Interview with Matthew Schum for Flash Art (March 2011)
The interview attempts address the artist's upcoming work in Venice through general
questions giving some background to previous artworks, before moving onto questions
regarding his ideas on current practices and preparations for the biennial.
1. Your work exudes energy; your visual sensibilities communicate intensity. What
kind of physical environment in Switzerland did you grow-up in? Is there anything
at all in your upbringing that can help explain the ferocity of your art?
Response 1:
Nothing else than the world surrounding me can explain the intensity and the density
of my work. There is nothing "personal" to explain this. I am not interested in "The
personal" or "The social" as an artist. I am interested in life, in dream, in change,
in action and in hope. I want to understand Art as a tool. A tool to encounter the
world, a tool to confront reality and a tool for life, in the time I live in. I want
my work to reflect the beauty and the incommensurability, the complexity and the
chaos, the cruelty and the infinity of our world.
2. I grew up in Minneapolis (where you have worked with the Walker Art Center--Cavemanman
was installed there). I hear you had a proposal there to put one of your giant books
on Lake Street in an overlooked part of town. It never happened due to budgetary
concerns; but I wonder, in new cities where there seems to be the right energy or
circumstances, if you often find spots like that where you wish you could intervene.
Response 2.
"The Road-Side Giant-Book Project" that I made in 2004 as a public artwork proposal
for the 'Walker Art Center' has indeed not yet been done. What I like about Lake
Street is that it could be elsewhere, in another city, in another country, on another
continent. Lake Street in Minneapolis/St.Paul is a truly universal spot. This project,
as all of my works, aims to be a universal artwork, it could therefore be made in
another city, another country, another continent.
3. I ask these initial questions because the connection your work has to landscape
seems so prevalent, whether in a cityscape or a cave. There is something veering
towards the sublime in how your work overwhelms the viewer. It reflects the urban,
natural and virtual containers people float inside. Do you intentionally confuse
or entangle the artificial and the sublime?
Response 3.
My work is never site-specific or related to a specific context and I am not confused
or entangled. When you feel as if floating, it comes from my will to implicate you,
to implicate you directly - from one to one - throughout my work. Not you as part
of the 'Circle of evaluation', but you as part of the 'non-exclusive audience'. There
is a 'non-exclusive audience' in a museum but also on the street, there's a 'non-exclusive
audience' in a commercial gallery, as well as in an institution. I truly want to
work for a 'non-exclusive audience'. The 'non-exclusive audience is not a target
but it's the public I want to involve and include in my work. Another word for the
'non-exclusive audience' is The Other. I am enclosing a diagram of the “Spectre of
Evaluation” for a better understanding.
4. Switzerland is a very beautiful place, an orderly society, with extreme wealth.
The paradoxes or responsibilities involved in being an international Swiss artist
seem to have set the stage for your most challenging works.
Response 4.
'Swiss artist', I do not know what this really means - but I am Swiss and I am an
artist - this is different. There is no paradox to be Swiss and to be an artist,
since not all Swiss are bankers or watch-makers! and as far as I know, not all Americans
are cowboys or astronauts. On the contrary, it's beautiful - there are artists all
over the world, and the artist who is Palestinian is, I suppose, as happy as I -
the Swiss - to be an artist. I don't think that an artist coming from a specific
country has more or less responsibility toward Art than another artist from elsewhere.
I believe that toward Art, we all have the same responsibility: to do our work with
love, with passion, with insistence, with the will of being in contact with reality
and with the spirit of paying first for what we are doing. I believe that Art - because
it's Art - is universal. Universality means Justice, Equality, the Other, the Truth
and the "One world". And as artist, I believe that Art, because it's Art, has the
power of transformation. The power of transformation of each human being. The power
to transform a Bangladeshi, a Canadian, a Peruvian and a Swiss.
5. Your Swiss-Swiss Democracy project at the Swiss Cultural Centre in Paris seemed
to address this. You wrote, “I want to de-idealize democracy and I want to destabilize
the good democratic conscience.” I think a lot of us were feeling that way in 2006.
In your experience, can art adequately address democracy?
Response 5.
I did not only feel it in 2004 or 2005 - during the years "Swiss-Swiss Democracy"
took place - the most recent events show us that we need to fight for democracy every
day. We have to reinvent democracy at every instant, we have to struggle for and
with democracy constantly and we can never lay back and think we've achieved something
like "Democracy". I want to be a democrat but I refuse to become a democratized subject.
The aim of "Swiss-Swiss Democracy" was to stand-up as a democrat and not to sleep
as a democratized subject. I wanted to question the institution Democracy, I wanted
to confront this institution with the invention of a living, uncertain, creative,
precarious, democratic, fun, productive self-authorization. I did this every day
during two months at the "Centre Culturel Suisse" in Paris - every day with the only
guideline of "Presence and Production": every day presence and every day production.
I did this with the philosopher Marcus Steinweg and with the theatre director Gwenael
Morin and 6 actors and actresses. Art can address democracy - not adequately - because
there is no adequacy but also because the relationship between Art and democracy
and Art and politics is a complex one - but Art can - because it's Art - invent its
own address to democracy and to politics.
6. Swiss-Swiss Democracy, you said, was not a provocation but a kind of artistic
siege of a satellite ministry. It led to some punitive defunding of the institution.
Yours was a very specific action addressing universal problems. Are we witnessing
an atrophying of democratic institutions across the board at this moment in history?
Response 6;
First of all: did you know that the punitive defunding of the institution was abandoned
after a year and the previous funding re-established? Because even the politicians
who had voted this consequently to a hysterical media-produced scandal, had to face
the evidence - after a while - that their "punishment" was childish! I think it is
important that this be know, mentioned and remembered. But the fact itself shed light
- and believe me this was not my intention - on the democratic institution as being
a "holy cow". What I just wanted to question is how democracy has turned into a
“Holy cow” and produces “Subjects of democracy”. I am convinced that the Tunisians,
the Egyptians, the Libyans and all other people of the world who aspire for democracy
don't understand it as a "Holy cow" nightmare but as a dream for freedom, free speech,
equality, justice, one man = one vote or one woman = one vote. Such things that the
Swiss have achieved by struggles and fights some hundreds years ago, and even - concerning
the vote of men and women - just a few decades ago! Isn't this an example that shows
us how, even in a democracy such as Switzerland, democracy is never achieved and
never finalized?
7. More recent work: Too Too – Much Much of 2010 at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Belgium,
was a great title, and work about quantity—itself a subject of controversy in your
work. How did using tons of recycled aluminum cans come about and what was the material
addressing ? It seemed like a departure from your previous work because there was
no adhesive involved.
Response 7
I am truthful to my materials - don't worry! also to adhesives. But I have indeed
included aluminium cans to my materials - since years ("Cavemanman"). I love the
materials I am working with. I love them because I decided myself for them! This
is the important point and this is also what is political - the decision! It means
to work with them and to insist with them. Furthermore, to decide for something means
to pay the price for this decision. This is perhaps what you meant by “controversy”?
My love is not based on a kitschy, narcissist and selfish self-love but on the conviction
that the materials are constitutive to an artwork and the decision for a material
is a decision which is essential. And because there is this love and this decision
for - I cannot change my material for "something else" or for "something new".
8. Speaking of adhesives, comparisons to your work are both common in print yet hard
to substantiate given your profligate use of materials and simultaneous critique
of material culture. I can’t be comfortable being specific, like splitting you between
Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys. I am curious, though, how you yourself would frame
your work. What precedents in any art form do you continually relate back to?
Response 8:
I myself certainly do not want to frame my work! And I myself do not constantly look
back! What I want - and I think this is a valid ambition for an artist - is to create
a new term of art, my own term of art. A term of art which establishes a critical
corpus as such. I want to construct a critical corpus.
9. Again, without getting too specific, your work resides in a kind of Bermuda Triangle
between Pop, Minimalism, and Arte Povera. There is the theatrical or bodily relationship
to the viewer in your work found in Minimalism, a first world deconstruction of propaganda
with Pop, and a dissipation of materials found in Arte Povera. This combo unleashes
a kind of gigantism or maximalism that breaks with the ambient environment in order
to invite the audience into your world. Do you feel your spaces address the viewer
as fantastic, quite heterogeneous to the outside world?
Response 9:
I do not follow you into your Bermuda Triangle. I cannot comment your art historical
approach. I am not having ideas or phantasmagorias outside our world. I want to give
Form. I based my work on my form- and force field, which is divided into 4 parts:
Love, Philosophy, Politics and Aesthetics. With each work, I want to touch each of
these parts. It is not important that they be equally covered, but it is important
that they all be engaged. I am aware that out of my form- and force field, Love and
Philosophy have a more obvious positive aspect - but I consciously decided to touch
the Politics and Aesthetics, which both have a darker side and are considered more
negatively. What I want, is to touch the negative parts and not make things nicer
that they are. I am absolutely positive but I think it is important not to understand
this positiveness as something which excludes the negative. This is how I understand
the world, as a unity, as a one, as a one world. And this is what I want to express
in my artwork. My work wants to address the viewer as sovereign and emancipated and
as someone who is not neutralized by facts, comments or opinions.
10. The three movements mentioned above are immanent for contemporary artists, especially
for sculptors after your work. How do you suppose working with everyday materials
has changed since the 1960s? And how do you see it changing in recent years in order
to stay current, filled with impact and obtrusive?
Response 10:
Again I cannot follow or comment your art-historian approach. I am an artist who
has his work to do - and as somebody who works, who constructs a corpus which is
a critical corpus I cannot analyse it and, at the same time, be doing it. To me the
work has to be done first. When I stop working, I can then - perhaps - analyse it.
But I haven't stopped working! I want to continue working, I want to continue insisting
with my form and I will continue to make experiences with my passion about Art, today.
11. Documenta 11 in 2002 was seen as a radical intervention. Can we expect any kind
of scaling back in your work for Venice, or is it likely to be as visually maximalist
and provocative as before?
Response 11:
I will do a new work for the Venice Biennial. I cannot say what you can expect, but
I expect of myself to do a generous, charged, enlightening, complex and dense artwork
which aims to implicate and to engage the non-exclusive audience through its form.
12. How immersive can we expect the work at the Venice Biennale to be? Will the viewer
be in the Swiss Pavilion in Venice or in a Thomas Hirschhorn display?
Response 12
I do not know what you are expecting. But I expect of myself to do an artwork which
is based on the belief in autonomy of Art and of my own work of art. And I am working
toward that autonomy, that can give my work its beauty and its absoluteness.
13. In 2008, you ended a boycott on showing your work in Switzerland that began in
2003. What has changed in Switzerland since that time?
Response 13:
I think it will no longer be possible to elect a federal-councillor such as the one
elected by the federal assembly in 2003. The one against whom I expressed - without
implying others - my own boycott of Switzerland. It was this federal councillor which
was not re-elected - by the same federal assembly - 4 years later in 2007. I think
it will no longer be possible to elect a federal councillor with the argument: it's
better to have it "inside the system" than "outside the system"! I am aware that
nothing is definitely won - I have, we have to keep watchful, we have to stay alert
in order to fight racism, fear of the stranger and self enclosure, but I know that
I - myself - can do something. I can succeed in doing something I believe in and
I am ready to pay the price for it. And I do know that all boycotts maintained until
the end will be successful boycotts.
14. Does your work at the Swiss Pavilion represent a kind of homecoming?
Response 14:
My home is art - I never left home. My passport is Swiss - I never changed it.
15. Does it address Swiss realities in any way?
Response 15:
I very much hope that my work confronts realities - and will work hard for it. Furthermore,
universal realities - if they are really universal - concern the Swiss as well. Just
in order to make it clear: to me to exhibit in the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale
is a pleasure, it is a joy and it makes me happy. Why? Because the pleasure is to
present – or if you want – to represent my artwork, because the joy is to present
my understanding of making, now, and because what makes me happy, is to work out
my position of an artist today.
16. Does it have a theme, subject or inspiration as your works have in the past?
Response 16:
My work will have the title: "Crystal of Resistance".