With the height of 2.02 meters, Oliver Zwink's stature is hard to miss among Indonesians. Coming to Asia for the first time to give a workshop on urban space through video art medium, he seems to adjust quite easily in the urban jungle life of Jakarta.

With the initiative from the Goethe-Institut and Ruangrupa to organize the first Jakarta Video Art Festival, Oliver Zwink is considered one of the important artists in combining urban life issues in video art.

Born in Heidenheim in the south of Germany, the 36-year-old man went to Kassel University taking Fine Art as his subject, then grabbed his Master's Degree in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in London where he continued to live for the next three years.

Based in Berlin since the year 2000, Zwink now teaches Fine Art at Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany.

Zwink is looking forward to the O.K. Jakarta Video Art Festival which opens this Monday evening. He is eager to see the results of an earlier workshop that he conducted with young Indonesian artists when participants' work will be screened during the festival at Galeri National.

He wants to see how people react to the video. A big fan of Goddard's film Le Mepris and most of Werner Herzog and Tom Tykwer's films, Zwink is filming the buildings in the area from Old Batavia to the Welcome Statue Monument.

"I'm filming from a car. The traffic is only as a layer. I feel like the buildings really look at me. It will be like a monitor installation."

Here is an excerpt of the interview with him:

Question: How did you start to become a video artist?

Zwink: Well, actually I don't consider myself a video artist. I use video as a tool. In fact, I only began using video not that long ago. I'm more specialized in urban space and architecture. I studied Fine Art and I used to do painting. I painted big abstract layers of landscape or from an aerial point of view.

I'm always interested in topography and illusional space. That shows a lot in my paintings. But I wanted to stop, so I started taking photographs and little by little my work became more three dimensional.

Could you tell us about the workshop you are doing now in Jakarta?

The theme is urban space. Urban means living in a city. Most of the participants come from filmmaking backgrounds and I come from Fine Art. There are many different points of view. The workshop is about exchanging ideas. We try to bring up ideas, comments, then share them. We also try to specify things or issues.

It seems like most of the participants have been influenced greatly by MTV and the music culture.

As a person specializing in urban issues, what do you think of Jakarta?

Jakarta really fascinates me so far. I've been here a week and this city is so vibrant. I feel there are so many people everywhere. Everybody stares at me, maybe because I'm very tall.

Jakarta is a city that is hard to say, 'this is Jakarta'. The city planning, the use of space, I just can't figure out why. For instance, if I look at the traffic, people make use of the space. Every inch will be filled by cars, motorcycles, even the pedestrian pathways are used by the motorcyclists but there is still a lot of space like for monuments.

I feel the buildings in Jakarta are kind of intimidating. It seems like there is no relationship between the nature and the buildings. I think Jakarta is reaching a point where it can't go further. One spot that hits me hard is the toll road in the north of Jakarta. It blocks the harbor and I find that quite brutal.

On the other hand, Berlin, where I live now isn't really challenging as it is too organized. In Jakarta, there are so many spaces smashing together. It's harsh. Space is a big issue from the economical point of view, I guess. I feel like Jakarta is fleeing away from its roots.

It's like a huge facade that you don't want to look behind anymore.

What do you feel has been your greatest accomplishment?

My turning point was when I got selected to do an exhibition in The Showroom, an art space in London. I made a sort of miniaturized towns in a theme park. Made from folded paper, the buildings are sometimes simple boxes, and other times more complex structures. It's a cityscape.

I find the city is a fragile organism. A city always has several aspects, for instance, a city is a super symbol of civilizations, and it has always the fragility. We use the city as a tool for whatever. Then I made a video with a tiny camera on the end of a broomstick and went through the streets in between all the buildings, going in a loop all the time.

My video also got nominated for the International Media Art festival in Karlsruhe in the year 2000.

What do you think about the O.K. Jakarta Video Art Festival that you are participating in?

I have the feeling that Jakarta needs some contemporary cultural reaction. It's radical, courageous and the spirit of doing this event is overwhelming. The concept is to form a communication platform. I myself am not a complete fan of video art showings only, but I guess Ruangrupa has its own agenda.

They are all a bunch of wacky people but it's been great working with people from all different backgrounds. I find the Indonesians are so diverse. People are really different from one to another.