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JM: Somehow,
yes.
FE: So,
with your tower installation, you went exactly the
opposite way. You went from coolness, and being hip,
and the posters, into your direction, into you, that
is, a path, if you describe going from the first tower
that we saw in the image to the second?
JM: Total
necessity. It was totally necessary, because otherwise,
it would have ended. The whole thing. That was the only
way out. I mean, there are not many ways out for me
anyway, and it’s very difficult for what, I could
puke very often onto myself. It is so difficult and so
hard to realize what you want. And, uh, there, for
example, when I started this with the pop images and
everything was so full of images and everything, people
often came to me and said, “Ah, wonderful. That
is really super cool.” And it fitted into
the history of art. But I don’t believe in the
history of art, because I think that everything that is
right has no history. It is always the same point that
it comes to.
FE: For
someone who doesn’t believe in history, you talk
a lot about figures from history.
JM: Yeah,
but I think they are all the same.
SB: And
also cultural history. I actually want to step back for
a minute and talk about talk about the iconography in
your work in relation to this idea of authenticity. And
yet you, in terms of making an avatar for yourself, or
a kind of fantasy image for yourself in your work, you
are drawn to people like Joe Dallesandro, or Sean
Connery’s Zed in John Boorman’s film Zardoz
(1974), who is a futuristic man. He is a play-acting of
this idea. Or Emma Peel, who is all about being unreal
in a way. She is all about being a fantasy. Can you
talk about that difference? What the fantasy figure
means to you in relation to your interest in
authenticity ... realness?
JM: In
fact, I don’t believe in authenticity and
realism. This is also a very weak language and
expression, because when you are an artist you are
never authentic. In relation to art you are always an
actor. Because art is in the hierarchy, it’s not
touchable. I think that the artist is totally un-free.
Always, and that is his free-ness. That is his freedom.
Because the only thing that is totally free is art. And
the art as a god takes me when it loves to take me. And
it also destroys me when it loves to destroy me.
Without any reason. This is what I love about art -
that it doesn’t care. That’s why I am never
authentic. Because it doesn’t come from me.
It’s not important what I do, it’s
important what the art wants me to do. But it does it
without rules.
SB: So
your objects are using you in a sense.
JM: Yes.
Hopefully ...
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SB: And
then could these figures be a vehicle for, whatever it is
that their meaning is? Does Emma Peel function in the same
way?
JM: She
is a god unto herself. That’s what I love.
That’s what makes her important. She
doesn’t give us anything, and she doesn’t
take. She is what she is, finished. And I try to find
these people who have no, who are absolutely what they
are, nothing else. And that is why for me they are
always the same. That is why there is no history
existing for me. For me Wagner is the same person as
Caligula, Caligula is the same person as Klaus Kinski.
SB: How
does Zardoz fit into this, because I would think that
James Bond would be a little bit more iconographic than
Zardoz.
JM: Zardoz
is the figure. For me it is the most appropriate god
that has ever shown his face on this earth.
SB: What
is the combination of things that makes him so?
JM: Um
... his ruthlessness and his love, because he
doesn’t love us. That’s what I love. He
doesn’t care. That is what I want a god to be. A
god not to care. This is what I need for my fantasy
world. I live in a naïve world. Fantasy. I want a
god not to care.
FE: Um,
we all have our own preoccupations, right? And what
strikes me is that theanguage that you use to describe
your relationship to art could almost be verbatim a
language that, say, an early reformer, like Martin
Luther, used to speak about God, or a mystic like
Meister Eckhart used to speak about God, and about this
deep suspicion of autonomy, of making yourself a
principle, of closing off, against an outside source
that is stronger, more powerful, more meaningful, more
truthful. And so to you — something like
coolness, or pop, is that a kind of closing off to that
outside force, to the outside truth?
JM: Yes,
yes. It’s maybe a necessary stage, and it’s
also funny sometimes...
FE: I
really, I’m going to interrupt you, I’m
sorry, when you say “stage,” that’s a
history, right?
JM: Yes.
FE: So
there is a development, but there is no history.
JM: Yes,
exactly. It’s a Schein-development. Pseudo.
It’s also why we use art history to make
something sweeter and more consumable. I think there is
no history. There is nothing that is not. We always
want to give things names, like “Concept”
art, or this art and I don’t know what, like
Cubism or something. I think this is all rubbish.
|
Stalker Trish Goff by Richard Kern
team work Sam Bean (Iron & Wine) interviews Joey Burns
(Calexico) on music and their collaborative album
art of view Portfolio Currated by Michael Clifton with texts
by Alissa Bennett
uncover Overview on Colorado based musician David Eugene
Edwards
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FE: So
art like the Old Testament God, who says “I am
who I am.”
JM: Yeah.
FE: And
you are looking to those iconographic figures for, well
you can’t really say a representation of that,
but for an expression of that. That they are what they
are.
JM: Yes,
they are what they are. And Concept art doesn’t
exist because art is its own concept anyway. It makes
no sense. Also to use private myths. For example, this
is something that many people say about what I do, that
I talk about my private myths. But myths are never
private. So this is only used to make us insecure, and
to make us small, and to make everything suitable in
terms on consumption. I think art is so big or so small
that you can’t consume it anyway, and so
it’s not necessary to use words to describe this.
It’s better to accept that something is art, and
something is not.
FE: And
so the opposite is
State Satanism.
JM: State
Satanism. Yeah, [laughs] but nobody really knows what
that is. The question of what a state is, is the most
important thing for me, absolutely. And this is anyway,
my ... something that I want to know. Uh ... I think in
what we live nowadays is no state.
FE: What
is it?
JM: I
think it’s the obscenity of harmlessness.
[Laughs]
FE: Obscenity
of harmlessness?
JM: We live in something, we
can’t even call this a country. There is no word
for this harmlessness existing, in what we are living.
There are no enemies at all at the moment. This is
really crazy for me.
FE: Enemies
for you.
JM: For
me, or for everything. Because everything is so weak. I
mean, this is something that everybody knows, but I
think there is something else behind it. And we have to
give the state the respect to be what it wants to be.
The state is a totally independent figure. And we
always want to say what the state has to be. We never
let it be what it wants to be. Which could also mean
very difficult times for us. But if we let the state be
what it wants to be, then after a while we will be in a
very interesting situation.
SB: What
will the situation be?
JM: I
don’t know yet, because we’ve never allowed
it. We always try to find some explanations that we
need a democracy or we need a dictatorship or
something. It’s all rubbish, I think. Let it just
run.
SB: So
if your iconography and the world you are building is
about a leveling of history or making transparent this
kind of iconographic weakness, or equality, and you are
a vehicle for this work to speak, to come alive, are
you in some way trying to create this rupture for the
new? The new state of being? What do you hope to
achieve by transforming these objects or becoming a
vessel for these objects?
JM: First
of all, I would love for somebody else to do what I do
because then I could sleep. I mean, I just, I would be
very happy if someone else would do this but on the
other hand what I want
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is to be drawn into a radical
situation. I want that somebody comes and says to me,
“Here, I am totally radical. Uh ... Jonathon, what do
you have to say to that? What is your response to my
radicalism that is so strong that it will kill you in a few
months or weeks?”
FE: Would
you recognize that in a statement that says it’s
about going from a state of being undead to being
alive?
JM: Yes,
that could be, yeah.
FE: What
strikes me is that in fields outside of art, like in
philosophy, one would say this is like anarchy.
It’s the attempt to make man or woman understand
that we are not the principle of our being, that it
comes from the outside. That it is not autonomy, it is
heteronomy.
JM: Yes.
FE: That
it comes from the outside.
JM: Yes,
it comes from the outside.
FE: And
you, when you think about the state, for example, you
want an objectifying experience of that outside.
JM: Yes.
SB: A
state that is stronger than you.
JM: Yeah,
and also that is stronger than everybody. Nowadays we
always want to minimize the risk of everything.
It’s an escape from real danger. To get drugs or
something, that’s too easy, I think. This is too
personal. This is something the state wants you to do,
in fact. They want you to be involved in these
childish, not really strong, strong-ness-making things.
This is something, in fact, the state wants. This is
what is called state nowadays.
SB: The tone of your current
exhibition is completely different than this
conversation we are having. It is extremely playful. I
asked you before about rock music and staging and you
said that that also was staging and repetition and
therefore less interesting, and you just put out a
record, Johnny! [Laughs]
JM: [sadly]
Yes, I know
[giggles].
SB: What’s
up with that?
JM: It’s
somehow …
SB: It’s
a contradiction!
JM: It’s
not only that, it’s also a trap. But I have to
take it.
SB: Why
do you have to take it?
JM: Because
otherwise I’m too bored. I can’t ...
FE: Waiting
for God is too boring?
JM: Yes.
It’s too, too, too boring. I make so many
mistakes at the moment, it’s crazy.
SB: And
part of this is re-understanding where God could be?
An exploration? Research, perhaps,
into God?
JM: [laughing]
Yeah, but this is also not really possible.
SB: Really?
|
tribute A style tribute to the Black Panthers
pass the buck Collaborative presentation of Andros Wekua by
Rita Ackermann
connection A conversation between film makers Gaspar
Noé (Irreversible) and Hubert Sauper (Darwin’s
Nightmare)
perspective Interview with Imitation of Christ’s Tara
Subkoff, followed by fashion images by Richard Kern
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JM: [laughing]
Because he takes you whenever he likes!
SB: God
does?
JM: Yeah.
SB: How
so? That’s very sexy.
JM: Yeah.
Uh. Yeah, but that’s okay. But, uh. You could
wait, like he said, wait sleeping, or you can do just
rubbish things, you can do just what you are doing and
sometimes I did quite good things, and now more and
more traps come. More and more silly things. More and
more.
SB: Hmm.
What is your relationship to the adolescent girl?
JM: To
the adolescent girl?
SB: The
teenage girl.
Do you identify with her at all?
JM: Yes,
of course.
SB: How so?
FE: Because
she gets taken!
[laughter]
JM: Because
she has the power
I never have.
SB: How
so?
JM: I
don’t know!
SB: What
is the power of
the teenage girl?
JM: Nobody
knows it, but it is there.
SB: It’s
an unnamable thing?
JM: I
don’t know.
SB: Is
it desire?
JM: Nooo.
What I like about these ... you mean teenage girls,
yeah? What I love about them is they are totally
independent, they are really what they are, they have
their own rules that will never be discovered. Nobody
can write down these rules that are in their brains.
When they are exactly what they are. And this is
something so strong. This is the strongest weapon in
the whole world.
SB: They
are a state of anarchy in a sense? Embodied in a
person?
JM: Yes.
If they are what they are. But that you never know. I
think only from one hundred million teenage girls, one
has this quality, to be exactly the mirror of herself.
SB: Did
you ever know one, like when you were in high school,
who embodied this for you?
JM: Uhhh,
somehow.
SB: Can
you describe her? You don’t have to name a name.
JM: [laughs]
I thought that she could have been that. But she was
not young enough, in fact.
SB: Can
you describe this girl to me? Did she live in your
town?
JM: Near.
Near. Near the town
SB: What
kind of clothes did she wear?
JM: Ummm.
Never looked at them.
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SB: You
never looked at them.
You are lying!
JM: No!
No!
SB: Tell
me about her shoes!
JM: No
idea! [laughs]
FE: Did
you see all the places where you could see her skin?
JM: I
have never seen her skin.
I wanted to, but I never have.
FE: So
it’s a state of corruption.
JM: Yeah,
yeah.
FE: That
you would like to inhabit yourself.
JM: Yes.
And that’s one human
possibility.
FE: To
be a teenage girl.
JM: Yes.
One direction. One way to show a real definite total
law of humanity. That’s a total law. What is
established there in these faces. When they are real.
This cannot be bought, this is not shown in a building.
I mean you have the pyramids, which are maybe the same
as the face of a teenage girl, or you have the Holy
Grail, or gold.
FE: This
reminds me, maybe I am totally off track, but this
reminds me of Pasolini talking about the criminal, or
talking about the young gay
trickster, using the world for his
pleasure, or for his survival and pleasure. Is that
something that you would relate that to?
JM: Yeah.
Somehow. Also in the person of Pasolini everything is
done. Fulfilled in the way I love it. In the films of
his, especially the last one, it’s a bible. This
last one, Salò ...
FE: Well,
but isn’t, in fact, Salò (is) a kind of
step backward from the hope, from the promise of that?
Isn’t that a much more, like a negative utopia?
Dystopia?
JM: It’s
maybe the acceptance of failure for him ... but
it’s the figures that are shown in this film.
They are partly gods. Especially the one man who is
shown in this film. The face of this one man. The
president.
FE: There
have been readings of Pasolini’s work which say,
precisely in the last film the promise of substance
change or of bodily change, for example as in Decameron
or in other films, was reneged upon. That he was
pessimistic in this last film about the possibility of
freedom, of expression. What would you say about that?
JM: Maybe
that’s a very human way of looking at your own
things that have gone through you. But I must say this
film is a high level — a very high level.
Like A Clockwork Orange, or, the Marquis de Sade, There
are sometimes these very delicate, and very important
law books. For me this Marquis de Sade is a law book.
It is a book for society. It is a state book. It shows
how a perfect state could be. But they never tried to
establish this state because they are too afraid.
[pause as tape is changed]
FE: Jonathan
just asked me if I believe my phone is being tapped by
the police. I said no. Then he said, well, what did you
say? He would like his phone to be tapped.
JM: Yes,
I would like for my phone to be tapped. Totally. I
think this is very necessary.
SB: To
be tapped? Why?
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Andros Wekua inspired collages by Rita
Ackermann
