Interview with BBB Johannes Deimling
27.08.2014
Q: Why / when / how did you start to work with performance, what is your background, how did you arrive at doing performance?
I presented my first public performance in May 1988 at a small music and art festival near my hometown Andernach. I put a big white canvas on the ground, threw hundreds of eggs on it, poured glue and red pigments onto the eggs, mixed it with a broom and brushed the white canvas red. Next, I held the red canvas around my shoulders like a cloak, placed a crown on my head, took the broom in my hand like a scepter and left slowly, disappearing in the nearby woods.
I have never visited an art academy and don’t have any degree in art. I am a pure autodidact, driven by curiosity and the enormous fascination and potential of creativity. My early studies were based on almost daily visits to the local library in my hometown Andernach, where found books from the Artsection. Looking mainly at the images of the books I tried basically to read them visually. I started by trying to copy some of the paintings and drawings I saw, to study the form and color language (For example: Martin Kippenberger, Sigmar Polke or Anselm Kiefer). I followed those aesthetics, which I liked, names and styles were not that important at that time, but more the variety of visual possibilities. I also went to all the exhibitions I could and tried to talk with artists in order to get more names of other artists. My self-studies and the important conversations with my art teacher at school led me to go deeper into the world of Action Art as the joy of doing was for me already at that time much bigger than the satisfaction after finishing the work.
I experimented with all kinds of artistic expressions such as drawing, painting, collage, object, assemblage, installation and sculpture. Always I found the process more inspiring, more exciting and richer than the ‘leftovers’ (art works). Marcel Duchamp’s work and his manifest of the ‘creative act’ became in my early years an important influence and led me into the direction of performative art practice. The possibility of creating art within a moment and without producing any sellable and tradable product was for me an initial spark to follow this form of art praxis.
Q: What is your process like when you make a performance, from idea to actual work?
The process implies that there is no goal to reach, but more a way to go, so even though there is a presentation of my performance, the process is still going on, guiding my thoughts and decisions even within the performance itself. This is because in Performance Art the ‘production’ is trying to sculpt the unknown. I never rehearse my performances before the public presentation, so even though I conceptualize and think a lot of how the work should look like, I have no concrete knowledge about how it will actually be in the end. The absence of rehearsal is a distinct separation to other performing arts (theatre, dance, music) and focusses on the uniqueness of the creative act with all risks of failure. This requires that I always need to take the process with me in order to keep my awareness within the public presentation as high as possible.
To begin the creative process I form single images. The so-called ‘acted images’ (agierte bilder) consist of reduced, simple actions often with only one object, one material or one gesture. A visual alphabet of acted images accrues, allowing me to literally and visually write my art that is performance. Using the technique of collage I combine several acted images that allow me to play in a cinematic way with all of the visual elements by deconstructing the course of actions and putting the parts anew together. During this process various intersections appear in which unpredictable new images emerge. The term for this working method would be: ‘performative collages’.
The quality of this working method is that there is no end result; each performance is unique which cannot be repeated and creates a new question, which opens a new research: an open and free field of choices, responsibilities and possibilities. The process itself becomes the technique.
“It’s not the action that makes the performance” is the title of a recent published catalogue of my work (an online version is available here: http://j.mp/PPLxX9). The title of this publication is a statement that includes the thought that even the artist and his body is a main focus in performance art; it is not the only quality. The combination of the present body with various artistic components (size, shape, color, light, space, sound, ...) - and very important - time, creates this holistic universe of a performative art work which - if it comes altogether - creates this ‘magic’ moment in which art is in direct conversation with the present audience.
Q: Can you tell about your latest project?
Since summer of 2013 I am working on a cycle of performances entitled ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss’. Until now I have realized 12 performances. One of these performances I have presented at the last PAO Festival in 2013: https://vimeo.com/78539678
The English proverb “A rolling stone gathers no moss” can have both a positive and a negative connotation. On one hand being in a constant state of movement means to keep on evolving, changing without letting time impose its traces. On the other to be a perpetual wanderer implies not to have the capacity to settle down necessary roots. Within this cycle I am accepting both the meanings of this sentence, and summing-up them in a third option: to be involved in a constant movement does not mean to not have roots, rather to spread those roots everywhere.
In the performances composing this cycle I create visual moments that are connected one to the other by a system of subtle relations, which develop a composite collage of imaginative actions. The performance pieces are the sum of several figurative constructions, shaped by the interaction of my movement with the objects, with their forms and colors, but also with their inner, symbolic meanings. I am electing the metaphorical language of poetry as the idiom of his performance practice: the objects that the artist chooses have the capacity to create a clear sense of beauty, while expressing, or suggesting, something more behind the simple optical gratification. Roses, soap bubbles, marbles and wooden chairs are some among the recurrent objects I am using in the series A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss; all of these tools can encourage a certain basic feeling in the audience, for example: if the rose suggests both beauty and ephemerality the chairs inspire stability and familiarity. The physical intervention on the material, my interaction and play with my instruments, has the power to give a different form to the spontaneous sensations and interpretations of the audience, overturning its perception of common elements from plain everyday life.
Q: What role does performance art have in your life / artistic praxis. Do you also work within other fields, like installation, sculpture, drawing, other expressions. How do they influence / inform each other?
Even though the biggest part of my artistic practice is Performance Art I would never describe myself as a ‘performance artist’. By doing so I would somehow exclude the research I do within other art forms. This research is supporting very much my performative practice, but it can also exist on its own. An artist can use each thinkable form to create and articulate his artistic vision. Before an artistic vision becomes form there is a choice and later on a decision on the form on which this vision can be best transported. If this comes out as a poem, I will write a poem, if this comes out in architecture I would create a space and if it comes out in Performance Art I would create a performative artwork. The form simply transports the artistic vision and the form can have many looks and faces. That, in my case, a lot of my visions are having the form of a performance is related with the idea and the acceptance that the concept of ephemerality is something which brings art very close the life, because even a mountain will be washed away by the sea.
But some of my artistic visions end up in form of poems, drawings, texts, videos and photographs.
Q: With what kind of form / material do you express yourself and use in your work and how did you arrive at using this material. (eks: form?, material, sound, technical, movement).
I perceive the world in which I am living as materialistic and complex. There are so many objects produced of which some are useful and others are useless. I don’t feel that my art practice should add more objects, by combining existing objects and materials and filling the world with more (art) objects. Performance Art is a wonderful tool to create ephemeral art works for a moment. ‘How long and how strong this artistic moment will stay in the remembering’s of the audience?’ is a major question to me. Even though I prefer the ephemerality in art I am interested that my production and my action will last as long as a painted image. Following this question massively shapes my research and strategies.
To confront this question I created the term ‘Performance Art Povera’. The use of ‘poor’, ‘pure’, ‘raw’ and ‘simple’ materials within the creation of my performative art works is a research field leading to simplicity of my artistic articulation towards complex concepts. Using these ‘povera’ materials means to sharpen the awareness for things and objects and researching them on their transformational possibilities in order to place them specifically within the performative work. I try to use these simple materials like puppets and ideally they start performing themselves as my actions and gestures will bring these objects to life, to turn them into a certain context in which they are more than they actually are. This method creates images with a sustainable possibility.
In my performative work I refrain to use any sort of technical and electronic equipment. I would rather sing by myself than playing a song from a computer. It is important to keep the artistic act as pure and natural as possible as it is in this way I see the biggest chance of transformation of my artistic visions.
Q: How do you experience or consider the audience / surrounding. What space / surrounding do you find interesting to work in. How does your surrounding influence your work. Do you involve the public? If so how?
I like the audience that are present at the moment of my performance very much as I often imagine that they could have decided to stay at home and watch television or meet with friends for a dinner. That they are spending their time and attention to witness my artistic action is a big value to me, which I try to respect and give back with a full awareness of what I am presenting. But very rarely I would include the audience as an active designer of my performative pieces. I feel that I don’t want them to feel used for a vision I have. Instead I try to touch or stroke them with my visual works. I do have many doubts with interactive performances. I don’t need the audience to hold strings or objects and I don’t need to share with them holy moments where I give them souvenirs of my performance. I treat the audience as adult, smart and intelligent. This treatment generates a dialogue that does not need words for to communicate, but it needs their knowledge and life experience to make the work coherent and holistic. What I try is to create an inter passive situation, which means that the audience is free to take the offer of an artistic shared experience, not like in interactive performances where the audience often is forced to be within an artistic act.
The space is never the space where the performance just takes place. Each space has a certain history and a certain temperature that is very much useable for an artistic concept or vision. The space can add a lot to the presented performance if the action is somehow corresponding to the spatial environment. The action can echo the space and vice versa, the space can echo the action, which always brings a deeper understanding of the action within a certain context/space.
In fact there is no space in which my artistic practice would not fit into, but of course some spaces are easier to perform in then others. But at the end of the day a professional artist needs to be able to transport his or hers artistic vision in each space and at any time.
Q: Is there something you would like to add?
It is nice not to be asked what Performance Art is.
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Q: Why / when / how did you start to work with performance, what is your background, how did you arrive at doing performance?
I presented my first public performance in May 1988 at a small music and art festival near my hometown Andernach. I put a big white canvas on the ground, threw hundreds of eggs on it, poured glue and red pigments onto the eggs, mixed it with a broom and brushed the white canvas red. Next, I held the red canvas around my shoulders like a cloak, placed a crown on my head, took the broom in my hand like a scepter and left slowly, disappearing in the nearby woods.
I have never visited an art academy and don’t have any degree in art. I am a pure autodidact, driven by curiosity and the enormous fascination and potential of creativity. My early studies were based on almost daily visits to the local library in my hometown Andernach, where found books from the Artsection. Looking mainly at the images of the books I tried basically to read them visually. I started by trying to copy some of the paintings and drawings I saw, to study the form and color language (For example: Martin Kippenberger, Sigmar Polke or Anselm Kiefer). I followed those aesthetics, which I liked, names and styles were not that important at that time, but more the variety of visual possibilities. I also went to all the exhibitions I could and tried to talk with artists in order to get more names of other artists. My self-studies and the important conversations with my art teacher at school led me to go deeper into the world of Action Art as the joy of doing was for me already at that time much bigger than the satisfaction after finishing the work.
I experimented with all kinds of artistic expressions such as drawing, painting, collage, object, assemblage, installation and sculpture. Always I found the process more inspiring, more exciting and richer than the ‘leftovers’ (art works). Marcel Duchamp’s work and his manifest of the ‘creative act’ became in my early years an important influence and led me into the direction of performative art practice. The possibility of creating art within a moment and without producing any sellable and tradable product was for me an initial spark to follow this form of art praxis.
Q: What is your process like when you make a performance, from idea to actual work?
The process implies that there is no goal to reach, but more a way to go, so even though there is a presentation of my performance, the process is still going on, guiding my thoughts and decisions even within the performance itself. This is because in Performance Art the ‘production’ is trying to sculpt the unknown. I never rehearse my performances before the public presentation, so even though I conceptualize and think a lot of how the work should look like, I have no concrete knowledge about how it will actually be in the end. The absence of rehearsal is a distinct separation to other performing arts (theatre, dance, music) and focusses on the uniqueness of the creative act with all risks of failure. This requires that I always need to take the process with me in order to keep my awareness within the public presentation as high as possible.
To begin the creative process I form single images. The so-called ‘acted images’ (agierte bilder) consist of reduced, simple actions often with only one object, one material or one gesture. A visual alphabet of acted images accrues, allowing me to literally and visually write my art that is performance. Using the technique of collage I combine several acted images that allow me to play in a cinematic way with all of the visual elements by deconstructing the course of actions and putting the parts anew together. During this process various intersections appear in which unpredictable new images emerge. The term for this working method would be: ‘performative collages’.
The quality of this working method is that there is no end result; each performance is unique which cannot be repeated and creates a new question, which opens a new research: an open and free field of choices, responsibilities and possibilities. The process itself becomes the technique.
“It’s not the action that makes the performance” is the title of a recent published catalogue of my work (an online version is available here: http://j.mp/PPLxX9). The title of this publication is a statement that includes the thought that even the artist and his body is a main focus in performance art; it is not the only quality. The combination of the present body with various artistic components (size, shape, color, light, space, sound, ...) - and very important - time, creates this holistic universe of a performative art work which - if it comes altogether - creates this ‘magic’ moment in which art is in direct conversation with the present audience.
Q: Can you tell about your latest project?
Since summer of 2013 I am working on a cycle of performances entitled ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss’. Until now I have realized 12 performances. One of these performances I have presented at the last PAO Festival in 2013: https://vimeo.com/78539678
The English proverb “A rolling stone gathers no moss” can have both a positive and a negative connotation. On one hand being in a constant state of movement means to keep on evolving, changing without letting time impose its traces. On the other to be a perpetual wanderer implies not to have the capacity to settle down necessary roots. Within this cycle I am accepting both the meanings of this sentence, and summing-up them in a third option: to be involved in a constant movement does not mean to not have roots, rather to spread those roots everywhere.
In the performances composing this cycle I create visual moments that are connected one to the other by a system of subtle relations, which develop a composite collage of imaginative actions. The performance pieces are the sum of several figurative constructions, shaped by the interaction of my movement with the objects, with their forms and colors, but also with their inner, symbolic meanings. I am electing the metaphorical language of poetry as the idiom of his performance practice: the objects that the artist chooses have the capacity to create a clear sense of beauty, while expressing, or suggesting, something more behind the simple optical gratification. Roses, soap bubbles, marbles and wooden chairs are some among the recurrent objects I am using in the series A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss; all of these tools can encourage a certain basic feeling in the audience, for example: if the rose suggests both beauty and ephemerality the chairs inspire stability and familiarity. The physical intervention on the material, my interaction and play with my instruments, has the power to give a different form to the spontaneous sensations and interpretations of the audience, overturning its perception of common elements from plain everyday life.
Q: What role does performance art have in your life / artistic praxis. Do you also work within other fields, like installation, sculpture, drawing, other expressions. How do they influence / inform each other?
Even though the biggest part of my artistic practice is Performance Art I would never describe myself as a ‘performance artist’. By doing so I would somehow exclude the research I do within other art forms. This research is supporting very much my performative practice, but it can also exist on its own. An artist can use each thinkable form to create and articulate his artistic vision. Before an artistic vision becomes form there is a choice and later on a decision on the form on which this vision can be best transported. If this comes out as a poem, I will write a poem, if this comes out in architecture I would create a space and if it comes out in Performance Art I would create a performative artwork. The form simply transports the artistic vision and the form can have many looks and faces. That, in my case, a lot of my visions are having the form of a performance is related with the idea and the acceptance that the concept of ephemerality is something which brings art very close the life, because even a mountain will be washed away by the sea.
But some of my artistic visions end up in form of poems, drawings, texts, videos and photographs.
Q: With what kind of form / material do you express yourself and use in your work and how did you arrive at using this material. (eks: form?, material, sound, technical, movement).
I perceive the world in which I am living as materialistic and complex. There are so many objects produced of which some are useful and others are useless. I don’t feel that my art practice should add more objects, by combining existing objects and materials and filling the world with more (art) objects. Performance Art is a wonderful tool to create ephemeral art works for a moment. ‘How long and how strong this artistic moment will stay in the remembering’s of the audience?’ is a major question to me. Even though I prefer the ephemerality in art I am interested that my production and my action will last as long as a painted image. Following this question massively shapes my research and strategies.
To confront this question I created the term ‘Performance Art Povera’. The use of ‘poor’, ‘pure’, ‘raw’ and ‘simple’ materials within the creation of my performative art works is a research field leading to simplicity of my artistic articulation towards complex concepts. Using these ‘povera’ materials means to sharpen the awareness for things and objects and researching them on their transformational possibilities in order to place them specifically within the performative work. I try to use these simple materials like puppets and ideally they start performing themselves as my actions and gestures will bring these objects to life, to turn them into a certain context in which they are more than they actually are. This method creates images with a sustainable possibility.
In my performative work I refrain to use any sort of technical and electronic equipment. I would rather sing by myself than playing a song from a computer. It is important to keep the artistic act as pure and natural as possible as it is in this way I see the biggest chance of transformation of my artistic visions.
Q: How do you experience or consider the audience / surrounding. What space / surrounding do you find interesting to work in. How does your surrounding influence your work. Do you involve the public? If so how?
I like the audience that are present at the moment of my performance very much as I often imagine that they could have decided to stay at home and watch television or meet with friends for a dinner. That they are spending their time and attention to witness my artistic action is a big value to me, which I try to respect and give back with a full awareness of what I am presenting. But very rarely I would include the audience as an active designer of my performative pieces. I feel that I don’t want them to feel used for a vision I have. Instead I try to touch or stroke them with my visual works. I do have many doubts with interactive performances. I don’t need the audience to hold strings or objects and I don’t need to share with them holy moments where I give them souvenirs of my performance. I treat the audience as adult, smart and intelligent. This treatment generates a dialogue that does not need words for to communicate, but it needs their knowledge and life experience to make the work coherent and holistic. What I try is to create an inter passive situation, which means that the audience is free to take the offer of an artistic shared experience, not like in interactive performances where the audience often is forced to be within an artistic act.
The space is never the space where the performance just takes place. Each space has a certain history and a certain temperature that is very much useable for an artistic concept or vision. The space can add a lot to the presented performance if the action is somehow corresponding to the spatial environment. The action can echo the space and vice versa, the space can echo the action, which always brings a deeper understanding of the action within a certain context/space.
In fact there is no space in which my artistic practice would not fit into, but of course some spaces are easier to perform in then others. But at the end of the day a professional artist needs to be able to transport his or hers artistic vision in each space and at any time.
Q: Is there something you would like to add?
It is nice not to be asked what Performance Art is.
<< Back