2008 interviews2 englisch

5/23/2018 2008 Interviews2 Englisch

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IewsGerald Matt

Lida Abdul

Sergei Bugaev Afrika

Pawe Althamer

Lara Baladi

Matthew Barney

Louise Bourgeois

Wolfgang Capellari

Maurizio Cattelan

Nathalie Djurberg

A K Dolven

Marcel Dzama

Tim Eitel

Barnaby Furnas

Michael Haneke

Glsn Karamustafa

Zilvinas Kempinas

Amal Kenawy

Zenita Komad

Katarzyna Kozyra

Paul Albert Leitner

Linder

Liu Ding

Urs Lthi

Ryan McGinley

Olaf Metzel

Olga Neuwirth

Tim Noble & Sue Webster

Ulrike Ottinger

Poka-Yio

Julius Popp

Nedko Solakov

Doron Solomons

Ricky Swallow

Pascale Marthine Tayou

Spencer Tunick

Paloma Varga WeiszWang Wei

Nari Ward

Erwin Wurm

Feridun Zaimoglu

Ralf Ziervogel

Artur Zmijewski Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Knig, Kln


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Gerald Matt

Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Knig, Kln


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Foreword

Lida Abdul

Sergei Bugaev Afrika

Pawe Althamer

Lara Baladi

Matthew Barney

Louise Bourgeois

Wolfgang Capellari

Maurizio Cattelan

Nathalie Djurberg

A K Dolven

Marcel Dzama

Tim EitelBarnaby Furnas

Michael Haneke

Glsn Karamustafa

Zilvinas Kempinas

Amal Kenawy

Zenita Komad

Katarzyna Kozyra

Paul Albert Leitner

Linder

Liu Ding

Urs Lthi

Ryan McGinley

Olaf Metzel

Olga Neuwirth

Tim Noble & Sue Webster

Ulrike Ottinger

Poka-Yio

Julius Popp

Nedko Solakov

Doron Solomons

Ricky Swallow

Pascale Marthine Tayou

Spencer Tunick

Paloma Varga Weisz

Wang Wei

Nari Ward

Erwin Wurm

Feridun Zaimoglu

Ralf Ziervogel

Artur Zmijewski

For Mimi Monplaisir


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Food

Art should never be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

Oscar Wilde

The publication at hand is the second volume of interviews recapitulating the

conversations I have been able to hold with artists in the course of my work as a

director and curator. It reects and conrms my conviction that interviews within

the art system present a particularly suitable form of creating an equal plat-

form of exchange between creators and distributors of art. The artists conrm

this point of view with their readiness to answer questions and to enter a dialog,

they even embrace the opportunity to criticize or correct some of the inter-

pretations of their work. The questions asked are not only results of the mere

dialectics of each conversation, but are also shaped by the pre-knowledge of the

interviewer, which is rooted in a variety of sources. Thus, the questions the art-

ists are asked reect the image that has been set by the art public. This, in turn,

means that the interviewee is not only in dialog with the person asking questions,

but retrospectively with the public itself. Through the medium of this publica-

tion, the feedback nds its way back to the public, with the potential of broaden-

ing and re-questioning prevalent images. As a result, interviews can serve as animportant medium of communication within the art world as media which

convey authentic information (from the artists) to an audience interested in art

as well as to art critique and theory. A growing number of artists are voicing their

opinion on various panels and platforms, articulating their position in written

and verbal form. Self-positioning as opposed to heteronomy and submission is

proving to be an adequate, or even essential tool in helping artists succeed in

an art world that follows mechanisms similar to those underlying economies,

politics or the entertainment industry. At the same time, it helps counteract the

image of the speechless visual artist, which to a certain extent is still being

perpetuated today.

In spite of all the differences between the artists represented in this book,

they all seem to have a certain amount of ruptures and changes (in form and

medium) as well as continuity (in theme and content) in common. I would like to

name Erwin Wurm as an exemplary member of a generation of artists who have

established their names as brands by using experiments in a variety of media

to create a basic theme such as the analysis of the notion of the sculptural in

Erwin Wurms or Matthew Barneys work that can be traced like a basso con-

tinuo in the many stations of their oeuvre, rather than specializing on a certaingenre, technique or linear sequence of artistic development. The factor of the

recognizability of the artists identity, which is so important for both the art mar-

ket and art critics, may be endangered by the transformational shift from visual

to conceptual continuity especially when the media employed are ephemeral.

This may be the reason why the documentation of experimental processes by

the artists themselves has become an essential part of their work.

A lot of Westerners couldnt comprehend how it was possible for one artist

to create so many different kinds of art, Nedko Solakov remembers the 1990s,

Now it is okay visually I can do whatever I want, people recognize my sense

of the absurd under any disguise. A sense for the absurd is a characteristic of

continuity in the art of many contemporary artists. It can be expressed as ironic


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distance, as humorous pointedness or as a play on reality and ction. When the

context of artists origins plays an important role in their work, the sense of the

absurd can be traced in post-socialist society or capitalist consumerist culture,

in the Arabic world as well as in Africa. Artists from formerly communist Eastern

Europe often use these tools for socio-political critique, which probably stems

from a specic tradition of underground strategies. Sergei Bugaev Afrika says:

The type of irony developed by Soviet artists did nally lead to the destruction

of Soviet ideology.

When asked what political potential their work has, most artists react with

a certain sense of reservation. Nowadays, nobody believes that art can really

change the world the common attitude seems to be more like Katarzyna

Kozyra denes it: Art can show that the world has changed, even if people

havent noticed yet. These changes from the global conict of values, general

disillusion and our fast-paced lifestyles to capitalization and the concentration

of economic and political power are perceived by artists internationally andare then addressed in a subtle rather than activistic way. The afrmation that

politics and the world of advertisement practice excessively can no longer be an

appropriate means for art to convey a critical message. Art rather aims at decon-

structing a higher level of values that determine our Western way of thinking

and acting: our belief in objectivity, in the calculation, explanation, proof and

prediction of phenomena and processes. As Urs Lthi, for example, states, I

think that there is no such thing as objectivity; there are only agreements for the

sake of order.

There is no such thing as one world, one reality, one truth; we live in paral-

lel worlds and realities. The change of perspectives, references to art history or

popular culture, art and life, shifts from one place to the next, using documen-

tary and ctional images simultaneously all these and further strategies are

used to create a subjective view of the world constituted by our own emotions,

contexts and opinions, in opposition to a purely rationalist one. Approaching the

localization of the subject but also the localization of the object by question-

ing authorship and reception aims at understanding and clarifying the current

situation and condition of the entity art. Next to references to popular culture,

contemporary art seems to be drawing more from art history than it has in thepast whether by resuming certain iconographic characteristics and formalist

references, which have traditionally been summarized as style, or reverting to

historical epochs, which offer visual and mental stimulation or archetypes that

artists process in their work. Aiming at re-interpretations, shifts or appropriation

as well as translating the past into the present world of life and images, these

references are expressed in certain narrative concepts, but also in an interest in

technique and craftsmanship. As A K Dolven puts it, the history of art functions

like an (imaginary) dialog partner: It is just like talking to someone. Most of

the time a work at the beginning has nothing to do with art history. Then when it

develops, I discover connections and an interesting dialog begins.

As they did in the rst volume of interviews, the integration of the narrative,

the personal, once again plays an integral role in the interviews presented in

this book, becoming an expression of subjectivity, which reveals itself as the

carrier of the artistic and oppositional, as a deconstructivist factor. It is less the

belief in the revolutionary power of art, but rather an attempt to visualize a meta-

level of truth, in which fantastic, real, individual and collective aspects are knit

together in order to question the socio-political consensus and to reveal media

structures. Art production in the digital age does not merely resort to the same

visual vocabulary and technological means as the media, but uses them in a self-

reective-subversive manner. Doron Solomons describes this as taking the

original material and cooking it to emphasize (hidden) truths that lay beneath.

His work constitutes maybe as of yet, not a front, but maybe only guerrilla in

the woods.

It is the tension created between alleged realities and truths that signicantly

determines the practices and strategies employed by contemporary artists: I

like to think my work is a continuum of experiences that ask people to thinkdifferently about themselves, and the world they live in; about how they move

through each day, remarks Spencer Tunick. Artur Zmijewski takes this a step

further and conjures an actual artistic prole: You can say artists are masters

of reverse perception they see what cant be seen. They know the unknown.

Or they know, semi-consciously, what we dont know we know. I believe its part

of artistic know-how and could be used as expert knowledge, as a cognitive

method, in other elds.

For many artists, involving the recipients is of great importance. The audience

does not necessarily have to be made up of members of the closed circuit of the

art community. The public arena still seems to me the most appropriate space

for any kind of reception, explains Olaf Metzel. Even in a country like Afghani-

stan, which is considered to be ver y restricted in terms of belie fs and values by

Western standards, art in public space can work. Lida Abdul answers the question

of how co-operations with people involved in her projects work: Beautifully. With

tremendous respect.

The artists interviewed for this volume all prove their open-mindedness in

their individual biographies. They do not live and work in a singular place, they

readily embrace the foreign, and even those who were forced to leave theirhome countries hardly ever feel uprooted. No, I dont necessarily see being-at-

home in relation to boundaries and borderlines. For me home is where I feel

happiest, and from the moment where, in my own head, the borders no longer

have any relevance, its only the institutions that remind me of the existence of

borders, explains Pascale Marthine Tayou, who is originally from Cameroon and

now lives in Belgium.

I have been able to observe the work of most of the artists represented in this

volume over a longer period of time, whether through the international art circuit

or through personal encounters. Many have participated in exhibitions that I have

been able to curate. Some of the artists are also new discoveries, who caught

my attention in the course of preparations for exhibition concepts. I would like to

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thank all of the artists who participated in this project for the fascinating, inspir-

ing insights they have granted me in their work in an often relaxed atmosphere,

for their points of view and their visions, which, together, we are delighted to pass

on to the readers of this publication.

I would like to extend my special gratitude to Synne Genzmer, who supported

the editorial work and coordination of this project with exceptional dedication. I

also thank Lucas Gehrmann, Ilse Lafer, Thomas Miegang, Sigrid Mittersteiner,

Angela Stief and Jrgen Weishupl for their assistance in the realization of this

book and the graphic designer Dieter Auracher for his exceptional work in the

design of this publication.

Gerald Matt

Vienna, November 2007

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Lida Abdul

Blank space is a modality just as the blanks between

movements of thought are some early voice.

You are from Afghanistan, ed to India and Germany and nally emigrated to the

USA. Why did you stay? Did the USA offer something as a country and a place to

live that you didnt want to do without?

I suppose more than anything it offered anonymity, the anonymity that oneneeds after having lived in so many different places, after so much is takenaway from one that one really feels powerless, the sense of self stripped ofso much dignity that you just want to hide in order not to have to answerthe possible well-meaning questions of people about what really happened.And then at some point from within this place I started making art, notrealizing that at some point it would become the place where Id begin tolive, the real world ju st sometimes intersecting with this imaginary world.I dont think I couldve done this anywhere else, because in the US youreabsolutely free to create the most intense solitude without anyones noticing.

Actually so many people live perfectly that way; they know TV charactersmuch more intimately than their neighbors. Theyre exiles in their ownsocieties.

Cultural difference or cultural heterogeneity has aroused great interest in recent

years, not only in art but also as a political instrument. What is your view of cul-

tural difference?

I suppose the problem arises when cultural differences which of courseare underpinned by political and aesthetic aspirations become the startingpoint for talking about civilizations. I mean, who today can honestly say thatshe lives her life entirely within the parameters of her culture, what with theglobal pop cultural marketplace, which in some very banal way creates somelowest common denominator of identification for people. I dont know whypeople think they can actually force people to change the way they livetheir lives, knowing full well that cultures are accumulations over many yearsand for many people they are the g round of their existences. This is not tosay that there are meant cultural differences, which I find repugnant. So then

the question becomes, What is my responsibility in the face of that?, andI suppose my answer to that is art.

The destruction of your home country occurs as a theme in many of your works,

combining seemingly quite contrary aspects. If I may cite you: In my work, I try

to juxtapose the space of politics with the space of reverie, almost absurdity,

the space of shelter with that of the desert; in all this I try to perform the blank

spaces that are formed when everything is taken away from people. How do we

come face to face with nothing, with emptiness where there was something

earlier?

Empty spaces are a constitutive element in the gure, which are what make

Lida Abdul, Still fromBricksellers of Kabul,

2006


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it visible. What shape do you give your gure of emptiness? It often seems to be

translated into aesthetic Formalism.

I agree. In other words, whatever cannot be reconciled with exper ience wejust do not see and thus the empty spaces in our thoughts. So empty spaceis not empty in the sense of no-thing; it is not even a thing with a particularboundary, but it is always there even when we think and make art. It is therewhen we move from one idea to another, it is the background noise to ourthoughts, that which allows thinking in the first place. It is the lowest com-

mon denominator to which we compare all movements of consciousnessand I feel when one is brutally traumatized, when consciousness retreats,that is when we come face to f ace with this hum of our inner blank spaces,which must have been there at the beg inning, too, when as babies we reg-istered the world but didnt experience it.

Blank space is a modality just as the blanks between movements ofthought are some early voice.

In one of your lms there is a scene where one man after another steps to a hole

in the ground like to a grave and buries a stone. The protagonists are asked

about the sense of their doing: The stones represent our martyrs, are their jus-

tiying answers. These are actions with purely symbolic functions, replacement

activities. Is this a kind of allegorical grieving process?

Yes, because mourning, as Freud rightly says, is the attempt to come toterms with the lost body and in this scheme, repetition serves a purposebecause in the unreality that loss brings, there is always the hope that theloss that one feels is really an illusion and it couldnt be and thus one checksagain, Is it there? Are you there? and then again and again until at somepoint exhaustion forces one to give up.

It is always the body, the stuff in it, that colludes with the mind and adecision gets made, but it is not of the order of a conscious decision. I amfascinated with those decisions that are not really decisions and nor are theydefeats. So the repetition is simultaneously a distraction and the opening upof the possibility of refining the loss.

In your work White Houseyou paint the walls of a ruin white: yet again an action

without a rationally justiable purpose. The functional quality of the architecture

is transformed into a symbolic-aesthetic form of almost sculptural quality. In the

end the walls appear in contrast to the harsh, desert-like landscape, abstract in

brilliant white. You transform the ruin into a monument and conserve what has

been destroyed. The gesture of painting implies conservation, branding, decorat-

ing, refreshing, and cleaning. The relations between the monument and the ruin

are all recurrent aspects of your work.

What is the relationship between this and the traditional memorial? What is

the agenda of aestheticism in it?

How to preserve the workings of a disaster in such a way that it does notlater elicit the desire for revenge, and at the same time it maintains withinitself some memory of what has happened? Architecture is constantly threat-ened with destruction, I believe, because a form is really a condensation ofthe possibilities of that medium. The material that this laptop I am typingon is hard because at room temperature this material is hard and, if I were to

increase the temperature, the plastic would melt, take another for m.The ideas that one gets in peacetime dont necessarily have to be the

same as those in moments of disaster. The form changes.

Many of your works come about in public space in Afghanistan, drawing in people

you meet there. How does this cooperation work?

Beautifully. With tremendous respect.

Are projects like White HouseorWar Games/Upon awakeningseen as art in the

sense of performance, or are they rather a part of the creation process, whose

product is the lm/video?

Lida Abdul

Lida Abdul,Still fromUpon

awakening, 2006


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I think the latter, because they are the last term in some story of forms andcreating machines that destroy forms to create nothing so that somethingnew can begin.

Before you started to work in Afghanistan, you believed that making art there

could seem ruthless considering the pain and destruction that the people and

the land have suffered. Did this feeling disappear while working?

No, it has not been easy and at some point while making my work Ive hadto give up and that signature of given up affects the form that is left. Icould never make the same piece twice, even if I repeated all the same stepsonce again. The blank spaces would be different.

How do the great poetry and formal beauty of your works go together with thepolitical background of the context in which they arose? It seems that you want

to compensate for the chaotic conditions and political insecurity a compensa-

tory gesture?

Ive always thought that poetry is what remains after something has hap-pened. A friend of mine lives his life making the assumption that everythinghas already happened once and when he actually is doing things a secondtime, he has a choice to do it differently. I like that. Poetry is the catalog ofchoices and thus difficult for people.

The rst major international responses to your work came from the presentation

of the Afghani pavilion at the Venice Biennial of 2005. How do you deal with your

success? Do you feel it as recognition and opportunity or also as appropriation?

Well, I am pleased that the work is being seen and that I have the oppor-tunity to continue living and producing work in Afghanistan despite thepolitical situation.

At present you live in the USA and Afghanistan. Do you ever plan to go back to

your home country permanently, or has Lida Abdul become an American?

I dont know.

Lida Abdul in conversation with Gerald Matt in August 2007. The artist participated in the exhibition

program of ursula blickle video lounge at Kunsthalle Wien in 2007.

Lida Abdul, born in 1973 in Kabul, Afghanistan, lives and works in Kabul and Los Angeles.

www.lidaabdul.com

Lida Abdul

Lida Abdul, Still fromWar Games, 2006


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The opening up of human perception to the sensitive and emotional aspects,

the if you like actual creative potential in us, which is largely inhibited by

dominant logocentric structures in our society, seems to me one of the main

focuses of your work. You use certain strategies towards this purpose that are

concerned with perception and the deciphering of signs in image and text, as

well as various potentials of human memory. The background to this, which pro-

vides the impulse for it, was a society that went through radical transformations

during the time of your early artistic activity: the time between Soviet statism and

the beginnings of perestroika. Before I come to speak with you about your artistic

resources and directions, I would like to hear something about your beginnings

within this framework. You once told me that even before you shifted to Lenin-

grad, on the Crimea therefore, you undertook a self experiment, which seems

very unusual to me, in order to track down various irrational structures: you had

yourself committed to a psychiatric clinic and spent four weeks there in a dormi-

tory with more than forty patients including ve murderers. Could you tell memore about that?

I think your question refers to the project called Krimania. As a youth, I hadlittle to do with psychiatry but this project was in fact focused on a psychi-atric clinic and we carried it out in Crimea. The experience that finally ledme into a psychiatric clinic was related to the collapse of the Soviet Unionand the difficulties tha t followed it.

However, at some more profound level, I was drawn to this projectbecause I felt it necessary to illustrate such complex processes as annihila-tion of firmly established texts and contexts. Though painful, this experience

after weve lived through it in the countries of the former USSR will beinherited in some form by the whole of humankind, since were all witness-ing the enor mously swift changes in our lifestyles together. The basic causeof these changes, I believe, is techno genetic, and it wont be long till wellsee the final integration of technology and biology in human form.

Psychiatric hospitals are very special places. Theyre inhabited by peoplewho break all classifications. The reasons for which murderers kept in hospi-

tals committed their crimes lie beyond the borders described law and otherhuman establishments. In this project, we considered going beyond the bor-ders of one collective field and rather entering several collective fields thatare entirely discrete from one another. The point is that transition from onecollective body (that of the USSR, for instance) to several other bodies isaccompanied by a fission that forms new experience. This was one of themost important elements of this project.

While entering the international art scene we, former Soviet people,resembled newborn kitties or puppies with their eyes still closed, crawl-ing out of the basket they were born in. But at the same time, one canalso compare our experience with the emergence of new accomplishedsystems brimming with unique understanding. I think the experience that

sgi Buga Afika

A study of post- and quasi-aphasiac conditions is my favourite topic. I try to

find possible ways of introducing people to this condition.

Sergei Bugaev Afrika,Rebus (black on

white) 4, 1991


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Sergei Bugaev Afrika,Rebus #30, 1991

were made of a few real rebuses I took from my collection out of purelypersonal preferences (I liked one element in one rebus, then combined itwith an element from another rebus, etc.). One of those teacups happenedto be presented to our physicist Kapitsa, descendant of the Nobel Prizewinner, Pyotr Kapitsa. Later I came to know this renowned physicist drinks

his morning tea from that very cup and cant help trying to solve the rebus(all Soviet people are well familiar with the technique of solving rebuses).

Yet he always fails to guess the meaning. At that moment I realized that Ihad reached my goal: a man with prominent abilities to decrypt extremelycomplicated systems proved unable to read that simple post-schizoid con-struction that was never meant to be decrypted.

Western people were also curious about my rebuses. I saw that they werestunned. It is very important for me to come to my exhibitions and talk tothe public. I dont like the system nowadays that is widespread in the artworld, where a piece of art goes from artist to gallerist and from gallerist toinvestor. I am in constant search for new systems of representation. Thatswhy I often make exhibitions at places that may seem improper, such as

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humankind acquired in the process of sovietization is extremely interesting.It deserves a thorough study and deep analysis. Unfortunately, Western soci-ety is still not ready for sober and contained analysis and perception of whatwas going on in the USSR because people in the West are still sticking tothe norms and behavioral standards of the Cold War time. Verbally, everyonedeclares principles of peace, democracy and financial independence whilein practice we see rather the functioning of repressive mechanisms based onCold War norms and ideas.

In the eighties and nineties you made whole series of collages sometimes

on copper plate that are related to a rebus puzzle. In contrast to actual rebus

puzzles, however, it is difcult or even impossible in any case for us Western-

ers to decipher the individual signs or their connections to one another, or to

recognise a logical meaning. Olesya Turkina and Viktor Mazin analysed your

rebus works more precisely in 1996 and described three different types in all,which came about one after another. According to this analysis it all begins with

re-appropriated Soviet symbols from the fties and ends with puzzle-like works,

where Christian symbols appear, among other things. The two authors speak of

a shift from the symbolic level to the imaginary one.

What intentions were behind these semiotic works, and what interests me

particularly how were they received and interpreted by the public, not only in

the Soviet Union but also outside the Eastern Block, where you were rst repre-

sented in 1988 at group e xhibitions of unofcial art from Leningrad?

Rebuses were a good example of interconnection between the work ofthe Club of Mayakovskys Friends and the activities of the Tartu-Moscowsemiotic school: we shared a desire to understand the functioning of uncon-scious structures and find out what their relation to language and variousimage systems is.

I chose the rebus form because when I was a child I used to collectrebuses from magazines and newspapers. Sometimes I did not even botherto solve them. I was fascinated by their structure: we see something that

is not what it appears; in fact, it is something quite different. Twenty yearslater I got back to my old scrapbook and began using those rebuses in myartworks.

It was at the time when the Soviet Union started talking openly with theWest, revealing a profound discrepancy between the reality and the appear-ance of this reality: two similar objects did not have the same meaning. Iturned to rebuses: I changed the meaning of the encrypted structures (madeof letters, words and images) to make them unreadable. Then I had the luckyopportunity of presenting them: rebuses were shown at one of my first exhi-bitions in New York City.

A funny story about rebuses happened recently in Moscow. Some timeago I produced teacups with rebuses on them. These particular cup-rebuses

sgi Buga Afika


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Neubauten in Berlin was in the scope of our responsibility as well as thefamous Gooses Solo. The goose started its extremely beautiful song after Iplucked its tail accurately. It was singing together with a very famous Swed-ish opera soloist who started crying when the goose went off-key, thoughshe was warned that were not into schooling the animals but trying tointeract with them as they are. Thus, you cant say those were purely musicalendeavours.

Among our other para-musical activities, I should mention our jointperformance with John Cage called Water Symphony. In our studio thatoccupied a room in Timur Novikovs communal apartment we called itthe Assa Gallery we created a number of important noise instruments,including an utyugon (a scary-looking construction consisting of old boxirons hanging from a rusty metal frame). Our music was based on suchinstruments and, surprisingly enough, we saw a growing number of fans.

Perhaps, it was largely due to the fact that avant-garde music was alwaysextremely popular in Leningrad despite all bans and prohibitions. By the late1980s the Pop Mechanics orchestra performed at stadiums and large concerthalls and they were always full.

Its great to get a question about the film Assafrom a Western colleague.Such questions are rare because the film was not distributed in the West and,above all, has lots of stuff that would resist translation. Also, it is not a purerocknroll film, but rather one seething with the ideas of non-official Sovietart. Sergei Solovyov, director of the film, made his best to invite all the mostimportant underground activists. One should be aware that in the USSR,film-making was overseen by the KGB. Every scene in the script had to besigned by KGB representatives and they later checked whether the footageshot coincided with the script approved.

Assa was extremely popular it was never forgotten and people stillidentify me as its main character. When the actor who played the char-acter killing me in the film was running for president, people used to askmy opinion of him. I answered this question with another question: whatshould I think of the person who killed me?

There are rumours thatAssa 2is being shot ?

True. After twenty years of intensive public pressure, film director Solovyovfinally gave in and agreed to make a sequel to Assa. The shooting is fin-ished and the film is expected to be presented in Riga in June 2008. Wedid our best to continue the line of the firstAssaby showing the works ofestablished musicians and artists and also searching people all over Russia

who are doing similar things on their own. During the shooting, one ofthe featured actors, Sergey Shnurov (leader of the Leningrad band), becamea victim of new Russian censorship his concerts are now prohibited.We also apprehend that the final frames of the film may be prohibited by

a psychiatric clinic with its sub-marginal territories, wards for patients ofsocially unacceptable behavior. With these rebuses I did reach my goal: tomake people speechless.

Aphasia is quite a common phenomenon in a developing civilization. Astudy of post- and quasi-aphasiac conditions is my favourite topic. I try tofind possible ways of introducing people to this condition. One cant say itsthe condition of total incomprehension or collapse: it is apparently morecomplex than that and I try to trace the paths leading up to it.

Another of my series related to this topic was based on the transforma-tion of El Lissitzkys Beat the whites with the red wedge. I transformed the workaccording to Schillings isochromatic tables and showed them to a group ofcolor-blind people. They were incredibly happy to see these works as theywere. Color-blind people are often obsessed with the idea that they seethings differently from what they are, when they saw the art works trans-

lated for them, they were happy to get rid of this constant obsession, atleast for a moment.

In 1987 you played the main role, a labile musician, in the lmAssa, directed by

Sergej Solovjew (regrettably, I have never seen it, but it is accredited as the rst

Russian rocknroll lm within the New Russian Film) and over several years you

gave performances with the Leningrad Experimental Orchestra.

Film, music and performance were these, or are they still, media through

which you were able to transport your artistic and, perhaps, political ideas? And

if so, under what technical conditions of production were you able to work at the

time?

My relationship with music started at school where I played bugle in aYoung Pioneer group. Later, we had a sort of light orchestra at school andeven later when I moved to Leningrad I became a member of several bands.We had virtually no instruments, but used every opportunity to rehearse atvarious Houses of Culture and then to perform. Important bands appeareda bit later but, again, their activities were never restricted to pure music. Take

Pyotr Mamonov and his Zvuki Mu as an example: in their performances,there were always some elements embedding their music into the Sovietcultural landscape, which was extremely heterogeneous and interesting.Today, Im inclined to consider Soviet art as an art of an entirely differentcivilization. And very often explanations suggested by Western ar t historiansmiss the point since they are rooted in Cold War rhetoric. In a word, oneshould understand that within the Soviet context of that time music was notmusic in its narrow sense.

The functions we performed in Kuryokhins Pop Mechanics includedmanagement of industrial instruments (which means that we were respon-sible for producing some abstract noise effects) and zoological instruments.The famous Piglets Soloduring our joint performance with Einstrzende

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24 25

Sergei Bugaev Afrika,Stills from Stalker 3,

1996/2002

24 25

seemed to me that the author of this film (I mean the person who editedthe footage taken from several cameras and from several points in a number

of different places) did see Tarkovskys film Stalkerand was referring to cer-tain moments of this film. But since the Tarkovskys Stalker we all saw is notthe first Stalkerhe shot (he destroyed the first version of his film to shoot thesecond one from the very start), I called this video Stalker 3. What I meantwas that nothing disappears completely. All things destroyed continue exist-ing in some other for m for instance, in the form of a found video.

In this sense, there is no difference for me whether to work with estab-lished symbols mushrooming everywhere or to pick up some documen-tary material. Documents are as full of symbols and references as are sym-bols officially established as such.

Today it is often emphasised that the nationalist strivings of Russia go hand-in-

hand with the art markets wish for an explicit identication, whether ethnic or

national. This identication could potentially culminate in a ver y real conict for

Russian artists when you consider the impact of the international art markets

demands on them. For example, Dietrich Rschmann wrote on the occasion of

the exhibition HA KYPOPT! Russische Kunst heutein The Staatliche Kunsthalle

of Baden-Baden in 2004: Torn back and forth between the demands of the

international art market, whose interest in exotica and the projection screens ofthe Other is still uninterrupted, and the effort to set up something individual in

opposition to this force, many start by employing the gesture of distance in their

art: irony, humour, provocation. At the shooting range of Sergei Bugaev Afrika, for

example, the public is permitted to shoot at the booty art from Degas to Picasso

with a paint pistol.

How ironic is your art, really? And when you make use of irony, are you doing

so from the platform of disillusionment?

I do u se irony but I use it seriously. The type of irony developed by Sovietartists did finally lead to the destruction of Soviet ideology, which showshow effective irony can be.

the Moscow government, because Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow, issued adecree banning any concerts of Shnurov and his band. This is a good signfor us: it shows that we are indeed dealing with p ressing social issues.

The first run of the film will take place in ten Russian cities and willbe coupled with exhibitions of Soviet art retro exhibitions of artists andmusicians who participated inAssa 1. Twenty years ago we had similar plansthat were blocked by Boris Yeltsin, then a high Moscow city official. Sur-passingly, Gorbachev supported us at the time. Now we also count on thesupport of the Gorbachev Foundation.

At the exhibition Attack. Art and War in the Media Ageat Kunsthalle Wien you

were represented by your video Stalker 3,which refers to Tarkowskijs lm Stalker.

This work is based on a found video documentation from the Chechen war of

1996 and shows pictures of the morning after a battle between a Russian infan-

try regiment and Chechen-Arab ghters. You use documentary material eventhough it is edited and provided with a new soundtrack.

How do you see the relationship between symbols spread by media propa-

ganda, which are also used by you as documents of a certain ideology, and

authentic documentations in association with the question of reality?

This film is a good a good example of what we often encounter nowadays.To all appearances, it is a film but it does not belong to cinema due tothe lack of necessary characteristics required for it to be classified in thatfield. I perceive such films to be similar to the early Christian icon paintingthat lacked the author-agency and where the authorship was transported tohigher invisible powers.

Let me tell you how I acquired this film. At the State Duma, I had achance to meet one of the heads of a secret elite military unit who wasworking on the terr itory of the Chechen republic. I asked him what exactlythey were doing and he uttered the usual phrase anti-terrorist activitiesbut then mentioned they had knocked off another terrorists base. I askedwhat they had seen there and he listed the objects one usually finds at such

places. A video-archive was on his list. Video recordings are used to justifyterrorists activities for their sponsors. For instance, if they blow up a militarytruck, they can only receive money for that after they show footage of it tothe sponsors. When I asked this chief commander whether it was possiblefor me to see an example of such a video, he handed me this video tape.

I did not see anything extraordinary in this film; after all, we are all usedto seeing short excerpts from such films in the news. But it was the firsttime that I had an opportunity to consider such a video as a completed andedited film. What you saw as Stalker 3does not differ greatly from what Iinitially got. My task was to get this footage across to an audience capableof judging it, contemporary artists and art cr itics. When I saw this film formyself, I got a feeling of completeness, something close to perfection. It

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I think it was Jacques Derrida who grasped the function of irony in post-Soviet society and also in my art better than anyone. After visiting my studioduring his lecture tour in Russia, he said in an interview to Les NouvellesFrancaises:

I felt in St Petersburg even clearer than in Moscow that these youngpeople have reinvented their attitude to culture I could also see abash-ment, distress, lack of points of reference. Many students were informedof the minute details of Western culture; they feverishly appropriated itwithout renouncing their own culture. Sometimes they lacked instru-ments institutional or economic to go two ways at once: rediscoverand reinvent their own roots.I could see the same doubts in young professors and artists I met in StPetersburg. I am thinking of Afrika, a famous artist, who collected and

denigrated the fetishes of Soviet culture. His immense apartment is full ofbusts of Lenin and Stalin, various pennants, flags, insignia that he used inhis satiric painting. From a certain perspective, this movement also cor-responds to the Russian tradition of irony or destruction.*

When they entered the contemporary international art market, Russianartists failed to recognize the danger of purely totalitarian mechanisms reg-ulating it. They failed to recognize, for instance, that Andy Warhol was atotalitarian artist. Perhaps that was not his intention, perhaps he perceivedhimself as a product of American democracy, but in any case the global artmarket did impose his ar t on everyone.

So for Russians, the contemporary situation is doubly-defective: on theone hand, Russian artists are not integrated into the international art proc-ess in the proper sense since they are still exoticized, but on the other hand,they are all too dangerously integrated in that they fail to see anythingbeyond their constantly growing bank accounts.

The repressive mechanisms of the market are quite the same everywhereand this will gravely affect art both in Russia and abroad. Only its more

hazardous here: it is even dangerous to speak of such things here becausewhen you describe the situation, you are talking about rich people who areaccustomed to using fire-arms to reach their goals.

However, we formed this specific form of irony to defend ourselves andwe are ready to spread it throughout the West among our fellow artists as ameans of self-defence against market repression. I am sure the experienceof the Soviet underground will finally be assessed as extremely importantto everyone who tries to create independent art regardless of where on thisearth he or she lives.

26

sgi Buga Afika

One more question to nish with: is Lenin still a mushroom?

In talking of Lenin, we are in fact talking about fungimorphic structuresthat support the image of Lenin in the consciousness of humanity. In talk-ing of Lenin, we do not mean this bearded fellow who had established theSoviet Union a long time ago but rather a specific type of affect his nameproduces. As such, he is perfectly alive and will be alive for a long time, likeany fungimorphic structure. He is still only because he is a mushroom.

Sergei Bugaev Afrika in conversation with Gerald Matt in September 2007. The artist participated in

the exhibitionAttack! Art and War in the Media Ageat Kunsthalle Wien in 2003.

Sergeiv Bugaev Afrika, born in 1966 in Novorossisk, Russia, lives and works in St. Petersburg.

Russian to English translation by Olga Serebryanaya.

* Jacques Derrida, Les urgences de Jacques Derrida,in Les Nouvelles Francaises,October 1997,

N3, p. 25.


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Pa Alham

My strategies, similar to the strategies of my peers, stem from the old

shamanistic goal to communicate with the world.

Pawe Althamer,Brdno, 2000

In your article, Kantor in Spring, published in one of the Polish weekly maga-

zines, you said that people increasingly compare you to Tadeusz Kantor. Do you

mind such comparisons? One can see certain parallels between yours and Kan-

tors work, such as the theme of mannequins and verisimilar objects, as well as

the presence of tramps, travellers and wanderers. How well do you know his

oeuvre? And is it at all possible to study art or be an artist in Poland without

being familiar with Kantor?

When studying art history a t the academy I surmised that it is more inter-esting to create or focus on art, whatever that means perhaps to focus ononeself than to study artists from the past. Now, I do both but with moreemphasis on my own work.

I dont know Kantor very well and I was also slightly put off by himbecause of his involvement with the theatre, which I find hard to bear,

though I liked the beach actions. I liked it when he said on TV that, as chil-dren dont often go to museums it would be better if they did something forthemselves, like painting or sculpture, for example. In Poland you can easilystudy the fine arts without knowing anything about Kantor, although it isworth becoming acquainted with his work.

Tramps play an important role in your projects as they do in Kantors oeuvre

and you introduced into the advertising campaign of a renowned daily, Obserwa-

tor, the character of a tramp, stressing his function as an observer. When you did

the project for Vienna Secession, you granted it as a shelter to the homeless and

unemployed for the duration of the exhibition. In other words, social outsiders

found temporary asylum in cultural institutions as a result of your work. Some

might even accuse you of hopeless social romanticism, in that such interventions

only have a short-term impact and may even come across as anachronistic. How

strongly do you still believe in provocative and agitational art that can expose

differences and bring about change?

I believe in shamanistic art, in working with ones outer and inner worlds

and learning about oneself in the universe, among others and amid themany different selves people, animals and plants. This has changed mypicture of the world, or worldview, on a number of occasions, no doubt, asI lay myself open to confrontation with thoughts, feelings and beliefs ofother the same people.

You unceasingly subvert the function of art institutions. In your installation in

the Berlin neugerriemschneider gallery in 2003 you replaced the gallery with

ruined premises; in the Migros Museum in Zurich you exchanged the museum

attendants with children. In Bad Kids(2004) you allowed problematic youths to

cover the walls of Bonnefantenmuseum with grafti, turning The White Cube

into a colorful space variegated with aggressive messages. You turn the order


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Pa Alham

and the expectations of art institutions on their heads. The critique of museums

and institutions has been a running artistic strategy since the 1960s. How do your

strategies differ from those of artists such as Maurizio Cattellan or Hans Haacke

and whats your particular goal?

I dont subvert the function of art institutions; on the contrary, I supportthem as forums for human communication. I dont turn them on theirheads but rather put them back on their feet. My strategies, similar to thestrategies of my peers, stem from the old shamanistic goal to communicatewith the world.

You once said, all my wo rk not only the sculptures, but the performances,

actions, and lms, form a peculiar autobiography. Your self-portraying sculp-

tures, which function as your alter ego, demonstrate that very poignantly. Do

you consider the position of people from the social margin the homeless, theretired, museum attendants or prisoners as comparable to your position as an

artist?

The artists self is a perfect example of a transvocation the shifting of theself in infinite directions, as well as enlarging and diminishing it (alpha andomega). It immediately recognizes and becomes interested in the phenom-enon of the per plexed and suspended self the self bereft of place.

As part of the Staff en plein air for Kunsthalle Wien you sent the Polish and

Austrian museum attendants on an educational trip. What were you trying to

achieve by doing that?

The Staff en plein airproject is first and foremost a fascination with theinvisible person among objects on display. This is also a gesture towardsperfecting an institution that is preoccupied with the beauty of communi-cation and arousing the sensitivity of the viewer. The role of the staff oftenseems to me to have been underestimated and strongly objectified.

You use a form of outsourcing in your projects and delegate tasks to institutions

and their workers. This method is reminiscent of theatre. To what extent do you

identify with the role of a director?

If we look at our life as a film and our involvement in it as a role then therole of actor-director seems optimal.

For the installationBrdno 2000, you managed to persuade nearly 200 families

living in your district of Warsaw to turn their lights on so that they would form the

sign 2000 on the faade of their block of ats. The length of the action itself

(which lasted only 30 minutes) was disproportionate to the time needed to plan

and organize the project. How do you perceive the relation between the creative

process and the end product?

If you look at Brdno 2000as an outcome of creative passion, or the con-sequence of an intangible association or thought transferred into reality

and this is how I see it time span means little (nothing?). It really justhappened.

Your actions take place outdoors. You constantly look for new scenery and con-

texts. You and your protagonists are often on a journey. Are these journeys goals

in themselves?

Pawe Althamer, Staffen plein air, exhibition

staff of Kunsthalle Wienand Zacheta NationalGallery of Art, Warsaw,

Wien 2005


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Pa Alham

Outdoors is everything. We are both traveling and not moving at all.We are always in the right place (and time). See also: The Adventures of Matolthe Goat*

Through experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, in isolated experiments on

yourself, or hypnosis, you create situations where the artist operates as a medium

for other, irrational, perception processes. To what extent can such spiritual and

metaphysical experiences be, in your opinion, conveyed to an art audience?

As in for instance This is how I feel and understand it. And you?

If you had to choose between cynicism and humor, which position would you

choose?

I hope I never become cynical. I love a good laugh.

You still live and work in Warsaw. Do arti sts work ing and living conditio ns in

Poland differ from those in the West? How do they impact your work?

I was born here and it was here that my mother read Matol the Goatto me.The working conditions in Poland seem to be better than anywhere else inthe world, so why would I move?

You studied sculpture with Artur Zmijewski and Katarzyna Kozyra at Grzegorz

Kowalskis studio at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. However, you and your

classmates have been more drawn to performance and intervention into public

space. What could be the reason a whole generation of young sculptors has

consciously broken away from this traditional art form?

Artists (sensitive people) instinctively discover the most effective means ofcommunication. The rest of the world is vital here. This is our rest.

On a number of occasions you invited other artists to collaborate with you. Artur

mijewski conducted many interviews with you and you realized an exhibition

entitled So-called Waves and Mind Phenomenatogether. What is the outcome of

such a collaboration and how does it benet your work?

Its wonderful to encounter passion equal to mine but from such a differentdirection. Its great to meet you, Alpha said Omega.

Do you see yourself as more of a chronicler and observer of the world than a

creator of social environments?

Im both but I prefer to create, socially, for instance.

What projects are you undertaking in the near future? Are you going to place

even more emphasis on performance and theatre?

I like the fact that I dont know what I will be doing in the future. Im sopreoccupied with the present.

Pawe Althamer in conversation with Gerald Matt on the occasion of the exhibition The Impossible

Theaterat Kunsthalle Wien in 2005.

Pawe Althamer, born 1967 in Warsaw, Poland, lives and works in Warsaw.

Polish to English translation by Aneta Uszynska-Graham.

* In the Polish childrens comic Matol the Goat(1933) by Kozioek Matoek, the literary gure of a

young, clumsy goat, takes a journey to Pacanw, where he has his hooves shod, and nally after

many adventures, makes his way back home.


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Laa Baladi

It is a broken and fragmented memory which I try to fix.

What was your inspiration for Shish Kebabthat was shown in our exhibition Some

Stories?

Shish Kebabis the result of research on the idea and metaphor of the musicbox, i.e. the melody which repeats itself, the spinning ballerina stuck insideand the only possibility of inter rupting the music is by closing the box.

I was invited to Japan in 2003 to work for six months. I was fascinatedby the sheer excess of visual infor mation and was drawn to the ubiquitousmanga culture. As I experienced Tokyo, I continuously videoed and photo-graphed with mobile phone, digital camera and 35mm. It was like buildinga visual diary.

The music box idea was in the back of my mind but with all theseimages, the piece ended up as a mixture of sound, video and installation

the images literally breaking the confines of the music box. The sensory

overload of Shish Kebabwas the immediate and necessary outcome of mystay in Tokyo. It is a condensed version of all the questions raised during myexperience in Japan.

The recurrent melody in Shish Kebab is taken from the Egyptian filmIsmael Yassin in the Mental Hospital. This melody is mixed with sounds frommany parts of the world. Some more familiar than other s, taken from fair-ground carrousels, popular films, etc. All question stereotypical representa-tions of places and create a brochette of the absurdity and dance we live in.

What key issues do you make the subject in your artistic work?

I work more with ideas than with issues all mixed up with per sonal history.My work attempts to highlight zones of cultural ambiguity. For example,one of my continual interests is with paradise and the loss of paradise. Igather images, writings, ideas and edit then re-edit them. The two digitalcollages Perfumes & Bazaarand Justice for the Motherare both part of thisinterest.

One theme always flows into the next. Part of my interest in Shish Kebabwas to explode the boundaries that separate one way of working fromanother I am sure that will happen in the next paradise work at themoment I think the r ight form is like a vast mosaic, but that may not liter-ally mean a mosaic made of ceramic tesserae. Or it may.

The theme of paradise is not escapism, but equally connected to loss andsadness. At the same time I have been recording donkeys braying, somethingwhich I always hear in Egypt these sounds have a profound resonance ofthat sadness they may end up in the work on paradise or they may forman independent work. So my interests and themes often run in parallel andcross fertilise each other.

In your work Oum El Dounia(The Mother of the World), for example, there are

Lara Baladi,Roba Vecchia, The Wheel

of Fortune, 2006


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all sorts of fantastic gures who nd themselves in the sand dunes of the desert

mermaids, magicians, and hybrid creatures in shimmering costumes. What

legends are behind this image? Are you telling a particular story here?

Parodying the Orientalist representations of the desert, Oum El Douniadepicts a phantasmagoric enactment of the third day of genesis.

The water separates from the earth, humanity appears. Its original inno-cence is represented by archetypal figures from fairy ta les.

The rabbit stands for time.Alice represents childhood and virginity.The mermaid lives in the depths of the sea, symbolic of the souls search

for understanding. She is a bewitching temptress, a fallen angel, the daughterof Mnemosyne memory the anima mundi, the soul of the earth. The mer-maid is the collective memory moving through the fictional space I create.

She is beyond time.Within this procession of time, the story of humanity unfolds against a

backdrop of sky and sand, with humanity as mediator between the heavensand the earth.

I try to turn personal experiences and thoughts into something arche-typal, but try to keep the specific color and flavor which makes them per-sonal.

This is a Once upon a time story, which is like saying this is not realalthough it is. This is in a time which is simultaneously past, present andfuture.

Catchphrase Globalisation: you once spoke of myth Is it possible to see pic-

torial inventions like Justice for the Motheras a kind of presentation of multiple

parallel worlds in one world?

To some degree this is what I am doing: Building one world out of multiplesources drawn from all over the world. This is a reflection of the world Ihave always lived in and so has my family for generations.

Justice for the Motheris a visual non-linear narrative based on Jean de LaFontaines fables The argument of the strongest is always the best. Thestronger eats the weaker, the law of the jungle. All the characters in thepicture refer to wilderness in some way: destructive, instinctive, original

nature as opposed to nurture.On a personal level, the work represents my father riding his motorbike

towards the West, leaving behind his youth, his roots and most of all, the lastthirty years of Middle East politics. He is wearing a leather jacket with theimage of the twin towers collapsing. This image, taken from a Senegalesepro-Bin Laden T-shirt made in Afr ica in 2002, is the symbol of the globalconflict of values we are all facing today. Nothing is resolved, history repeatsitself.

Recently, at the Sharjah Biennale 2007, you exhibited a piece called Roba Vec-

chia. The Wheel of Fortune. It looks like a huge kaleidoscope of pictures and obvi-

ously some of the pictures were from the Shish Kebab-video. Is the idea of the

kaleidoscope as a kind of sampling machine also pre-visioned in your earliermultiple-part installations such as Sandouk El Dounia (The world in a box), which

was exhibited in Cairo in 2002?

Images and ideas collide in Roba Vecchia; they flow freely, but of course thereis a direct connection between the way the images are used in the early col-laged works and the way they flow through the kaleidoscope. In Roba VecchiaI wanted the viewer to be inside the work so the importance of using a mir-rored structure of this scale is that you are immersed in the images when

you walk into the kaleidoscope, you become part of the work.Roba Vecchiauses over 2000 images, which are selected semi-randomly

through software. The selection process is based on color. The constantlychanging juxtaposition of images is similar to the process I go throughwhen editing the images its like walking in the street, each time noticingand responding to different things.

The initial motive for making a work is always an extreme experiencethat gets digested into an idea for a piece. Then I find the most appropri-ate way to convey or express that idea. However, working with imagesconsequently challenges the medium itself. Sandouk El Douniameans theworld in a box but it is also an expression that refers to Pandoras Box, theprecursor to cinema. Sandouk El Douniaplays with conptemporary heroes

archetypes coming out of the box, the television box, the computer, thefilm screen. Most of my works question and challenge the history of imagemaking, both still and moving, and most of all the consuming of theseimages.

By mixing techniques such as 10X15 CM color pr int, x-ray and digitalimage modified by a photo shop, computer programming, physical struc-tures, sound and mirrors, my work not only attempts to extend the limitsof the photographic medium, but also to remain accessible to people not

Laa Baladi

Lara Baladi,Roba Vecchia. The Wheel

of Fortune, 2006


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familiar with art discourse an emotional or aesthetic response is as impor-tant as an intellectual one.

In Roba Vecchia, the kaleidoscope, everything is organised into a strictly ordered

structure so that it is even more of a tapestry-like collage of images. Did this

structure come about from formal considerations or is there a substantial idea

behind it, such as the presentation of structured systems?

As I mentioned earlier,Roba Vecchia uses specially written software thatselects and orders the images according to a semi-random system theseare projected onto a mirrored structure 11 meters long and 2 meters 45cm high it is a constantly changing and developing carpet of images. Thesystem (and the architecture of the piece) is part of the process of makingthe work the structured system is part of the materialisation of the object

rather than an end in itself. The first time Roba Vecchiawas exhibited at theTownhouse Gallery in Cairo in 2006 it was interesting watching peoplewaiting for the images to loop but due to the nature of the program thesequence of images never repeated itself.

When I am working with my archive of images, I have to use systems tofind them. Ordering things is very important to me. There are over 2000carefully selected images from several sources, but essentially from what Iconsidered to be digital trash after my high consumption of images while Iwas in Japan. The flow of images and the exper ience of the color both con-tribute to the triggering of a physical experience. The images are ephemeralbut resonate. In this work, I am less interested in the image as a fixed formalthing. Roba Vecchiais a time-based performance.

A kind of puzzle effect seems to be a characteristic feature of your pictures ...

The puzzle effect reflects the way I think. Its an additive process that givesme a great deal of freedom. The resulting composite images have their ownreality like a memory something very specific but with its own poeticdynamic. It is a broken and fragmented memory which I try to fix.

Perfumes & Bazaar shows a bucolic scene, which is reminiscent of the Baroque in

its motifs and composition.A golden scroll frame ourishes at the center reveal-

ing a view of the symmetrically arranged park, while the bazaar mainly offers

pictures; in the foreground of the picture the saleslady in an elegant costume

extends an invitation to discover her goods; the world of the garden is inhabited

by playing children, naked angels, antiques etc. What symbolic meaning do you

give to the rich art-theoretical motif of the frame?

The sales lady is my mother in the 1960s in Lebanon. She is dressed by

my grandmother who during that time was designing kaftans with Syrian

materials to feed her family.The selling aspect is there for sure. My extended family have had to leave

Lebanon repeatedly over the last century and selling and trading are animportant aspect of our survival. Leaving Lebanon was like leaving paradiseboth literally and metaphor ically.

I like your interpretation of her presence in the foreground of the image,however, my intention in this work was to depict paradise using the manylevels and forms used across cultures to represent it. The title is based onthe name of a tourists perfume shop in Cairo. The shop sign placed at thecentre, on the front of the house reads Perfumes & Bazaar: The Garden ofAllah. My mother, as all the other symbols in the image, represents oneaspect of paradise, in her case the womb.

The overall iconography of Perfumes & Bazaaris infused with a Madein China aesthetic that fills the streets of Cairo. I scanned a popular poster,a crudely photoshoped montage representing the idealised Western housewith garden a wannabe Chateau de Versailles, itself an artificial theatr icaltour de fo rce a formal, organised, perspectival and controlled enviromentthat has come to character ise our image of wealth and luxury.

A fake golden frame occupies the centre of the image a frame withina frame. The work has been shown several times as a vinyl pr int, but whenit was in ICP in Snap Judgements, the frame within the frame was replacedwith a physical frame containing a duratrans print mounted on a lightbox,emphasizing the ambiguity of the relationship between illusion and reality.

How do you perceive your role, as an artist, within society?

My role as an ar tist is to process my experiences through my work in orderto share the parts of them that strengthen me, to question the world aroundme without imposing a statement or theory and to produce work, which

Laa Baladi

Lara Baladi,Oum El Dounia, 2000


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hopefully can be a starting point for others to reflect on. I wasnt formallytrained or at ar t school and find the role of professional artist problematic.

What artistic strategies work for you in accomplishing your aims, and what prob-

lems do you encounter?

In term of strategies, I choose to work with technologies available in Cairowhenever I can such as printing C41 10 X 15 color prints in a high streetphoto shop or building Al Fanous El Sehry (The Magic Lamp) in a familyworkshop in Cairo, or if I cannot find sources here, I find ways elsewhere to,for example, print on stainless steel in Madrid, write computer software inDenmark or make tapestries in Belgium.

The main problem I encounter is that I am not a stereotype Arab artist.Being a woman and an Arab, every one expects me to take a political stance.Its true my work is not overtly political. But it is about the environment Ilive and work in, which has become the battleground of differ ing politicalideals. Of course this colors and influences the way I think and work andconditions the subjects I choose.

You live and work in Cairo, but have also stayed in London and Paris for longer

periods of time. Do you also see your artistic strategy as a result of this back-and-

forth movement between different cultural surroundings?

Yes.

How is the art scene in Cairo like? Can you see particular tendencies thematic,

media-related or of some other kind?

Its growing and evolving. In the past decade there has been a great emphasis

on creating an infrastructure to support the Arts. There is a general tendencyin contemporary art to focus on socio-political issues.

What projects are you planning for the immediate future?

I am currently working on several ideas, but at the top of my list are twoideas. One is a diary of the future which will be mixing photographically-based work with Internet online performance. The second one is building akind of personal anthropological cabinet in the shape of a rococo sculptedenvironment.

Lara Baladi in conversation with Gerald Matt and Synne Genzmer in September 2007. The artist par-

ticipated in the exhibitionSome Storiesat Kunsthalle Wien in 2005.Lara Baladi, born in 1969 in Beirut, Lebanon lives and works in Cairo.

Laa Baladi

Lara Baladi,Perfumes & Bazaar,

2005


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Mah Bay

the way I approach places has a lot to do with taking some of the myths

that exist in that place and using them as part of the vessel that holds my

language

I would like to start with 1997: your Cremaster-project was shown here in Vienna,

that was more than ten years ago. You have nished Cremasterand we are going

to show Drawing Restraint at the beginning of next year. What has changed in

regard to your productions?

I feel that theres been an ebb and a flow in the complexity of productionand the scale of the pieces in those years.Cremaster 3was a three-hour longproject; it took three years to make.

The film I made after that, De Lama Lminawas made in a very shortamount of time and it was, in a way, a quite provisional piece. The experi-ence in Brazil making De Lama Lminawas the enabler of Drawing Restraint9,as a way of changing the Cremasterprogram and trying to work in a realcontext, in an environment that is more out of my control than the Cremas-teruniverse was.

The earlier lms of Drawing Restraintare smaller productions, theyre more in

the frame of a video production but it also developed into real movie making.

Did it become a bigger scale project because you had more possibilities or rather

because your interest in it grew?

Well, I think my interest turned more towards narrative, it really crystallizedin Drawing Restraint 7,which was made in 1993 after the Otto and Houdiniworks.

In the beginning your work was much more linked to performance, to yourself,

to sculpture, to the relation of human and space. I remember when we spoke

in 1997 you always emphasized that you feel very much like a sculptor. Has that

changed with recent productions?

No, absolutely not.

So lm as a medium of sculpture?

Yeah, I think its an easier proposal now than it was during the productionof Cremasterfor instance, to say that the piece was an earthwork, as it wasintended to be. It was always conceived to be within the tradition of LandArt.

So I never understood it as being anything other than sculpture. It wasalways a given for me.

Beuys for example spoke of social sculpture: society as a total work of art. You

also consider your art production from the point of view of sculpture, i.e. the cho-

reographies in your lms, the formation of ornamental patterns with the human

body. In regards to the Cremaster-cycle you speak of narrative sculpture, as a

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sort of media collage, a complex of different visual forms of expression, where

the moving image, objects systems and static image blend together to form of

a Gesamtkunstwerk. Do you see any conceptual relationship between a social

sculpture and narrative sculpture? Or lets put it this way: Where do you feel

totally different from Beuys?

I think the project De Lama Lmina,which took place in public as a paradethrough the streets of Bahia was very social, was collaborative and had a lotof qualities that you could descr ibe as being social. But Im not interested inmaking political works; Im not motivated by external systems but internalsystems.

In the exhibition at Kunsthaus Bregenz, which was titled Myth, your works were

presented together with those by Douglas Gordon, Cy Tombly and Joseph Beuys

as a historical reference gure. What does myth mean to you?

I certainly identify what I do as narrative, and I think that myths are sharednarratives, right? I think that the way I approach places has a lot to do withtaking some of the myths that exist in that place and using them as partof the vessel that holds my language, so in that regard Im dependant onmyth.

Beuys was interested in certain substances like grease and different kinds of

metal and their transformatory qualities, the w ay they produce energy through

heating and cooling. You work with Vaseline, which is a different material, but

processes of metamorphosis also seem to be of great importance to you.

Drawing Restraint 9was an opportunity to think about the history ofpetroleum jelly, its development, where it comes from and how whaling isinvolved in its history the pre-historic animal (the whale), and the fossilfuel that comes from its body, and the process of refining it. Up to a certainpoint, the whale was the key source of the fuel and was later replaced bypetroleum.

This was another organizing principle of Drawing Restraint 9,trying tothink about the history of petroleum jelly, comprehend it in more naturalterms. This whole family of plastics which I am working with are petroleumbased materials and they are understood somehow as synthetic materials, butin fact they are very natural.

So there is this use of articial materials as if they were natural and natural mate-

rials sometimes look as if they were articial, but, as you just said, one has to look

at the production process, that natural material is actually the basis for materials

like plastic.

In that way I think Beuys was interested in the elemental in the resourceand the nature of the materials that he was using. On that level you cancertainly draw a relation.

Is playing with the articial and the natural something you think that carries on

in your work?

Certainly.

something, which is an important factor?

Its a way you can describe differences and similarities between Cremasterand Drawing Restraint 9. I think of Drawing Restraint 9as a more naturalpiece in the sense that I felt like I couldnt manipulate the environment or

abstract the environment to the extent that I had in Cremaster Im not sure if I would use the word artificial. But I felt that I couldnt

create a situation where there was a synthesis between the environment andmy narrative.

When did this fascination with Vaseline as a material start?

I started using it right around the time of those first Drawing Restraintprojects. The first pieces I made of Vaseline were about wanting to moistensomething. The jelly was being used for its lubr icating product qualities. Iwas thinking of all things that I was making at the time as literally exten-sions of my body somehow, and I wanted these objects to feel like they had

just come out of me or could be put into me.

In Drawing Restraint 9a love story is also told. A man and a woman come onto a

whaling ship, where they are brought together in a kind of wedding ceremony.

In the end the ship is ooded and they kill each other by wounding each other

bit by bit, cutting the esh from their bodies and practically eating each other.

They are submerged in the ocean, transformed into whales ocean, love, death

these are quite archetypical motifs and are often combined with each other in

Hollywood and other lm production sites. The shift to cannibalism, however, is

disturbing How did you come up with this story? As far as I know it is also based

on Japanese traditions. How did you adapt it to your vision?

Well, yes, it is based o Japanese traditions, but not in a direct literal way. It isin the sense that whaling in Japan is very specific to the fact that the whaleis eaten. So the way the whale is flensed, the processes on the factory ship,are specific to Japanese whaling and its very different from the way thiswould happen on a western whaling vessel.

With food, there is a relationship to Shinto. Particularly with the whale,

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which is considered an ancestor of the human and at the same time itsa staple in the diet. So theres a kind of cannibalism built into the story. Iwould say this is where that aspect came in.

Has the whaling theme fascinated you for a longer period of time? How did you

learn about the procedures on board, about whaling?

By traveling in Japan. But there was also a piece in London, titled CremasterField. It was made in 2002 during the tour of the Cremaster-cycle show. Tentons of petroleum jelly were poured into a mould in a cinema lobby. Themould was more or less the scale of a whale, and the walls of this mouldwere pulled off and then the sculpture collapsed quite violently. The pos-sibility of handling the sliding petroleum jelly interested me, not being ableto stop it once it moves. I started to imagine being in a situation like thatwhen youre trying to deal with the body of the whale. The behavior ofthe material became more compelling each time the process was repeated.That every room, the ambient temperature of the room, is going to affectthe behavior of the Vaseline. So too will the shape of the mould and thetemperature of the liquid as its poured. So I started thinking about how toshift the environment in a more radical way. What happens when its beingpoured on a ship and the ship is moving? How will it affect the integrity ofthe material? When casting petroleum jelly, if the material is agitated and airis introduced into it, it undermines the integrity of the jelly and makes itweaker. So that moment in the cinema lobby in London was another organ-izing principle for Drawing Restraint 9.

When I visited you in your studio, I think it was in Brooklyn then, you were work-

ing on the project. You produced partly in the studio, but also on the boat. How

important is work on the scene?

That set is a good example of one which would be difficult to do in anyother way. I think Im actually quite resistant to building sets or teams usingdigital effects. I often shoot scenes in real time just so I can have that experi-ence. The physical experience is important to me, and I want the situationto be actual, rather than vir tual if its possible. But then along come certainscenes like the tearoom scene, where theres this ambition to fill the roomwith fluid, and to have the room moving so that it could suggest the move-ment of a ship, and for the fluid to begin to coagulate. We couldnt havepulled this off on the Nisshin Maru, which is like a national treasure, ascontroversial as it is.

You call your protagonists occidental guests and indeed they are like two stran-

gers who convey a disconcerting story. You also talk about the settings for your

stories as places that represent the host for a sculptural body, an analogy for

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the penetration of something foreign into a closed system. How does this con-

cept of guest/host work for you? Its not always used as obviously, but still it

seems to be something very important.

Its very important in Drawing Restraint 9because I think its the thing thatdefines the difference between the Cremastermodel and Drawing Restraint9. For me, Cremasterhas always been a kind of viral model where my lan-guage would enter an environment and become part of the environment;where it would integrate with the mythology that comes from that placeand it would really become part of it. I think Drawing Restraint 9is differentin the sense that I felt like it was impossible to fully integrate my languageinto that culture. The guest and host model becomes quite interesting withregard to Ambergris*,which is the product from a guest body entering awhales body. It never stops being what it was when it entered, its just beeninformed by the intestinal walls of the whale and as its passed, a transforma-tion occurs, but it never integrates. I guess I felt this way bringing my workto Japan, making an exhibition there, making a site-specific work. So theseguest/host models became very useful and ended up becoming central toDrawing Restraint 9.

What has always fascinated me was your choice of persons, main roles were

played by Richard Serra or Ursula Andres in your Cremaster-lms, Drawing

Restraint9 was made with Bjrk. Persons also seem to function as allegories,

bearers of certain concepts. Did you think of a certain agenda for them? Why did

you choose precisely them?

I first asked Richard to play himself in the sequence that was filmed in theGuggenheim, to be delegate for Cremaster 5, to be the death or lets saythe end of the lifecycle of this idea. In his works like Splashing, the moltenlead is thrown against the wall. It immediately goes hard; it crystallizes andbecomes fixed in a single gesture. This was used as a visualization of the endof the Cremaster Cycle.

Some kind of end to the process of transformation?

Exactly, and in the discussions with him about that I was continuing towrite the other parts of the story with the architect and the apprentice. Hefelt like a perfect character to play the role of the architect.

That means that you also like to work with the image of a person. But image

could also be a disturbing factor.

Its something along the lines of the materials that are chosen to makesculpture. Its not really about acting; its about being a sort of aspect within

a system thats not necessarily character-driven. It is driven by the set andthe scene, therefore their history becomes important and part of their pres-ence.

Would you answer this question the same way if I asked you about Bjrk?

It felt like a natural choice in the sense that we are in a relationship andDrawing Restraint 9was going to be a love story, and a piece which is fun-damentally about relationships. Again, it felt like a kind of honest choiceinstead of casting actors to act like something theyre not.

Encounters or unications of two persons in your lms tend to be presented as a

ritual act, like a dance, a ceremony or a wrestling match more a kind of control-

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led approach following prescribed movements than a spontaneous expression

of a (passionate) feeling. Is a personal encounter still included or is the rituals

function that the individuals are substitutes for a more general idea?

I had seen some drawings which were made to describe Shinto. There weremany circles which were interconnected and looked like a molecule withcells overlapping, so that there was a shared space between every circle. Inthis model, Shinto could be understood as an infinite, a system of billionsof relationships, basically, and in each one of those individual cells you havethe entire system. The whole is in every part. I think because of my feelingsabout Drawing Restraint 9and this guest and host relationship, the piece wasvery much about describing a relationship or a system of infinite relation-ships. So I think that the occidental guests describe a relationship, but arelationship within a system where two particles are magnetically attractedto one another, not as in an emotional relationship. It has more to do withdescribing the nature of a system. The art direction of the scene used aspectsof the Shinto marriage in combination with the formal tea ceremony. Theseformalized rituals were used to abstract the relationship and to have it func-tion more like a model, rather than as an interpretation of something thatexists in the world.

You use Houdinis escape art as an analogy of the creative process. How can one

understand more precisely the parallels between bodily functions and artistic

creativity? We talked about the idea of restraint which is needed to create form.

How would you describe that in reference to what you do now, especially in the

last Drawing Restraints,where, as you said, you turned more towards narrative

how does it function there?

I always learned things through my body and through a direct kind of expe-rience. So I think that proposal in the beginning for me was quite literal,quite literally referencing athletics, because up to that point in my life thatwas my experience. That has changed. It has grown. But it continues to bemy instrument of choice; its the tool that I know how to use best.

Is this the reason why Houdini fascinated you so much?

Well, I think that he had a duality that interested me. He was both a show-man and involved in this hermetic practice which had to do with his rela-tionship to the paranormal. He was a contradiction in a certain way. Thatconflict in my understanding of him was something I was very interestedin describing in those first narrative works I made, between Jim Otto andHoudini, this hermetic space in conflict with a more performative space.Its also important to me that theres so much interpretation in the under-standing of somebody from that period, particularly from somebody who

was rewriting his biography all the time. That appealed to me, that level ofmystery in somebody I never met, never saw.

You make drawing and lm that generates sculpture and photography and vice

versa. There seems to be no preference for a particular medium. Some people

think that lm is your most important medium, others think its sculpture. What is

your relation to the media a