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81
31 — # 08/09 (Dezember 2006)
Das Magazin des Instituts für Theorie
der Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich (ith)
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different kind of sense. The films are a
different way to ask different questions,
and the multi-media answers are more
complex than simple writing can ever
be.
SL The way the art lovers speak about
art in those ArtClips — one could think
of that as a performative perception of
art: a flow of analytical, yet very subjective
thoughts.
What was your original interest in producing
these ArtClips as audience interaction?
Were the art lovers involved in
the research project and thus coached
(i.e. introduced to or familiar with the
interdisciplinary methods of art theory)
before giving their ‹monologues› in
front of the artworks? Do you understand
their speech as «doing theory»?
How does the «Werkanalyse» in front of
the camera differ to the one on paper?
Does the actual presence of the artwork
influence the interpretation? Do these
Clips exemplify your theory of the role
of the art work as an active producer of
the viewer’s subjectivity, the notion of
knowledge as active production? Could
you elaborate on the interrelation between
the subject (the viewer) and the
object (the art work) as well as the role
of the camera in it?
MB The speakers in the clips were not
coached, and they were not involved in
the project. I just asked them to show
up at the location at a certain point in
time. For me, their lack of involvement
in my project was crucial: only then
would I be able to learn something new.
For example, the ArtClips, which I
made when in the middle of writing
academic pieces on art, have shown me
beyond the shadow of a doubt that people
looking at artworks can be provoked
to put their responses into words
and thereby come up with astonishingly
profound ideas. The ability of viewers
to both bypass and benefit from
insights that circulate in criticism and
in academic art history, to connect what
they see with real-life issues without
reducing the art work to a document,
and to say what moves them is important.
No library book will teach me this.
I don’t think the earliest clips are that
good, but the later ones do convey this
convincingly.
The series was meant to offer an
alternative to the expert explaining art
on television. I wanted to stage the
empowered viewer. To legitimate the
personal and the subjective as more
rather than less directly connected with
the art work seemed a valid project.
This was the original motivation. The
characters in the films were not coached
or in any way involved in my
research. On the contrary, I tried to find
people who had no stake in art history.
While this was often difficult for practical
reasons, I never coached them to
say certain things. Hence, yes, this is a
form of performative perception, a performance
of art viewing recorded while
it was happening. This aspect has had
a great impact on my later film work,
especially in the installation work
Nothing is Missing.
SL The ArtClips were screened in prominent
art institutions such as the Centre
Pompidou and the Whitechapel.
Were they considered as an instrument
of reflection/perception/contextualisation
or as an art project? How did the
media/audience react? Artists like
Andrea Frazer, for example, with her
talks on art works have used similar
approaches that are perceived as artistic
concepts and ‹institutional critique›.
What is the difference between your
approach and that of an artist? Artists
work with the theories and methods of
scholars, and scholars with the methods
and concepts of artists — where do you
see synergies, differences, dangers? Is
this the extension of academic interdisciplinarity
into cultural analysis: the
interdisciplinarity of cultural production
and cultural analysis?
)