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Christian Schmidt-Rasmussen
interviewed by Angelika
Stepken
You are dealing with two figures in your new piece. Who are frightened
/ unsure about everything and don’t dare to move. In this the
actual version of a human dilemma or is it just the top of an acute
social state of being?
The story is about
two confused beings. It is likely that they are humans though this
is not certain. Their sex is not indicated. Their surroundings is
a place with atmosphere: it rains. And it is in rotation around
a sun: it’s turning into night. They live in a house - but
they could just as well sit on the lawn. They can be very afraid
and they are aware of a kind of complicated state of dependence
- that they call ‘to like’. It might be a common problem
in history that they refuse to acknowledge themselves as individuals.
This implies that they must approve of other people as individuals,
and that is simply beyond their comprehension. To acknowledge oneself
as an individual is also to acknowledge one’s own personal
history and thereby one’s personal frontiers and personal limitation
markers. The two who are talking donŐt acknowledge any of these
things. They don’t want anything at all. I don’t know
if this is a common problem - but the need of not taking on shape
is part of having ambitions and believing in social mobility as
something absolute. This, not as a means of gaining social prestige
and more money but as a mark of deviation. And the two people who
are talking absolutely deviated.
You are working with
images / models of popular culture / comic / collage... Is this
still working as an attack on the artificiality of art conventions?
Is there still a difference between high and low art?
I work within a figurative
language fed from what in one word is called popculture even if
we are talking about a rather varied substance. In total it’s
my culture, and I feel no need to be intellectual in any special
academic or high-browed and tweedy way. Fundamentally I trust that
the language that we use everyday is the only thing we need. Ceremonial
language excludes more than it embrace, it is simply not complex
enough. I can’t see any special reason for art excluding the
language that I use and that I am surrounded be every day. Therefore
my use of figurative language is conditioned by its suitability
and it is not a result of a critique of the art system. Artists
who work within a special art jargon are just lazy. They simply
haven’t enough strength to recreate and develop the language
they are surrounded by and that they are part of, and they pull
themselves into an art ghetto where the main purpose is to state
the difference between high and low - again and again.
You are working with
computer, painting, drawing, sculpture. What do these different
media - and the simultaneous use of them - mean to you?
The media that I
work in is formally exhausted by form and shape. It’s obvious
that the possibilities for exploring aspects of painting are infinite,
but at the moment there is a belief that painting has been worked
out from head to ass. This suits me fine not considering the constant
demand for the development of products that so many of the newer
media yiels to. This is also the case with water-colours - they
are really good at being pretty and charming - and they are very
good for the inner dialogue that I use them for. They are my bag,
lock, stock and barrel - from the small philosophical and the discoursing
political, to the foolish. The atmosphere of a Sunday picnic and
freedom from obligation that also marks water-colours suits the
unification of diversity.
Originally Published in Sanssouci oder: Die Kunst der entsorgung,
Badischer Kunstverein
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