.

Income and expenditure.

It was so chaotic here at first.

Things scattered all over the place.

But you just get used to it and it somehow becomes normal.

Would you like something to drink while you finish up there?

No, I'm nearly done.

Twentieth Century Fox has written to us again.

Let's wait and see how they respond.

You know how mad it makes me. - Yes.

Over there, for example,

you see the triptych

of birth, life and death.

Babies represent birth, then there's life.

And then skulls for death.

And the punk group Dead Kennedys

chose this image

for their album and they were taken to court.

The curious thing about this story

is that at the beginning of the trial, the jury obviously didn't realise

that it was a painting and thought it was a photograph.

Who knows how you'd take a photo like that!

He's painted a lot of Native American babies with feathers.

And all of these babies really look

like Hansruedi.