Berlin artist Jill Castillo reflects on time-travel, her work, and what our future holds. Image: Jill Castillo

Very few things are certain in human life and one of them is time. It cannot be stopped, slowed, fast-forwarded or rewound, so as Horace would suggest, the only thing we can do as humans is carpe diem. But eventually, time-travel will become a real possibility in a distant future and that will generate a new and unprecedently asked question: what time would you like to time-travel to, if you could?

Canadian artist and community member Jill says: “It would be interesting to see where our future leads us. To see where humanity takes itself and whether our efforts to better ourselves and our society yield the positive effects we all strive for. The past certainly has its charm; I love to fancy myself existing as one of Jane Austen’s characters in the British Regency period around the 1800s, lolling around in cream corseted dresses, sipping tea, or dancing those palm in palm dances within opulent ballrooms. But that era already happened and is already written so there isn’t much else to explore there.”

Images: Jill Castillo

“But the future’s with such infinite possibilities could hold an existence we can’t even imagine. We might not even be entities with physical bodies at some time and some point! We could end up just clouds of neurons of connected energies. Imagine being frozen and thawed out and you’re the only being with all these “human needs” like eating/sleeping etcetera, would you want to go back, or dive straight into the cloud. I think I would be like “all right let’s get back in that freezer and see where the next million years go.”

Working abstractly, Berlin-based artist Jill paints from emotion with approaches similar to those used within the design; harmony, spatial balance, focal points, and the emotional impact of color. “Painting for me is an expression of thoughts, feelings, daydreaming, and the subconscious. My approach either realizes the introvert within or the extroverted personality. They are glimpses within myself.“

Jill is originally from Toronto, Canada. She has been living in Berlin for 7 years with traces of lives from Dublin, London, and the Philippines. 

Image: Jill Castillo

• Visit Berlin and find out why its Bratwurst is so famous, why its underground clubbing scene and nightlife are so popular (and wild), and go back home with a few souvenirs from the Ampelmann shop!

• Stay at Jill’s (and her fluffy cat’s) minimalist Altbau place in Neukölln and have tonnes of fun in this very popular, vivacious, and ethnic area of Berlin.