Erik van Lieshout
‘I try not to think too much’
Erik van Lieshout
During the opening of the Berlin Biennial in March, when I ran into Erik van Lieshout in the Auguststrasse, he told me he was exhausted. It was late by the time he had finished installing his work, and meeting the deadlines to get it finished on time had taken its toll. It is logical enough – the artist who works like a man possessed in order to produce as good a work as possible for an important biennial. But, Erik added, that was not all. The work was about him – as in his case, it always is. And he had had a run-in with himself during the filming of Rotterdam-Rostock, a video work that the public was able to view in a renovated container halfway down the Auguststrasse. Later that day, after I had seen his diary-like review of his bicycle trip through Germany, I realized that for Erik van Lieshout, presenting a new work was more than just another creative undertaking. Invariably, it is an exposé of his naked self.‘Real life’ has slowly come to dominate the work of Erik van Lieshout. This development has run parallel to the increasing importance of the video camera in his artistic practice. His first video work, EMMDM, made in 1999, still had strong references to ‘low culture’ visual vocabulary (in this case, Hip Hop and MTV), and at the same time could easily be explained in the context of his drawing, painting and sculpture, in which raw energy and provocations against decorum and respectability came together in clear images. The role played by the artist in EMMDM was a projection of existing ideas from black popular culture, inspired by the burgeoning hegemony of Hip Hop as a worldwide language for young people. Years before the term ‘bling bling’ had established itself, this video, in which two white men, made up as blacks, steal a car from two black men, was a comment on the materialistic hedonism of youth culture. The role of the artist here was a confusing one, toying with racial and cultural identities, creating a caricature of our complex relationship to ‘the other’, even though it is never quite clear exactly what moral statement is being made. The main protagonists are brought-to-life cartoon characters from some politically incorrect no-man’s-land, somewhere in between the famous Dutch series, Sjors & Sjimmie and Beavis & Butt-Head – grotesque exaggerations and interminably flat, as though they had walked straight out of one of Van Lieshout’s paintings. With the video works that succeeded Lariam, made in 2001 and the first after EMMDM, the artist had found a way of giving that flatness a real form: he introduced real life. And he introduced himself, artist Erik van Lieshout, as protagonist, reporter, exhibitionist and patient all rolled into one.To talk about his work, I met Erik in his real life, which was happening – momentarily at least – somewhere in Brabant. He was working on a commission for a private collector who had given him carte blanche to produce a new work. Van Lieshout immediately knew that this new work had to be about the collector himself. Just like the Moroccan youth in Respect, the Chinese in Fantasy Me and the Germans in Rotterdam-Rostock, here, as a social category, ‘nouveau riche’ is surrounded by the distinct clichés with which Van Lieshout likes to work. At the time of this writing, he has been filming for a month, totally committed, surrendered and submerged in his native region of Brabant. His client had lent him a fast Porsche n expensive sports car, and for as long as he was working on this project, he was living in an apartment in Eindhoven, so he could be as close as possible to the wealthy family.
Your work seems to have undergone a change in direction in the last few years. The video camera has become more important than the brush. And instead of creating alter egos, or telling a story through fictional characters, you have ‘invented’ yourself as a catalyst for examining socio-political issues: Erik van Lieshout, sometimes as Erik the artist, often as Erik the individual, as a central figure in a chaotic world in which mankind is in constant conflict, mostly with himself.
‘I want to make work that is about people, and I try to bring fundamental issues to the surface, about political and social conditions in our society. To do that, I need to have myself in the videos. It just naturally developed that way. In order to get the depth, I throw myself into the fray as much as I can, because otherwise, the people I film will not go deeper into the subject or the situation. In the end, I want to make films about “the other”, but it only works if I do it by way of myself. I have to challenge myself, put myself on the edge, break through my own boundaries in order to get at the energy that makes “the other” react. The audience thinks it is fantastic, but for me, it is more of a shortcoming.’
But who are you then? An artist in the role of creator or a reporter or journalist? How important is it to you that your films represent reality? It is reality that we see, but in many cases, it is a decidedly directed reality. In Respect, for example, the central theme is a primarily personal quest, but the film then unfolds as an increasingly directed narrative referring to the clichés in Hip Hop videos.
‘Realizing a video work is complicated, because I let myself be led by a feeling. Also I try not to think about things too much during the filming. If I were too busy analyzing situations, I would be too aware of what I was doing, and it wouldn’t work any more. Then I would lose the energy that is necessary for the work, and in the work. I have to be right inside the problem, run around in it, not analyze something from a distance.’
How exactly does that work? Your films always look very organic and intuitive, as if you had had a rudimentary idea and made use of things that just happened to cross your path when you were filming, like a script that writes itself by staying in constant motion.
‘That impulsiveness is important, but of course a lot of it is also consciously guided. By now, I have developed a whole range of interview techniques to get the people I am working with to reveal something of themselves, because that is essential. There is also a calculated quality to my impulsiveness, and a false honesty. So I am extremely honest about personal things, in the hope that they will also let go of something. Reality is very important. I want my work to be about real, substantial things, but I need unreal triggers in order to bring those essential things to light. On the one hand, I try to be relaxed, to wait until something happens, but on the other hand, it means really pushing: Bang! Bang! And then it comes. Sometimes people do not want to expose themselves out of fear that they will come off badly. That is also the case with the work I am making now, about the rich family. At a certain point, there comes a moment when I have to really whack into someone, or myself even harder – past the shame – in order to force the contact that I am looking for.’
That exhibitionism seems to have become a constant, something more than just a technique to draw people out. In the end, in a new-media, almost therapeutic way, your work is often about the romantic cliché of the troubled artist wrestling with himself, the crazy genius.
‘A film like Up! (completed in 2005, in which Van Lieshout focussed on his difficult relationship with his mother. XK), bothers me, too. Do all those people really need to sit for a quarter of an hour watching an artist cry? But then I look at it again and think, yes, it works, it grabs you! It is about more than just that personal therapy – which is very important, by the way. I show things about life in a way that resembles life, but isn’t quite, because of the artificiality that comes with making a video work.
My objective is not to make the audience sit for 15 minutes watching an artist cry, but to stake out the lines from there that run through different domains: social, political and cultural. If you judge the work from within a frame of reference of art, it is hard not to think of Bas Jan Ader when you see the crying scenes. That is an art historical reference that evolved very naturally in the work. At the same time, I want the viewer to look at life in a different way, on a more socio-political level.
What does it mean for an individual to have to satisfy all kinds of conditions imposed on him from outside, by society? What are the norms that are required in our behaviour, and how anomalous or aberrant are you when you go beyond the limits, or when you set alternative norms for your own existence? How can you bend the existing rules in order to come closer to ‘real life’? That fascinates me. The films that I made together with my brother, Bart (Respect and Happiness, both from 2003), confronted me with those questions. He is someone who, on his own, just by being different, found alternatives for the realities of our society. Today, he runs a kind of “garden for the senses” for children in Rotterdam.’
Perhaps your exhibitionism can be seen as a means of breaking out and going beyond the barriers of what is generally acceptable? Those moments when you have completely exposed yourself are often toe-curling – gripping and disarming. Do you see that as a way of intensifying the experience of reality, in search of a true ecstasy in the midst of all the artificiality of a society based on spectacle?
‘I am in search of moments of liberation for myself. Then I can just as well use those moments to drag the viewer with me into that vortex. I get something back for breaking those emotional barriers, something great. That is also where the power of a successful video comes from. You try to seek out the moment when the film is stronger than real life, without actually leaving real life behind. This is an interesting field of tension, because reality is always far stronger, much harder than art. You also see this in someone like Elke Krystufek, whom I think is very good. There is also the same kind of intensification of reality in her work. She is not afraid to involve herself and tries to break through social role patterns, or to expose them in a way that crosses the line. I find that extreme approach – not excluding yourself – very interesting.
Extreme behaviour is no new thing in art, but it often has to do with performance, with the execution of a task within a fixed framework. What I find interesting is taking on everyday life with that extreme attitude, which is now a part of me. The artist comes together with his work. In fact, I do not like wild painting at all, but if you are like me and you decide to paint, it is wild painting that comes out. I can’t do anything about that. I would really like to have made Sarah Morris’s video, Los Angeles, but I couldn’t, because I do not have that detachment in me.’
What do you find so good about that film?
‘Everything: the editing, the rhythm, the aesthetics of the imagery. The editing is truly fantastic. It is hair-fine. It is so thin that you can almost hear the DVD spinning, but at the same time, it has depth, because it says a great deal about the way we look at the world – in this case, at Los Angeles, as an artificial place with that whole celebrity circus. It is impossible not to be seduced by the aesthetic of the video. I also find it a very political work, in the same way that I would like to make my own work political. Politics without explicitly talking about politics, but exposing the structures of human behaviour and the consequences they have for the world. In a certain way, like Sarah Morris, I also try to create my own science fiction. It looks like real life, but it is in fact a very strange representation of it.
‘Editing plays a major role in that. During the editing, by introducing changes in camera movement or with certain formal repetitions, for example, of the architecture in the background, or with spoken text, I try to make my work more enigmatic. During the filming, and later in the editing, I try to seek out image combinations that transcend reality and offer something extra. In this sense, it goes beyond documentary. Core van der Hoeven, my permanent editor, plays a very important role in that process. In the editing sessions, we are often at a stand-off. It is a process that is confrontational, full of conflict, but also very organic. He forces me to take a stand, and gives me ideas that I would not otherwise have. I want to tell a story, but so does he, and in the end, a film comes out of it that is right – but at the same time, it is not right. That twist is very important.’
We have only been talking about your video work. You were once known as an angry young painter. What role does painting still play in your work?
‘For me, it all belongs together. I still draw and paint. I am also constantly looking for a balance between the various media. Video is very free for me. When you paint, all the time that you are working you are aware of the history of that medium, of the convention. But the advantage of painting and drawing is that you can isolate the images that you think are good and give them an independent life of their own, one that is much more autonomous than in a video image, which is constantly in motion and transforming itself. Today, it is often the case that the source material or the inspiration for my drawings and paintings comes from my films. I let images that I feel deserve more space for themselves graduate into self-sufficient works of art. The presentations are usually also separate. The videos are shown in a projection room, which is itself also an installation, while the drawings and paintings are often in a separate exhibition, so they assume a certain degree of autonomy.’
The installations in which your videos are shown are always expressly part of the work. Where you used to make free-standing sculptures, your video installations have taken over that role. It becomes a kind of trashy Gesamtkunstwerk. As a viewer, you have to go into a rickety little closet, wondering all the time if you are ever going to get out again.
‘That intimacy is very important for the work. By making the viewer sit on one of those narrow little stools which I build myself, I try to make the intimacy of the video inescapable. If you put in a museum bench, then it is easy for people to just walk on. If they are really not interested, fine, but what I want, in fact, is that when people feel uncomfortable, they still stay and watch. And however my video spaces are constructed, it still comes much closer to a feeling of real life, with all its shortcomings, than the imitation environment of an art institute. I always associate “video art” with that kind of clinical environment: pristine white spaces with prim and proper projections, everything all neat and finished. What I want is for the viewer to find himself a little ill at ease in the middle of the reality of the film. For my exhibition at Boijmans Van Beuningen, in and around the big gallery, I am thinking very seriously about how I can achieve that intimacy.’
Xander Karskens
