metropolis m

‘The crux of the exhibition is that in every case, it is about so-called “key works”. You have to have certain knowledge or information in order to understand the works, that is why I am calling the exhibition Code Inconnu. You have to know the code in order to gain access to the works. Instead of the idea that “art is for everyone”, my motto is “not all art is for everyone”. The assumption that the viewer and the artist speak the same language is an idee fixe; the moments when they “understand” each another are based on coincidence.’

‘Among others, Proxy and The Prophets. Proxy is a performance in which a girl – you could see her as representing the “public” – has to stay in a given exhibition gallery for as long as the space is open to the public. You could say that her cultural entertainment has been turned into “cultural punishment”. There are two spaces: one where the performance takes place and one where you can watch a videotape showing an earlier performance of Proxy. Because the visitor cannot be in two rooms at the same time, he cannot determine whether what he is watching is real time or recorded time. This creates confusion about the time you are experiencing and the time you are perceiving. You cannot verify the situation. You just have to accept it.

In The Prophets, two young, attractive men distribute copies of predictions for the next 24 hours to museum visitors. They are simple predictions, that a tour will take place in the museum at such and such a time, that the departure times for trains are so and so, that this or that film will be shown that evening. It is a kind of low level or indeed self-fulfilling prophecy. You can see this as a “useful” work, a service on the part of the museum, but on the other hand, it also has a frightening aspect to it, because the future is being dictated. What is important in these works is that they are bound to the elements of duration, situation, the course of things. These works have a broad presence and are linked to the time before and the time after the encounter in the museum.’

‘It is not about their implementation. I write the instructions, but do not know the results. What concerns me is that in our daily lives, we continually get the impression that we can choose but in fact there is nothing to choose. “Mind the gap”, “Today, this bus will not stop at…”, “Visit our sports department”, and so on. Even if you do not want to act or even to listen, all these signals mean that we live in an atmosphere of instructions.’

‘It is an investigation. I am aware of this phenomenon and find it interesting to investigate what its conditions are. What is important for me is to emphasize that The Glass Wall in all its variations is a story and both the individuals in the work know they are acting. But what is remarkable, as in The Glass Wall (video version 2003), is that a hierarchy immediately comes into play. One of the actors becomes so harsh to the other that the latter is pushed to the limit and considers stopping because she no longer accepts the instructions. At the same time, this actress is confused about whether the instruction she is receiving are part of the script -of the superego of the artist- so she keeps postponing her decision because she thinks it’s all “part of the act”.

For me, the investigative character is fundamental, so in this sense, it is important that I only indicate the general rules of the game in order to see what will happen. It is about creating an intense situation. Everyone is aware of the regulated world we live in, others as much as I am. One of my favourite works relating to this is Forever. I have a contract with FRAC Lorraine in Metz so that I can have a web cam running permanently in one of the exhibition galleries. In principle, the agreement is that for my whole life I will have access by way of the camera to follow what happens in that room. The only condition on their part is that I cannot use photographs where the people in the image are recognizable. Each year for the next five years, a book will be published with a selection of the photographs. In the S.M.A.K. exhibition, that space from the FRAC can by seen on a monitor.’

‘Nothing! What is interesting is what Forever means within the relationship between an artist and an institution, what “forever” means in art, the assumption that a work of art is for always, that it has life eternal. This work is a meditation about the concept of eternity in art. There is absolutely nothing interesting about the photographs. Eternity is boring, so the photographs are also boring. At the S.M.A.K., I am showing Forever in relation to a video that I found at the In Der Runden Ecke Museum in Leipzig, a museum housed in the former Stasi headquarters in Leipzig now in charge of the Stasi heritage. It has a similar quality to Forever because in such videos absolutely nothing happens. The golden rule of surveillance in totalitarian states is that the person looking at the video is not allowed to know what he is looking for or why he should even be looking. Indeed, everything is suspect. If the surveillant were instructed about what he should be looking for, then the intensity of his ability to notice things would be reduced. So, if you do not know what you are paying attention to, everything becomes meaningful, and everything in principle becomes “punishable” (as in the Stasi video) or “interesting” (as in Forever). For me, both videos are involved in a comparable kind of investigation. Forever is moreover about turning around the traditional order of artist, art, institute and public. I want to reverse that order, start with the public.’

‘Michael Haneke said that in his film, Code Inconnu, he wanted to make clear how complex the exchange of messages has become in our society. I have titled the exhibition Code Inconnu, referring to a public that is a complex and unknown quantity. Unlike what many would have you believe, there is a discontinuity between artist and public, there is no continuum between the maker and the recipient. Everything is dependent on the circumstances. It is naive to think that every visitor will pick up the same thing from a work. There are so many factors at work which influence the way something is read and appreciated, that the way the public and the work of art meet is almost more important than the work’s physical reality. For me it has become more and more important to consider the work’s environmental factors, than the actual object or thing itself. I have no problem with my work being ephemeral though as a young artist, I did suffer from it. At the academy, it was seen as too experimental, so they said I should just go into theatre. When I started Inserts in Real Time, I wanted to make performances for which the public was not asked to come at a specific time to watch something that would last a specific amount of time. On the contrary, these are performances that you can simply run into: a surprise encounter. I like the confusion you can find yourself in as a member of the public, because it evokes tension and commands attention. I interfere with it as little as possible.’

‘Everything is performance except birth and death, because they cannot be done twice.’