wynwood art magazine

Question: How did you start your art carrier? Was it something that you’d always wanted to do?

Answer: Yes, it was always clear to me that I wanted to do something creative. Creativity and inquisitiveness were always an impetus for me. Even as a child I used to take appliances apart to see how they worked, or I made figures out of plasticine to make animated films with my Super-8 camera. And I drew a great deal. At school drawing was my most important subject. At sixteen I registered at the Zurich Art School, but during the initial interview it became clear to me that this old-fashioned place was nothing for me. By about the mid-1980s I had already had various exhibitions using junk. But I then swapped from art to music because I found the direct confrontation with the audience in concerts more interesting, whereas the visitors to my exhibitions had nothing to do with me. They were somehow foreign to me and emotionally too far removed from me. In the mid-1990s I slowly began create objects again, and I increasingly used old TVs or mechanical parts, that I converted.

Question: What was the path you followed that led you to decide to create “video sculptures”?

Answer: Because I didn’t go the usual way of an art academy graduate and was therefore excluded from any grants, my greatest concern was to earn money. I produced so-called “visuals” for the spatial ambience of clubs and bars and the likes. But I found it boring that my films were only run on normal monitors, so I began to convert them and to combine the films with independent statements. But that was a purely commercial consideration, sullied by too many compromises. I wanted to realize my own ideas, which I then began to present publicly.

Question: Why video sculptures? What do they allow you to express?

Answer: Because I had always been fascinated by film, and through it the potential for non-static narrative, and by the shaping of objects and sculptures, indeed design per se, it was only logical for me to combine these two fields. Video allows me to divest the sculpture of its static. The other way round, I can set real limits to the video through the sculpture.

Question: How would you describe your art?

Answer: In my art I try to link external influences and internal conditions in given circumstances. My art is always preoccupied with people and their feelings. To some extent or another it is comprehensible to everyone. Through my art anyone can immediately generate a feeling from their own life-story that they can easily interpret. One can feel oneself, for instance, as victim or perpetrator.

Question: What is your creative process like? What triggers your need to create? And how do you plan your sculptures?

Answer: As opposed to earlier, the form and the technology are no longer uppermost in my mind. Decisive are the insights and situations that I want to reduce into a feeling. I then try to realize this feeling visually and with a form. The whole technical process is always accompanied by thematic confrontations. Obviously I initially conceive the form and the content in my thoughts. Somewhere in the middle of the process of producing the work I make the film. This is studio work. Then follows a raw cut and further treatment. Finally I tailor the sculpture and the film to one another.

Question: Why do you describe yourself as child prodigy?

Answer: (Laughs) That’s an interpretation based on a comma. A journalist from the Basler Zeitung called me a child prodigy, which I was naturally very flattered by. :-)

Question: Women in cramped conditions try to free themselves – or do they find it amusing? Why do you choose objects and situations like these? Is it a social criticism?

Answer: A lot of the public thinks that the sculptures were made by a woman, even though the technology with all its electronics and metalwork are otherwise usually a male domain. Obviously at first glance the themes are female ones – repression, subjection, etc…. The woman is not mediated in common terms as a female object of male desire. The viewers perhaps initially feel themselves to be the superior observer. This can be very stimulating…or shocking…. These situations are rooted in personal experience or observations. I acknowledge the role of the sexes and their instrumentation – naturally to the advantage of the dominant party. Nevertheless, I don’t want to leave it at social criticism. I’m more concerned with addressing the topic in each and everyone of us. Men too feel hemmed in or permanently humiliated. When everyone recognizes this in themselves, then certain social patterns become evident. I chose women because I’m a man. The woman in the videos is usually my partner.

Question: What do you want to provoke in your beholders?

Answer: First the observer always reacts with his or her personal interpretation, followed as a rule by discussions that mostly shift from personal ideas, but also fantasies, deeper into social structures. I find this incredibly fascinating. I’ve already taken part in a number of group discussions like this, and they have always been very interesting conversations.

Question: How does your art mirror the relations between men and women?

Answer: One interpretation could be, for example, that the frame and the boundaries of a woman are dictated by masculine forces.

Question: First the woman, then the place she is held prisoner, and then the duration of being imprisoned. How do you choose these particular steps? And what follows on from the last step?

Answer: Take for example “Turkish Bath”. The woman is the protagonist. It could also be a man, but women are obviously more constrained by society and systems. Freedom is a relative term. The woman is, of course, moving freely. She carries out her movements to the extent that the boundaries allow. Only the observer sees that she is imprisoned. Only they see the boundary and know how far her freedom could ideally extend. The bath is, if you like, the scenery, the world, the soul, personality. The edges are the boundary of the stage, society, inhibitions, etc…. The duration of the “imprisonment” lasts as long as the beholder makes the effort to behold it…or they accept beholding it…. Nevertheless, in turning away they do not necessarily dissolve the tension. This dissolution rests in the recognition of each of themselves. It is imperative for me to have these three entities in order to be able to produce a non-static sculpture.

Question: You’ve had a great deal of success with your work. Do you think that your art provides an answer to something? Do your pieces evoke a form of stress in the observers? Or do they merely give the viewer a feeling of power and independence?

Answer: I think that my work releases those fears, hopes or other feelings that the observer is currently experiencing. I don’t think that my work gives an answer to something. What question are they meant to be an answer to? On the contrary, they tend to far more raise questions, in as much as the answers to them are individual. Sure it’s possible to provoke a feeling of power and independence, but more likely from a position of dominance, which is again an interpretation. But I don’t produce the sculptures from this position myself.

Question: Do you have the feeling that you toy with the emotions of the observers? Perhaps with hope, despair?

Answer: Yes, I think so. Obviously it is above all women who very quickly see themselves. But it’s not only a matter of gender or the social discrimination of other marginal groups. I’m also concerned with completely subjective perceptions, for example the attempt to break out of oneself.

Question: What’s your aim as an artist? Where is it intended to lead you? Is there something in it that you want to accomplish?

Answer: My aim as an artist is obviously to be recognized, to move people, to evoke emotions – to progress further through the works, to delve into them, and to become better. It’s also long been a deep desire of mine to start an art-workshop project for creative, inquisitive youths who have difficulty finding their place in society.
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