Jonathan Meese: Saal is a very important word, because it means “hall.” Everything started in a hall — all revolutions started in a hall, like in Richard Wagner it’s this “Saal” where Hagen von Tronje is sitting in front to protect the hall. Adolf Hitler was also in this Brauhauskeller, which is a hall, too. It’s always a room, or a temple: this space where something happens. Felix Ensslin: Saalbefreiung, the liberation of the hall. JM: I don’t want to give so many explanations. It’s just, uh, for me this word is somehow something that you put everything next to. Saalbefreiung, Saalgott, Saalfreiheit, Saalbibel. Like this word Erz — arch — you can also connect everything, Erzmenschen, Erznahrung ... Sue de Beer: Okay, let me just check that this is recording ... FE: Our interest in you and your work came out of talking about your installations in staging a play and creating stage sets, so it is interesting to hear that right now you are working in the theater in collaboration with the director Frank Castorf at the Volksbuhne in Berlin. SB: Is this your first set, or have you done this before? JM: I have only done it for myself. I mean, all these installations are somehow stages, in fact, where I also performed and did my things, but this is the first time for somebody else. SB: Does each installation usually have a performance? Do you build the installations for the performance? JM: Not all of them, but if I feel fine and the situation is ripe, then I can do something there ... to make it a temple, to make it suitable for the situation. SB: And how is it different building a piece for an actual theater rather than building one for exhibition? JM: Um, uh, my first idea was totally, ah, without connection to the theater. I just did what I wanted to do, and I gave this idea, this, this Eiserne Kreuz (seen below), an iron cross in the theater.

And I didn’t think about the rest. But then, now I have to think about the rest, and it’s quite hard because you have to convince all the people who are involved. But this is okay for me because I like somehow this being a slave. I think this is fine. SB: Can you talk a little bit about this longing for passivity, Jonathan? JM: Um ... for me this is ...  um ... I need this to relax a little bit again, because I was so much on power, and energy, wasting energy, that I am a bit tired at the moment. And I need somebody who I can look up to and say, okay, I believe in what you are doing, and I can do something for you. This is so nice. It is also hard but in a different way. I really respect Castorf because I think he is a genius and marvelous and can bring me something that is important for my life, and I want to be his slave, his good slave, and I want to do something that is good and suitable for the situation. And that’s … what makes me ... happy. SB: And your exhibition at CFA [“Curry Expo,” which ran from March 23 to April 16, 2004, is a collaborative exhibition. Was this also part of this drive to have another kind of energy through your work? JM: Yes. To involve people because before, I mean, not working with other people meant that I had to do everything. That was also good because I have some, some strong wishes and some, some strong laws to tell people, but this makes you very empty after a while. And I did ... I mean ... performances between 1998 and 2000, and then I stopped for three years because it was so exhausting to do everything. And now I’m starting again a little bit. I had a pause of three years. SB: When did you go back to performing? JM: Right now, I am so confused that I can’t think of what happened last year ... It was six or eight months ago or something, that I also had the feeling that I had to do something on stage again — to shout, or to do things. It was in ... I had a performance in Munich … but also to do it with someone, with Bazon Brock, a theoretical ... FE: A theoretician. A performing theoretician one could say, hmm?

JM: Yeah. But also an artist, a strong person and tyrant, and really a god of his own quality. It is really important for me to work with these totally independent people who do what they want. And, umm...And now I also feel that if this all works out maybe I will have a chance to make a performance in this building one evening in the Volksbuhne. FE: Would you be doing it alone, or would you have the actors and actresses who would normally be in the play there and you could maybe spontaneously direct them, or be with them, or use them in some way? JM: It’s not yet decided. I mean, I would love to do something alone, because alone I am always the best. This is something I know. But I would also take the chance or would like to take the chance, to use, or to work with the actors because some of them are really very, very good. And I know them, and I would love this. Also, I mean, it is a question of taking risks, and doing something new. I mean, some artist friends—I think they are horrified that I am doing a stage project because they think it’s a kind of treason to ... first of all work for somebody else, and then to go into theater, because theater is meant to be the worst of all things you can do. SB: Do you see acting as at all related to performance? Or how does the performer compare to, you know, to the actor? JM: It’s really different because the actor always repeats, or has to repeat, and as a performer, I had the wish, uh, always to surprise myself with something totally different. And also really take the risk of doing something stupid. SB: Do you script your performances? JM: No. No. SB: Do you ever rehearse them? JM: No. SB: Do you ever do multiple performances in the same installation space? JM: No, never. It’s more an initiation for the room that I build. It’s nothing for the public, and also not really for me. It’s for the thing. Für die Sache —  for the room, for the temple. The room always tells me whether the performance was a success or not. FE: So it’s a kind of Weiung? JM: Yes, it’s a Weiung. Absolutely. SB: Now you have to translate that word for the American audience. [laughs] FE: In the context of our culture it’s, uh ... it’s mostly connected with a religious rite that denotes a building, or even a human being, or somebody into an office, right? Like a priest would come and say this church is now geweiht. Unfortunately I don’t know the English term. SB: Uh, consecration. FE: Yeah, consecration. Consecrate. That’s it. And it’s deeply connected to the idea of formation, transubstantiation, something that changes its substance by being consecrated. JM: Yes. FE: That’s your relation to the space? And the installations too,

right? It changes its substance? JM: Yes. It uh ... The substance itself shows me whether I presented the thing appropriately, or not. It can tell me. FE: So it can fail? JM: To me, it can say it failed, yes. Because when it’s a success there always comes a point where I can’t see anything but, I don’t know ... I can’t say what I see but I don’t see, I am in a situation where the things only come to me, and where I am the filter, the total ... the medium. It sounds very, I mean ... FE: It sounds ecstatic. It makes me think of mystical traditions. JM: Yes. FE: Which is what ecstasy means, right? To stand outside of yourself. And I am interested in to what degree do you think of that transubstantiation, changing the substance? Is that a metaphorical process to you, like this space means something different? Or is it a literal process? JM: I think it’s both. It comes together, and it says, now it’s done, and it’s worth it that it was done. Um … Yeah, it’s a kind of positioning, the thing and not me, it’s not important. Um ... It’s also ... I want this moment where there is a high risk that you say something very bad. This is what I love. To really come to the edge of something. SB: ... which could lead to bad language, or bad thoughts. JM: Yes, really bad thoughts. But where, and also this is very logical, these bad thoughts, not just saying something, it has its own logic. FE: It comes out of a development that forces it as a consequence, and not as a posture. JM: Yes. Exactly, yeah. FE: Do you know the movie, Fight Club? JM: Yes. FE: Would you connect this idea of doing violence to yourself to free yourself … ? JM: No. It’s freedom for the thing. Not for the human being. FE: That is interesting. JM: Yes, because without freedom for the thing, freedom for the people is not possible. This is the first door to open. It is not you as a person—it is not my wishes, and ideas, and my state of being. My state of being is not important. It’s another direction that is much more difficult and much more ‘albern’. FE: Unserious, in the sense of not being officially serious. JM: Yeah. It’s somehow very uncool. Fighting in this is cool. But what I would love to do is not cool. That’s also the attack, the criticism which I will often hear, that what I do is not real, it’s too stupid and too, ... FE: Then, in those criticisms there is an equation between coolness and being real.  continue