AT-TA Network

This interview took place in Brussels on February 23, 2002.

Hans Ulrich Obrist:
You once told me that you were very interested in notions of weakness and uncertainty, ambiguity and disorientation. American anthropologist James Clifford speaks about "lucid uncertainty" as a working methodology, while Carsten Holler frequently refers to his "laboratory of doubt"; these ideas seem crucial today. Could you specify the interest that you have in these notions, and how you proceed to open up areas of questioning by making viewers doubt what it is that they're seeing?

Cerith Wyn Evans:
Uncertainty in the sense of not defining these terms is probably the best example of what I'm trying to define! It seems to me to be something between an ethics of weakness and a politics of doubt that is hinted at or sought after. And by that, I mean it seems---and here I agree With Carsten Holler on this matter---that a process of hesitation is something worth remembering; it's somehow more interesting to seek out weak connections than to reinforce strong connections. This is all rather complicated to talk about; perhaps it will emerge through our conversation. It's difficult to come to such a topic cold and to try to map out some post-ideological territory.

HUO:
Yes, you're right, and I'm sure we will come back to these questions later on, or they will pop up in the middle of the conversation. Today we were together at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels talking about Marcel Broodthaers. Maybe it can be another starting point then: the moment of encounter with Broodthaers' work at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London in the '70s...

CWE:
That is much easier to talk about! I remember being very impressed with one of the first exhibitions that I'd probably ever seen. I was 17, coming from Wales and visiting London in l975; it was a show by Marcel Broodthaers at the ICA ("Décor: A Conquest," 1975). It was one of his decor pieces, and I was enormously impressed with it. I'd seen various works by modern and contemporary artists in museums, at the Tare Gallery and the Hayward Gallery, but this was the first exhibition that made a real impression on me in terms of contemporary art practice: the idea that this work might have been finished just a few weeks before the show, and that I was somehow a part of that. I'm sure it's not fair to use such an approximate and general category to describe Marcel Broodthaers as an installation artist, but this piece was very much an installation. It was surprising. The floor was covered, there were things around the walls, there was garden furniture inside, guns and canons, and various tropes, plays and puns on the location of the ICA. Through the window, you could see Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, something that clearly wouldn't have gone unrecognized by Broodthaers. I felt I had discovered something very exhilarating, and part of that exhilaration came from thinking that this work was somehow forbidden, unsanctioned, not allowed. It was one of those feelings, partly shock in a sense, because it seemed very stimulating that the pieces didn't add up, that there was room to move, or if there were connections, they were weak connections. I didn't feel as if I was losing out on the experience of the piece by not being able to source all of the references; it was a kind of liberation, a new found sense of freedom. The decor felt like a set, a stage setting, as if you had walked in by accident thr.ugh the wr.ng door onto someone else's stage, Or perhaps the right door, but the wrong door feels more appropriate---through the wrong door you find an encounter with something that you don't actually expect, and so consequently you are somehow refigured or remodeled against the backdrop of another; somehow you find yourself in a scenario that isn't of your own writing. It wasn't sculpture, because it was too much like window-dressing, but it wasn't window-dressing either, nor theater. It felt more like a decor, a setting.