Syndicate: IRWIN 3 for Oliver Fromer

["Miran Mohar" <miran@mordor.kud-fp.si>]

Just one more question. Why did you and Jan decide in the last minute
to invite Oleg Kulik to participate in this project? What about the
two years of preparations he has missed?

This was my proposal, frankly. I got the idea when Jan came to Moscow
and told me that there were many changes, that some artists left, that
some artists refused to invite other artists. It became clear that the
idea we had proposed could not be realized optimally. Jan wanted to
invite some new artists who would perhaps bring some new wind into the
project. I liked the idea of changing things after years of
preparation because I didn't like the rules, like inviting other
artists for collaboration, to turn into a dogma if the artists refused
to accept them. It became clear that the artists would not respect the
initial rules. Therefore, Jan's idea justified the need for
modification of the project.



 JAN AMAN

What is the curator nowadays? How would you define your profession,
occupation?

I don't think there's just one definition, just one role of the
curator. It is a profession that you have to adapt to your
personality. It is changing with each project. Interpol, for instance,
is more of a research, an attempt to understand what the role of
curator could be. Here, we are even trying to remove the curator, to
say that, in a sense, the curator is a problematic figure in the
contemporary art world. And the whole idea wanted to be very
democratic, but on the other side I found it very hierarchical in a
true sense, when I saw the results of  the project. Like a fake idea.
Like we were saying that what we are doing is very democratic, but at
the same time, we gave back the power to the curator. Because the
curator in this project was in fact a very important and very strong
figure.

What were the reasons to use this quite unusual strategy to create
Interpol?

The whole idea of the project started after a few talks between me and
Victor Misiano in Moscow. One of us from the West and one from the
former East. When we started to discuss  the collaboration, we were
talking about an idea to create a micro version, sample of the feeling
of the contemporary situation, of what happened after the collapse of
the iron curtain. We tried both to built and to deconstruct the
structures within the art world, which would represent a kind of
microcosm of the wider situation. The starting point was to create an
art situation and discus the structures such as power, freedom,
collaboration, geography, in a very concrete, practical way, to open
the feelings we have about the society through an art project. This
might sound crazy, but I think it actually works.

Where and how did you and Victor meet? How would you define your
conceptual link and your collaboration?

We met through a cultural attaché at the Swedish Embassy in Moscow.
And our initial idea was actually to make one issue of the magazine
together. In the beginning, we wanted to work more on theoretical
questions, but professionally we were both working in the field of
visual art and therefore the idea was evolving over quite a long
period. Actually we didn't talk that much, but from what we talked
about I got that Victor had some ideas and projects in Moscow that I
liked very much. I liked his ideas about the art situation and how to
threat the whole contemporary art situation. Everything was so
precise, dynamic and absolute. That was my feeling about these
meetings in Moscow. This urge that Victor has to redefine the
contemporary art situation, was very challenging but at the same time
I saw myself more as an observer, a watcher-on. Through this dialogue,
confrontation, I found a very appropriate way of thinking about some
contents and ideas of  myself and the contexts here in Stockholm.

How do you, as a person and at the same time as a representative of
Sweden or the Western world, see Russia and the former Eastern world
today?

This is a very complex question, of course. By coincidence I made a
project in Russia in 1987 and I lived there for a very long time.
Every project connected with Russia became very problematic and very
frustrating for me after a certain period time. For purely practical
reasons, as well as because of the cultural and mental differences
between the West and the East. Nevertheless for me,, Russia is the way
to understand Sweden and the West. Everything I see in Russia makes me
see much more clearly what we are developing here in the West. It
seems as if Russia makes the most out of every idea that you have in
the West. It can be Marxism, Communism, Capitalism... The development
that I've seen from 1987 till now is amazing, enormous. It gives you a
fantastic opportunity to understand the dynamism of societies, both
Western and Eastern, although I've only been in Russia and not in
other Eastern European countries.

What precisely do you perceive as a difference, as different? And what
do you mean by saying that "Russia makes the most out of any idea"?


Many things. One thing is something that you can call dogmatism or
absolutism, that is  for me some very frequent and recognizable
impulse in Russia. The ability to take  an effort and say; "This is
exactly like I would like to see the world, man, society. This is the
way I would like to signify the present moment." And it is always the
matter of signifying your aims, your time, which also bring the
question to another matter which is language. Russia is very
interesting for me because it is a proof that the West has lost
something very important, that it has lost its own narratives, the
language. Things are changing right now in Moscow too, but you can
still see that Victor and other Russian artists are very articulate,
intellectually strong and very analytical.

When saying that the West has lost its language do you think that the
Western world is less and less articulate?

It articulates itself in a completely different manner. The
articulation in, let's say,  the 18th or 19th century language model
is based on an analytical approach which results in a very rich
language. Language represents a special control system. Language
shapes your thoughts and forces you to define things, to signify them.
It is very clear in the Interpol project that Western artists and
intellectuals have lost their ability to express themselves in a very
clear way. But with that, on the other hand, the gain is probably
another ethical dimension which makes you free from something, history
or whatever, and says "leave me alone, I don't have to, I don't want
to take care about everything else, about the whole world". This is
the sort of relativistic attitude I noticed  during this project on
the part of the Swedish artists.

Do you think that this difference is present, visible in this
exhibition in preparation? Can you describe how you perceive it on
concrete examples?

Take for example that fantastic situation that happened in Moscow
during one of our meetings. The Swedish participants were unwilling to
tell precisely what they wanted to do and when the Moscow artists
presented their projects, they were just smiling, saying that it was
fine and so on, while the Russian artists were disappointed. They
expected confrontation, discussion. I think that the Western mood
right now is completely non-confrontational. For example, when
somebody said to E. Bilgren that he should be more provocative, he
answered: "Tell me exactly what I should do to be more provocative and
I will do exactly what you will say" -- which is, by the way, a very
provocative answer or statement. And in this concrete exhibition,
which is the result of the mentioned differences, you can see it
through the types of works. A lot of Russian works are of the type
that makes you feel that their authors believe that representation is
not possible any more. They are trying to abandon the concept of art
and build an autonomous concept of what is supposed to be art in this
time. For the Swedish or Western context these questions are only
partly relevant.

You've mentioned the relativist attitude, position of Swedish or
Western artists. When you say "I do what I want and what I think is
good and right, and leave me alone," this is a subjectivist position,
a highly modernistic, formalistic position, isn't it?

I'm only talking about ethics. Take Mauricio Catalan, who is defined
as a sort of non-modernistic artist, but his approach is based on a
kind of "just leave me alone, I don't want to be involved, I don't
want to know everything about everybody else, I don't want to know"
attitude.

If it is true that the need to be left alone is so deep, why then did
the artists get involved in the media of art where you can not be left
alone?

This is an interesting and very important paradox of the art world
today, which come out in this project which is based on contacts,
meetings, collaboration, confrontations within a large group of
artists trying to discuss, analyze. But at the same time we reached
the where everybody spontaneously formed the former Eastern side and
Western side, and said "leave me alone, just leave me alone." Which
means that the result of the search for contact can also be a
disappointment. And I think this is a necessary condition.

How do you actually feel, here in Sweden, the changes that have taken
place in Europe over the last six, seven years? How do these changes,
events, this dynamic, affect your personal, cultural and social life?

I think it is more of a mental change than anything else.
The stability which was based on a very strange condition suddenly
changed and a new situation opened up which is very uncertain and very
dynamic and in a sense a threat to the Western power position. The
world is growing, which is, I think, a very good thing. Something is
happening, something new will develop out of it. For us, it a mental
change that is happening in Europe and the whole world right now. The
strong position of the West is becoming even stronger because of the
economic situation, but you can also feel a lot of uncertainty about
the global economical situation, a fear of loosing the balance, and so
on.

You've mentioned a threat to the Western world that occurred after the
collapse of the iron curtain.  The whole post-second world war period,
the Soviet Union and the Eastern world also represented a treat to the
West. This means that at the moment when this old threat changed its
nature a new one appeared. This time not because of the potential
military threat but because of the opening up. Is that correct?

Yes, which means that it brings a need for a sort of reflection, a
self-reflection of the Western system based on the knowledge of the
concentration of the money and power it possesses. This system was
based on certain borders and when these borders were taken away you
would expect, according to its liberal position, that it will spread
out, which is impossible for many practical reasons and therefore it
has to take itself, its own philosophy, under the question. The need
for the reevaluation of the whole system occurred. And this is exactly
what is happening right now.

What did you expect from the Interpol exhibition? Has the project so
far developed in the direction you desired?

My position from the very beginning was that I consciously didn't have
any goal or desired direction, which means that the project has to
have its own development. My feeling right now is very good because
this is a project, exhibition that I haven't seen before. It is the
result of a very long, very strange and for many people involved, I
believe, also very frustrating process.

You've said that this project, by your evaluation, can not fail. Why?
You and Victor proposed the project based on collaboration. Are you
saying that any response whatsoever to your proposal is a success?

We only had some premises to start with which were that the artists
should try to collaborate, try to provoke dialogues, confrontations,
try to think how to use the whole exhibition space through
collaboration, but we just started the process, chose the two basic
groups of artists and from here on the project has to take its own
direction. This condition was the basic decision we made about the
project. We've created conditions, we organized the meetings and all
this will produce its own result. I don't want to control it. The
process is more interesting than the result, which means that the
project can not fail.

Do you think that the conception and organization which managed to
provide a space and process-based time structure of the project, gives
the sense, quality to the project in advance?

Absolutely. We really tried to avoid evaluations. The whole media
world is based on evaluations that something is good or bad. We wanted
to avoid this. It doesn't matter whether it is a success or not, it is
a process which is a perfect or if not perfect at least very good way
to start reflecting on the world around you.

Your main effort was to establish the conditions for the process
without any expectations of the directions?

For me, yes. I had absolutely no expectations, but perhaps with Victor
it was different.

The process itself is enough for you?

Yes. If you try to say that the process has to develop in a certain
direction then you fail because you try to control, supervise it. And
control itself became a very important question of this project. Here,
we are coming back to the question of the role of the curator. By
making a structure the curator is exercising control. In the case of
the Interpol project we tried to let the structure to evolve from the
process.

You've mentioned the problem of control, saying that Interpol avoided
classical control  the curator uses when making the structure of the
project. But even by the act of deciding to make this project and by
the fact that you do the first choice of the artists, you outlined the
structure and by that the mechanisms of control of this particular
project, didn't you?

Yes, we made a vehicle in a sense, but from that point on the whole
process go on in its own direction.

What were your criteria in choosing the artists? Did the
professionalism, skills,  name, intellectual capacities or moral
positions of the proposed artists played any role in the process of
selection? And what is the role, the  meaning of the artifacts in the
context of  the discussed structure of the project?

The whole process of selection was based on a very personal decision
or even the presumed interest of the artists chosen in such a project
which is not based on artifacts but on communication.  The Swedish
artists in a sense act as a homogeneous group but in fact they are
very different. I tried to invite people who, I thought, would be
interested and able to go into this project for their very different
reasons.

Do you find any similarities, connections between the concept, the
language of the exhibition as a whole and the concepts, the languages
of particular artifacts? Do you think that the concept of Interpol
affects the artists' decisions on structuring/creating their works?

Absolutely!
You can see that connection almost in every art piece exhibited in the
show. For example,  E. Bilgren started with the very artifact-based
idea, because he thought that one way of confrontation in such a
concept is also a possibility to choose opposite direction. But then
he developed it into something quite different, which is a sort of
infrastructure, a conceptual intervention into the Swedish cultural
context. And his project became very dynamic and interesting,
especially from the Swedish perspective.

>From  the Swedish perspective, what did he do?

He proposed a new National Academy, a new way of  thinking, evaluating
art. He said that he is not satisfied with the situation in art,
culture and educational and he is proposing how to improve, change it.
This project can have a very big, long term effect on Swedish art
life.

At the same time he did the artifact, the installation. How do these
two ideas, two projects,  correspond, if at all?

They do correspond. He is building a room, a set. And part of the
installation which has not finished yet is a podium for delivering
speeches. During the whole time of the exhibition he will organize
different meetings, conferences, speeches, and discussions about how
the National Academy should look like, about its function, purpose,
etc. That's how these two ideas are connected. For me, this work is a
very good example of the importance of Interpol, because Bilgren looks
like a classical artifact artist, but when you know him better, you
realize that he knows exactly why is he doing something, and what is
his position. Without Interpol, this initiative probably wouldn't
happen and if you knew the impossible, fake situation of art and
culture here, you would understand how very important it is that this
has happened. Therefore, the works like this one, or Mauricio
Catalan's work, for example, are of really great importance for me.

Can you say something more about Mauricio Catalan's work?

He was introduced into Interpol through Victor. Some time after the
Moscow meeting, he sent me a fax saying that he was an artist who was
not used to collaborate, but that he was ready for a challenge. He
asked me to provide him more information on the project. In the
beginning he was connected with Alexander Brener and Anatoly
Osmalowsky but later he disconnected himself from that project and
started very intensive communication with Stockholm. He is the artist
with whom I probably had the closest during the project. Almost every
week we exchanged a fax or a telephone call. He became deeply involved
in the project and he was trying to define what this project was
actually about. We were talking about building new networks and new
infrastructures, creating an interesting atmosphere and so on. After
all those talks he came to the conclusion that it would be interesting
to make a project, to involve a new group of artists. Because Sweden
and Stockholm is known for the Nobel prize, because money is the
universal problem of the art world and because the new dynamics in the
art world are only possible through new nets, he came up with a
project called Interprize, saying that if you give a substantial
amount of money to someone -- and for this prize he chose the French
magazine Purple Prose, a group of very creative people with lack of
money -- you also give him the opportunity to come to Stockholm, to
meet new people, to create a new net. He first told me that and asked
me if I liked the idea and if Interpol could provide a substantial
amount of money for the prize. Later he developed the project further;
he chose a group of international advisers and structured the whole
thing. Suddenly, the project became so interesting and so well done
that we decided to keep it as our permanent project, every year in
FargFabriken, that every year we would invite this interesting
international group of advisers to select a person or project to be
awarded the Interprize.

You actually support the idea of increasing the number of Interpol
participants. Do you think that such widening of the group makes
sense?

I really do think so. This extension relaxes me. I really like the
idea that the whole thing is not taking place in a sort of hermetic,
enclosed circle of people, but that there are people who think
differently, that the project is getting much bigger than initially
planned. But actually this was the paradox of the Interpol project
from the very beginning; on the one hand this is a very intimate
project based on intimate collaboration, but on the other hand it was
always open to new people. With more people involved, the process is
outgrowing  Interpol and is connecting a lot of people to each other,
which can be important, which can actually create a part of a new,
more interesting infrastructure of the art world.

What is the most precious experience of Interpol for you?

Through Interpol I actually came to understand how I look upon myself
on a very personal level. What am I actually doing? Why? For me, this
project grew from the idea of a magazine issue to the idea of a new
Contemporary Art Center in Stockholm. And the latter was very much
inspired by the importance of Victor's Contemporary Art Center in
Moscow.

Your main preoccupation is to put into operation the Contemporary Art
Center, FargFabriken, here in Stockholm?

No, this is only part of the whole experience. If I want to have a
dynamic situation,  that is a project that much bigger than this one
or any other concrete project,  I have to create the conditions to
reflect upon the contemporary art situation in Sweden. The Moscow
situation, the break which took place after the collapse of the old
structure and the new dynamic which appeared, was very helpful to me
to understand the situation here and to decide what to do. I was very
fascinated and inspired by the dynamic art and cultural life I saw in
Moscow. I've realized that if I want to do something in Sweden, I have
to create the situation, the dynamic, first.

Are you saying that FargFabriken is actually the result of Interpol,
that this idea grew out of the Interpol process?

Absolutely. I was absolutely certain before that I didn't want to do
big things with a lot of organization. That I want "to be left alone."
But through Interpol, through meeting Victor and others, I changed my
mind. I don't think that "to be left alone" is a valid position any
more. I think that you have to get involved and organize things on a
concrete level.

Why?

Because this is the only way to actually change things in a more
substantial way. And we need that here, in Stockholm, because the art
situation is so boring.

Interpol was based on the idea of process and communication,
collaboration, confrontation. But the result, the exhibition which
will open tomorrow, is going to be an exhibition of artifacts,
objects. It will be a quite classical, ordinary contemporary art
exhibition. What is the relation between the temporal, the process,
communication, that is the  immaterial body of this project, and these
artifacts?

Take for example your own work, which has this meta level but at the
same time is very concrete, very object-like. Most of the art works
are the result of the reflection on the situation. And I think that
this is a paradox: that you have to materialize something to
articulate yourself on some other level. Or for example the work of
Hausswolf and Mckenzie which is really the result of the discussions
we had in Moscow, where we talked about the relation to the other. And
if you are involving other artists or persons in your work, you are
raising the question of control, and I understood that particular
discussion as a discussion about control. When Hausswolf and Mckenzie
are inviting as and the audience to sleep here and record the
atmosphere around us, they are actually controlling us, they are
actually plying with us.

Why are they playing with us?

They are actually playing with the idea of controlling somebody else.

But they are also involved in this play.

Absolutely. It is experimenting outside of somebody's control that I
think can be very productive. It is comparable with the Interpol
structure. You establish a set of conditions which you control and
then you start the process which is not under your control any more,
anything can happen. Or Vadim Fishkin's project, for example. Why
every artist of this project has to have a phone to answer the
questions of the audience about his/her work, why should they be
abused by Vadim and other people? All this is an interesting way of
involving the artists, so that they are losing control of their
isolated, personal spaces, privacy.

But if you never try to expose yourself to be abused by the other, you
will never know how it is. The quality of Hausswolf/Mckenzie's and
Fishkin's projects -- for the latter it is still unclear whether it
will happen at all -- is that they provoke the unpredictable. Do you
think that the unpredictable, the uncontrollable is necessary bad,
negative? Isn't this exactly what we called a new experience in the
coordinates of this project.

Absolutely.

Juri Leiderman mentioned yesterday that this project has a very
sixties spirit, but in the course of our discussion we came to the
conclusion that there is a substantial difference in time. In the
sixties the artists were very open to larger, even political subjects,
such as the Vietnam war, student revolutions, criticism of the
consumer society, etc. Today, it would be difficult if not impossible
to gather an international group of different artists to discuss, to
confront their views very passionately on some common, global, ethical
subject. Don't you think that this new art infrastructure you said we
are building would also need some new moral common ground or is it
just about the mechanisms of protecting isolated, individual, creative
worlds? Or is the latter perhaps the only possible common interest of
the art world today?

I think that an interesting thing about Interpol is that it brought
out the question of subjectivity, isolation, that you can't avoid
reflecting upon yourself. The project of Don Volges, for example, is
very symptomatic. During our meetings, he wasn't physically present
very often, but the pressure of the project worked upon him too. I
think that for him this is the most important project in his life,
because it made brought him to reflect on the fact that he is a very
problematic figure to work with the others. For me, his position in
Sweden was one of the starting points for the Interpol project. He is
an artist who was always extremely clever in reacting on already
defined, established situations, playing with the curator figure,
playing with the exhibition team, playing with the art world, within
very precise observations on all these subjects. I wanted to create a
situation for him in which he would have to create his own situation,
where he wouldn't be able to react on anything else but himself. We
are a living in a very strange world. If you enter the art world, you
enter a situation in which you have to play with time. And for me
Interpol is a project about time. In Moscow, for example, you have
this constant awareness of time, of changes and developments. Interpol
has stepped out of time, because it has been going on longer than a
normal art project, which means that we reflect upon temporality. And
the paradox that we couldn't establish a common subject is, I think, a
necessary condition of the contemporary situation, of our time. Juri
Leiderman's project, which I really enjoyed and  which is the most
isolated island in the project, functions as a very interesting bridge
incorporating the difference between the Russian and Swedish mind.

What would be a reasonable next step in the field of art after this
experience? In which direction would you go as a curator?

What I really want to do now is to continue developing the
infrastructure levels, searching for new ways of creating precise and
defined situations in different eras, with different attitudes,
issues, etc. One important interest that I have is to improve the
educational level, the workshop level.

What is it that is new about Interpol?

It depends on the context. Here in Sweden there have been very few
self-reflective discussions on the questions of the curator, museum,
on what the art world is all about and so on. And this is something
new and important here. And from the European perspective it has the
same potential, exactly through this form of cultural meetings and
discussions about differences. I haven't seen this in a quite so
precise manner before.



END