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performative constructions
Interview by Hans
Ulrich Obrist
Hans Ulrich Obrist
: I felt it could be interesting to talk about this collaborative
issue. Douglas Gordon once told me that he thinks the 90s are about
the promiscuity of collaborations, and I wondered how your work
is maybe multiple collaborations with other people ... how did it
happen that you started to put the focus on the collaboration between
the two of you, and if you could tell me a bit about the beginning
of your collaboration, the very first contacts between the two of
you ?
Ingar Dragset : It
started with doing nothing together for one year but being boyfriends.
And, um, I was at that time doing theater performances, and Michael
was doing his art on his own. And since we had so many other things
in common, and were getting along so well on most matters, we thought
that we would try to combine my theater experience and MichaelÕs
visual art experience.
Hans Ulrich Obrist
: Which year was this?
Ingar Dragset : This
was in ‘95. And actually I started helping Michael preparing
a show in Stockholm. That was because I could knit, and he wanted
to do these knitted pieces. Some abstract pets, that the art audience
could hug and nurse and feel confident with...
Michael Elmgreen
: ... But in Stockholm nobody feels relaxed at openings, so we had
to show the audience how to feel confident and how to use these
knitted pets, and then everybody thought it was a performance -
so it became our first performance... by coincidence.
HUO : What happened
next? Was it followed immediately by a second performance? The first
time I saw your works, it was on videos of performances you had
done. It was before I saw exhibitions of yours. Was the collaboration
more on a performative level in the beginning?
ID : Yes.
HUO : And the objects
came later ?
ME : We were doing
many performances in a Nordic context, and we were always curated
to be the funny guys in the corner. If some curator wanted to have
a more light activity in a very stiff exhibition, he or she called
us and asked us to do something, you know, like ...
HUO : So it had to
do with a marginalization within the exhibition context ?
ME : Yes, and very
much like becoming a stereotype of yourself... being this kind of
almost typecast artist "Oh, we know what we can expect from these
guys." So it was fun suddenly to make installation works, «cause
that was a big surprise for everybody: "oh, they can do art objects."
ID : You experience
different kinds of marginalization as a gay couple and quite often
in the Scandinavian art context, because there are very few gay
artists. Sometimes you feel like you are in a show just as an alibi,
or...
ME : ...or as an
exotic element in something too predictable.
HUO : I once had
a discussion about this issue - in terms of the object also - with
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, whom I interviewed four or five years ago.
He always used this term "infiltration". Could you talk about two
questions related - on the one hand about Gonzalez-Torres, if it’s
of importance for you as a sort of reference - and secondly this
notion of infiltration in your own activities?
ID : I think Michael
should answer, since he met Felix Gonzalez- Torres...
ME : ...Yes, in Copenhagen
‘93.
HUO : Was it when
he did this billboard in Denmark?
ME : Yes, I was in
this billboard show with him at that time, but I met him just before.
He was invited to a really horrible conference or seminar at the
Danish Art Academy and was pretty bored. So we hung out and spoke
a lot about how gay people suddenly discovered the use of Minimalism
as the ultimate kind of infiltration into the history of high art.
Minimalism was always the thing that was shown in large scale in
the most important American art institutions... after they had had
a tiny little group show of young artists, just to give the institution
some credibility, to give the impression of not being conservative.
Then the museum director could feel safe having this huge Serra
exhibition afterwards, that would cost, say, twenty times as much
as the young art show. So, dealing with Minimalism was a kind of
challenge for a gay person - also to break the stereotype image
of gay people being, you know, interested in camp and being very
feminine in their way of expressing themselves...
HUO : So it becomes
a critique of this cliché, like Deleuze always said that
art is a critique of cliché...
ME : Indeed, like,
you don’t have one homogeneous homosexual culture... as a gay
person you’re as different from other gay people as anybody
else is different from anybody else...
ID : ...That’s
also very much the reason why we stopped doing the kind of performances
we were doing in the beginning. I mean the performances we did were
very important on a personal level and also on the level of artistic
development for us; but you felt you were becoming too much of a
gay icon, and that’s where our "Powerless Structures" series
started. That was also an emancipation from this stereotypical image
of gay people or being a gay couple. So we opened up our own artistic
expression to include all kinds of material, historical and cultural.
ME : It has very
much to do with not marginalizing oneself. A gay icon is as bad
as any icon. It’s all about not fulfilling the expectations.
HUO : I once had
a discussion with Vito Acconci, which maybe has something to do
with this transition, similar to yours. At a certain stage he decided
to appear less himself in the work, so that his presence was more
of an absence?
ME : Still, people
have the impression or the image of a performance - and it’s
very much in the history of performance itself - that the self or
the ego of the performer is very central. It can be the body or
it can be the social figure of the performer which is very important,
whereas for instance, Vito Acconci and more recent performance artists
have taken a step further.
HUO : Whom do you
think of among your colleagues ?
ME : Actually, no
one in the performance field. More artists working in other media.
Most of the works that we’ve done are attemps to make dead
materials come alive, like painting a gallery white for twelve hours,
or making this temporary white cube by painting the walls of a transparent
glass box from the inside... the piece, that we did at the Secession
in Vienna... where we created a white cube, that lasted for only
maybe fifteen minutes. In live acts like these, it is like our personal
presence is only to keep the material moving. We are only taking
part in the process of the performance, along with the materials
and the objects. So we don’t expose ourselves as absolute focal
points in our live acts. Our egos and our bodies are no more relevant
for the reading of our performances than they are for the reading
of our objects and installation works. In the performances we are
taking part in a process that is going on with the material.
HUO : But did you
ever think about, in terms of the different notion of time, the
viewer basically also playing a bigger part ?
ID : Our works are
very simple, they are, in a way, minimal, and this is not to make
a reduction, but to open up. Not to open up so much from us towards
the audience, but to keep it open for the audience to read things
that they would like to read into this open field.
ME : And in that
way, we are kind of very traditional, because we’re not calculating
with the reactions of the audience. We’re not making entirely
interactive works that demand a certain behavior of the audience,
you know, like push this button, or step here kind of things. We’re
creating the artwork, and then we’re not sure about what the
reaction of the audience will be. We’re not figuring anything
out beforehand.
ID : In Paris we
made this completely white carpet, and you had to pass it to see
the rest of the exhibition. You could expect that some people would
be reluctant to step on the carpet, but we couldn’t be sure.
I think the reactions were different from person to person, you
felt like, "should I step on this or not?" ... After all, you put
your dirty footprints on it. And maybe it’s also a generation
thing, people’s reactions, I mean, uh, more people are used
to going to so called young, contemporary art shows - they are used
to interactive works - and wouldn’t mind going and stepping
on it, but maybe some people would be reluctant to do it, maybe
they have too much respect for the art work.
HUO : It was also
the before and after, which was amazing about your Nuit Blanche
piece. When we installed your piece, we all took off our shoes,
in order not to make your white carpet dirty, and the very moment
the exhibition opened, and the carpet was still in a virgin state,
the audience hardly dared to pass by your piece and to step on the
carpet. And then more and more, thousands and thousands of people
walked on it and left their traces, and it was suddenly completely
covered with dirty foot prints.
ME : It’s exactly
what I call the traditional element... that you’re not able
to predict what will happen with the work, that you have this kind
of old-fashioned excitement. I really like that.
HUO : Robert Musil
once said, that art often occurs where you expect it least.
ME : ... and as an
artist you must be ready to receive a lot of different reactions
to the work, accepting the chaotic conditions of perception.
HUO : Also unusual
events?
ME : Yes... when
we did our performance in Paris, there was this child who was going
on and on interfering with our performance, like, playing with the
yarn, and so on. But being very sure of what we were doing, it was
just, like, "this is OK." And people could really separate what
we were doing from the interruption of this child suddenly participating
in the performance - and the spectators had in this way two different
experiences at the same time. As a performer it doesn’t help
if you’re totally freaking out if something unexpected is going
on.
HUO : Do you have
other examples of unusual events, of things that you would not have
expected ...
ID : When we did
our "Twelve Hours of White Paint" performance in Mexico, the paint
quality was so bad... it was not exactly white, it was more, kind
of, grey, and it was very watery and very chalky. But the atmosphere
was so good, and suddenly it became something else, because we were
these two white guys trashing a white cube gallery with white paint
in Mexico. So it got a lot of other connotations.
HUO : Could you tell
me about your 'Powerless Structures' ? I mean, you wrote this text,
but there is less there about how you arrived at the title. I would
be very interested in how you defined this series, and if you knew
in the beginning exactly where it would lead ?
ME : In Foucault’s
History of Sexuality, he writes that no structure is able to suppress
anybody Š not the structure itself. It’s only how you deal
with the structures already being there, and all structures can
be altered or mutated. That was very much an inspiration for us...
to discover that everything is just structures that could be something
else... the patterns could be different. It was just a question
of imagination. And when it’s just a question of imagination,
the visual art field is such a good area in which to work with these
things in a very concrete and very simple way. So we started making
these suggestions, that everything - from social and political structures
to architectural and cultural structures - could be something more
exciting and more open... and to make these suggestions we just
needed such small elements to start the change ...
HUO : So basically
to change the rules of the game?
ME : The game is
a dynamic game. It’s possible to combine the structures in
billions of different ways in every field.
HUO : In the architecture,
for example?
ID : The architectural
frame of a gallery or a gay bar, for instance. It could basically
be anything, the social structures or whatsoever. And that’s
also how we have come to make pieces that involve both, the art
institutional structures and some basic gay social structures, and
tested what happens if you combine these. The piece that you’ve
seen at 'Kunstraum der Universität Lüneburg' deals with
this. Here we made two sex cabins, that you normally find in the
back room of gay bars or in porn kinos and we placed them in the
white cube context. When you enter the cabins you can see the rest
of the exhibition through the peep holes. Like to see and to be
seen.
HUO : Active and
passive viewing ?
ME : ...and very
much about the voyeuristic situation. A trained art audience may
feel on a safe playground going into a gallery space, but they will
be totally alienated going into the back room of a gay bar, whereas,
a lot of the gay crowd who are, uh, consulting the back rooms will
be totally alienated going into a gallery space. Combining these
two kinds of architecture seemed interesting to us, because it points
out that you don’t have spaces such as queer spaces, and you
don’t have spaces such as art spaces. You only have spaces
that are, say, occupied for a certain period with artistic behavior,
and you have places that are occupied by queer activity for a certain
time. The borderlines are not that strict. They’re much more
fragile than we imagine them.
HUO : That’s
great, because that’s also what I think is a big misunderstanding
with people thinking that, on the one hand public space and on the
other hand private space would be something which is given. Vito
Acconci, in an interview I made with him, said that the biggest
mistake is that people always think that spaces are God-given, you
know, they think it’s a public space while it’s really
about what you make: you make it public ...
ID : If we just could
come to a point where people are more anarchistic in that way, that
they no longer believe in structures being able to suppress them
or in spaces being predestined for a specific purpose, then I think
we have come a long way.
HUO : So could one
say that the object is not an absolute reality or not a self-fulfillment,
but that the object is more there like a meeting point in the stream
of communication ? - that’s something that runs like a red
thread through lots of 90s art. It’s obvious that lots of art
in the 90s has called the object into question, and that the object
is very often just a trigger, a trigger for a dialogue.
ME : I don’t
think anything can be seen as an absolute reality, neither an art
object nor anything else. The dialogue is of great importance. But
I don’t agree with the object just being a trigger, actually.
I’m very fond of the presence of the object, and I’m very
fond of it even in a performance context. It has itself this kind
of very close communication with the audience. I don’t feel
that the spoken word or mental communication is any better than
presenting an object. I don’t have a problem with materials
so I don’t like this distinction between hardware and software.
What’s most important : An apple or a spoken word ? Well, if
you are hungry...
HUO : What I think
is very interesting about your work over the last couple of years,
is that also your installation works have this performative side,
this combination of object and action, like in Vienna in Kathrin
Rhombergs Junge Szene at the Secession, with the glassbox painted
white, or even in your Berlin piece in the Biennial, the wishing
well. Tomorrow there will be this small performance of you throwing
coins into the well as some testimonies. Then the action will be
exposed as a frozen image, and for the rest of the exhibition period
one can see the installation with the coins, the materiality. Your
work brings together different possibilities: there is the potential
action to happen, there is the event, the live event, and there
is the trace of the event in its materiality.
ME : Almost any cultural
object is performative. If you take the coffee pot, it’s waiting
for us to make coffee in it. If you have a chair, it’s waiting
for you to sit on it. And all the nature that surrounds you is cultivated
now, especially with the new gene technology. In a couple of years
you won’t be able to eat a carrot that has not been genetically
manipulated - it can’t grow without that - so it’s also
performative in a way. So, I don’t see the objects that we’re
doing totally apart from the performances we’re doing. It is
all part of the same system.
ID : It might be
that people who also know our performances read more performative
things into the installation pieces.
ME : I think we share
with a lot of the artists of today - and in fact all the way back
to Duchamp painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa - this attitude
towards art being far from the static masterpiece, but instead being
communication that can change all the time. Duchamp saw that painting
as something that was screaming to be changed, so he added his own
statement to the work and it became a sort of interactive act. A
lot of times when I’m looking at paintings I feel like making
a little green figure or something in the corner of the canvas.
To keep it alive by changing it.
HUO : To add or to
subtract?
ME : It depends.
HUO : Let’s
talk more about the Berlin piece, about this 'Fontana Tremens' which
leads us to the 'Fontana di Trevi'? Baroque Minimalism meets...
ID : It’s a
pond, a wishing well, right outside the entrance of the exhibition
space, in front of the stairs, and you can step on it on your way
up as it is covered with a thick safety glass plate. There are coins
at the bottom of it, and there’s this very thick glass plate
on top of the pond, so you can’t throw any more coins in there
- that means there are no more wishes to be made .... Tomorrow it
will be possible for people who happen to be there at twelve o’clock
for the installation to make their wishes for Berlin. After that
the work is sealed. But then it is possible to walk on it, over
its blue water...
ME : It’s kind
of in-between a romantic wishing well and a swimming pool, because
it’s squared, and it has this bluish water inside, and underwater
lighting. We got the coins from the Danish National Bank, and they
are coins that have not yet been stamped, you know, with the image
of the queen and the value on them. So actually they’re value-less
coins. You don’t throw any specific amount of money into the
pool. But it’s fun that you call it Baroque, because I think
it fits with the location, which is this totally over-the-top historicistic
building with a lot of different styles. It’s funny with these
contradictions melted together. To create a new kind of harmony
when you don’t respect the borderlines of logic.
HUO : I was wondering
if you could tell me about your favorite unrealized project ? If
you have projects which have not been realized for certain reasons,
because maybe the funding has not been there, or maybe they have
been censored, or maybe they have been forgotten ? Or if you have
projects which are more utopian, too big to happen ?
ME : We have one
piece with turning walls and static/permanent walls, an architectural
piece that is meant to divide up an exhibition space, where the
turning walls will create an ever-changing architecture, or structure
of the rooms. It will divide the rooms up in different ways all
the time. And this is totally impossible to produce anywhere. It
would go into the physical structure of the museum, which would
damage a lot of it, and it would cost a fortune to produce. But
it is such a great project to work on, just for fun, developing
it, making it more ridiculous than it was before, more utopian,
and it is, kind of, an ongoing project.
Originally published
in "Powerless Structures", catalouge, 1998
Hans Ulrich Obrist
is a curator and writer. Lives and works in Paris and Vienna
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