"Kratzen, wo es nicht juckt"

Otto Neumaier, Frame, 06 mar/apr 2001, pages 94 - 99

 

Otto Neumaier: On the occasion of your exhibition "Timbuktu" in Vienna you wrote a text in which you express your attitude towards the political situation in Austria as well as to politics in general. But your text seems to be even more a critique of the artists and the artworld with regard to this situation, and you appeal there to the responsibility of the artists which they have forgotten or lost from your point of view.

Kendell Geers: I wrote this text very specifically because there were all those calls for boycotts and a general feeling that one should not exhibit in Austria at this moment in time, because it had suddenly become a political place.I was trying to make the point that every place where I exhibit is a political place. As an artist I always try to be specific about what I do and where I do it, because I think artists should accept responsibility for what they are doing. A work of art is about an exchange with the viewer and I try very much to respect the viewer in a dialogue situation. Of course, there is no ideal viewer. I don't pretend that every viewer is the same. But there are things that everybody has in common like the fact that we are all bodies in space, looking at a work of art, reacting to it from within those bodies. It is from that point of view that I try create works of art that accept responsibility for the presence of those bodies in front of the work.

ON: Respecting the viewer obviously does not imply that you please the viewer. On the contrary, it seems that you have high demands with regard to the viewer, but presumably not every viewer regards this as a kind of respect. Is this a misunderstanding?

KG: Not at all. To respect the viewers does not demand that I amuse them with beautiful asides. My understanding of respect begins with assumption that the viewer is intelligent even if its an emotional intelligence. I try to create works of art that are unsettling so that the viewers become aware of their own construction, ideologically and morally, so that they start thinking about the invention of morality that they embody. Every culture has a different interpretration and thus a different invention of morality so therefor there will be different interpretations of the work. Of course I realise that I am trying to walk along a very thin line. Sometimes I fall over, but I prefer to take the risk of constructing such a situation, embracing the dialogue, and possibly failing, rather than to end up making invisible spaces on the wall that everybody likes because they say and in fact represent a charming nothingness.

ON: In an earlier conversation, you said that what you are doing is to scratch where it doesn't itch. Is this a kind of allusion to our "anaesthetic" way of life?

KG: Its an old Afrikaans expression: "Don't scratch where it does not itch." One of the projects I made was the "occupation" of an old Boer War Fort called Klapperkorp. This work called "Guilty" made the far-right wing very angry with me because they did not want art to slip out into their lives. They gave me a very stern warning that I must not "scratch where it does not itch" adding that if I did "something very " would happen to me. I loved the way the threat was articulated in the form of the aphorism and suddenly realised that they understood my work perfectly. It is precisely what I do, scratching where it does not itch, uncovering that which lies rotting just beneath the surface. That's why I was saying that today we talk about the politics in Austria, but we don't talk about the politics in Great Britain or in the United States, as if they don't have politics, which is nonsense. Of course they've got politics, and of course my exhibits there too are specific. For me it is as political to exhibit in Great Britain as it is to exhibit in Austria. And in each instance I want to engage with the situation, I don't want to end up in a generalization about life or about politics. I am not interested in party politcs because that lets you off the hook because it can be located. No I am interested in the politics of everyday life, the decisions we make to stay alive, the decisions we make to maintain the fragile balance of our existence.

ON: Does this mean that if you had an exhibition now in Great Britain it would be totally different from what you are doing in Austria? Could you even show the same piece at the same time at different places?

KG: What is essential is the point of origin where a work of art gets first exhibited. The birth of a work of art is always a response to a time and a place. The gallery or the museum where it is first shown in a way provides the collaboration that creates the work. After that it gets its own way and it travels around the world losing that specificity, becoming a work of art. So if I made a work for a show today in London it would of course be different from the work in Vienna because I would be responding to an entirely different set of influences.

ON: On the other hand, there are lots of works which were created for a specific situation but are relevant for another time and another place as well.

KG: Sure, because it always gets down to the basic issue of a body in space. It always gets down to the viewer in front of the work of art, and that viewer has politics, and I have politics, and the space has politics. The pathetic thing about the art system is that it has become so homogenous around the world that ts quite easy to predict the ways in which a work of art will be used by different viewers coming from very different backgrounds and contexts. I do however try to use the reality of the environment to construct a context, a situation, which finally is communicating with the viewer about their own mortality, their own fragility, their own fears, their own desire, their own paranoia. The things that cause these fears may have changed over the centuries, but the fears are all the same. In this way I see my work being very connected to that of the seventeenth century Vanitas paintings for instance. I think that in the past people were aware of death far more than they are today, because it was so much more apparent, people died much younger and much more easily, whereas we now live these contained lives. It fascinates me that hospitals and art galleries have become so similar. They look the same: they are both white, clean, sterile, and they are the only two places left in the world where people still speak in whispers. People don't speak in whispers in church anymore. This has to do with quarantene and with isolation. In hospitals of course it is as a result of the emotional content of the place, the fear that you could catch death, that death could be contagious. And in galleries, I think, it's the fear that reality could be contagious. Every time I go to an opening I cannot help thinking I am at some funeral with all these people wearing their sombre black suits and speaking in whispers about each other.

ON: So the White Cube gives us the feeling of being separated from real life. Presumably, this contradicts your idea of responsibility of art and artists. The assumption that artists should take responsibility for what they do can be interpreted in many different ways, however. For instance, when Monet painted his water lilies during the first World War, one can say that he was in some sense reponsible for his doing and his work, but we could also ask how an artist could just paint water lilies in face of such a cruel war.

KG: Well, he took a position. It is possible to discuss the merits of his position, but at least he took a position. He didn't stand in the middle and say: "I don't care." It wasn't about apathy or about invisible space which art has become today where it doesn't really matter what you make. You can make anything and call it art, and it's fine. A blue stripe on a yellow wall is art –fine, why not? And we can all then pretend that this is interesting. But for me, it becomes apathetic. It's about not taking a position. When I talk about responsibility, what I mean is the necessity of crossing the border between the gallery space and the daily part of our lives. When we cross the road, we make a decision or take a position. When we live in life, we take positions. But the second we walk into the gallery, the White Cube, we suddenly don't take positions anymore.

ON: You emphasize many times the responsibility of artists in general and your own responsibility in particular. On the other hand, you got the image of being a terrorist and anarchist, a rebel and I don't know what. Is this a contradiciton or is there something like a responsible terrorist? Is it a matter of your responsibility to act as a terrorist?

KG: All terrorists are responsible. That's why they are terrorists. Terrorists are just people who believe in something so much that they resort to violence to try and change the system as it exists, because every other means of change has failed. Discussions and negotiations have failed and therefore they resort to an armed struggle. Like terrorism, anarchy is not about having no responsibility, but a conscious decision to object to the abuse of power, by every means neccesary. I think in that sense I probably am an anarchist.

ON: There is a difference between the situation of South Africa when you started doing art and got your "honorary titles", and the present situation in the so-called Western world where you are still called that way. I can imaginethat it is a matter of responsibility to oppose in a specific society. Of course, we have also occasions for opposition in Austria, in Germany, in Great Britain and so on, but the situation is different.

KG: Yes and no. I grew up in the time of apartheid and through my political activities I developed a relationship with art. I was an anti-Apartheid activist on the one hand but still I ended up making art. You can do so much more with art than with politics. In a sense I have been using politics to try to make art more complicated, to extend the frames of reference but I must insist that I do not make political art. Politics is one one element of my work that is as present in my art as it is in my life. It is my response to the cold conceptualism of the 70's. Through politics I learnt certain intellectual skills that today I continue to use. These strategies are about resisting the homogenisation of the world by Hollywood or so-called globalisation or the americanization of the globe. Its really important for me that we try to resist the desire for the whole planet to all become the same and all have the same American value system. I do believe that art is a very valid place through which to question the construction of the world.

ON: Actually, when I entered your room at the MAK in Vienna for the first time, independentlyof my emotional reaction, I got two associations: One was a memory of my work during vacation when I studied. This was at an antiquarian bookshop which was next to a slaughterhouse. Every morning was filled with the squealing of the pigs, and then you could see the halves hanging there and so on. This was a very strange experience. My other association was caused by the title of your work, however, which is "Song of the Pig". This reminded me of a Beatles' song of 1968 (the year of your birth as an artist) about the "Little Piggies". And this, of course, creates a bridge between their political attitude and the political situation in the sixties, with the Vietnam war and so on, which is probably not so much different from our situation today. But what is more important, the piggies or the screams?

KG: This is a wonderful observation and interpretation. It a huge compliment when works of art allow the space for your own private memories, your own associations, a space where your own history gets implicated, where the work of art becomes a catalyst. That's precisely the dialogue that I was speaking about. It would be too easy to make a text on the wall saying, for instance, that Haider is a fascist. When the work of art becomes an emotional catalyst you are forced to think more carefully about your own role in the problem. Even though its possible that everybody could have a different response, the appearance, structure and function of the bags, the way they are exhibited, open with these wounds, it is possible to predict certain kinds of reactions.

ON: It's an inside-outside problem, because on the one hand you can see it as wounds, but on the other hand you also get the feeling that you could be inside the bags.

KG: That's why they are open. If they were closed, you would be safe. If they are open, this means that they are waiting to be filled, they are going to devour something very soon. In this sense, the meaning of our life is to fill the body bags. Finally we all end up filling a body bag at some point in time. You can procrastinate, you can deny it, but it eventually does happen.

ON: Well, it's a necessity, but the ways may be different. And apparently your work has to be seen before the background of some cruel ways.

KG: That's why there are sixty body bags, and not one. One body bag would be about individual death, but sixty is about a large group of people. This creates a totally different sense than would even five or ten. Sixty is a large number of people, it's a massacre.

ON: For some time at least, you used to withhold the title of a work, although there was a kind of title within brackets. Your installation in Vienna, however, has even two titles, that is, "Timbuktu" and "Song of the Pig". How about this?

KG: There are two ways of speaking about how language manipulates us. One is to deny it, to withhold it, the other way is to have an excess of it. So what is the title? Is it "Timbuktu" or is it "Song of the Pig"? I mean, it's one thing with two names, and that's precisely the idea of "Title Withheld", because by saying "withheld" you're actually not withholding, you are giving a title. It's a kind of contradiction. I still work with the "Title Withheld" system depending on the work. More recently, my works have developed references to literature and popular culture. In think it began with that aphorism about scratching where it does not itch. Many of the recent titles have been drawn from the names of books like "My Traitor's Heart", "The Beautiful Ones and Not Yet Borns" or "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" or popular culture like "Strange Fruit". This is in a way acknowledging the important role of on the one hand high theory and literature in my thinking, but at the same time also acknowledging the influence of popular culture too, the language of the streets. These references are noted as the keys to understanding the work being presented. I use "Title Withheld" for very specific reasons with very specific works, and with other works the more poetic titles. But the poetry is always loaded, as with"Song of the Pig". What makes me so happy about the way you understood this work is precisely that I chose that specific title for a simple reason: have you ever heard a pig sing? Pigs don't sing, they squeal. And they squeal most loudly when they are at the slaughterhouse. That was the idea I wanted to conjure up with this work: the open body bag becomes a mouth, squealing. It's the opposite of "Silence of the Lambs". Standing in that space I always think about the huge volume of noise that is filling that room, but that you cannot hear. I would not have been able to do with "Title Withheld".

ON: At least some of your "T.W." or "Title Withheld" pieces seem also to allude to and make use of Duchamp's idea of the ready-made. On the other hand, you also criticize the idea of the ready-made and what the art world has made out of it.

KG: My criticism of Duchamp and the ready-made was that he stopped. He didn't want to take it forward to the next step. He simply left it at that point as a process of selection. ON: What is the role of humour in your work? KG: There is a very dominant strain of black humour in just about every piece I have ever made. Humour is another way to talk about difficult subjects or issues that are in some way taboo. The court jester is able to say things to the king which nobody can. In many ways artists are the only other social animal that has the same liscence. I am using black humour in the sense that Andre Breton spoke about it. Strangely enough his understanding of "humour noir" was in a very racist way. When he invented the term for his book "Anthology of Black Humour" he decided on the term to describe the antics of African people behaving like clowns, possesing a freedom europeans don't have. As a white African person, I am a living example of black humour, because I don't fit into Africa, and this not-fitting makes me a bad joke. And from that starting point I create works of art that are bad jokes.

ON: Would you say that black humour is the right attitude towards life in general?

KG: No, not for everybody, but for me personally it's the only way that I can stay sane. Black humour is not cynicism. I'm not cynical. Cynicism is a trap, because when you become cynical you are very close to despair. There is no way out, whereas black humour is a way to speak about very important things in a socially almost acceptable way. I'm talking with humour about very serious issues.

ON: Black humour seems to be recommendable for artists in general and contemporary artists in particular, maybe even more for African artists. What I mean is that you oppose the system, you oppose the power, but you can't escape the system, you can't escape the power, the political power, the power of the art world and so on. So in some sense you are trapped.

KG: No, I'm not trapped, because I don't want to escape. I don't have to make art, I can always walk away from it if I really wanted to. But I don't because that would be too easy and too gentle on the institution. If I disappeared the institution would not have to deal with me any longer. So I don't want to escape, I want to stay in the museum, in the institution and be the thorn, be the itch in the institution.

ON: Is it correct to say that you instrumentalize the art world to communicate the itch? In some sense, you live within the art world and one aspect of this life is that you have an exhibition here and a show there, and hopefully you also sell something to collectors and museums. But this is not the main thing. You rather use this existence for the goal of communicating the scratch or the itch.

KG: Sure. The art institution, the art system is a necessary evil within my life, but I have never tried to play up to the art world. For me it's about a process of thinking, of questioning the world I live in, of trying to unpack or to decode the human being. Fortunately I exist and therefore I am my own subject and object. It's about unpacking myself, my own emotions, ideologies, prejudices, fears, or paranoia. I watch myself in situations, I put myself into situations in order to watch myself in order to then understand that I should make something, to make a notation.

ON: But this implies that you have to expose yourself to a very high degree, which makes you quite unsafe.

KG: Sure, I do. It's very important for me that life comes before art, that living and exposing myself to things is a process that happens in my life and in my world. This process is absolutely necessary because I don't believe that I can make art if I have not experienced those things. You can't talk about the smell of something if you never had that smell. So what you see and experience in my work is there because I experienced it first in another way and then had it translated into art. Sometimes, you get a bad translation, but that's OK I will continue trying. My work is a by-product of my living. Art is not a reason for living, it's a by-product of living.