Sarkis and when attitudes become form

8/19/2019 Sarkis and when attitudes become form

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SIn“W

Ats


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SALT005-SARKIS EN-002

Sarkis with his work, Rouleau en Attente [A Roll Waiting], installation view, When Attitudes Become Form (Works – Concepts –

Processes – Situations – Information), Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, 1969. © Courtesy of the artist and ADAGP, 2013.


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PREFACE

Sarks and “When Atttudes Become Form” s an

oral hstory project. Takng as ts startng

pont the exhbton enttled When Atttudes

Become Form (Works – Concepts – Processes –

Stuatons – Informaton), whch was curated by

Harald Szeemann and ntally held at KunsthalleBern between March and Aprl , ,

later at Museum Haus Lange Krefeld (May –

June , ) and the Insttute of Contemporary

Arts n London (August – September , ),

ths project features the promnent artstc

postons, nteractons, dfferences, and trans-

formatons of the perod as

narrated by Sarks, one of thepartcpants n the exhbton.

The text, whch I have comp-

led after ntervews wth Sarks

at hs studo n Vllejuf, Pars

on three separate occasons n

January and December ,

s accompaned by photographs from the personal

archve of the artst.

When Atttudes Become Form (Works –

Concepts – Processes – Stuatons – Informaton)

defned the newly emergng trends of the

perod as unque “atttudes” and brought them

together; these would later come to be calledPost-Mnmalsm, Arte Povera, Feld Art, and

Conceptual Art. In hs catalog pece, Szeemann

defned the common ground of these atttudes as

“the obvous opposton to form; the hgh degree

of personal and emotonal engagement; the pro-

nouncement that certan objects are art, although

they have not prevously been dentfed as such;

the shft of nterest away from the result towardsthe artstc process; the use of mundane materals;

the nteracton of work and materal; Mother Earth

as medum, workplace, the desert as concept”.1

Brngng together the movements that sha-

ped the cultural producton of the last century,

1 When Attitudes Become

Form (Works – Concepts –

Processes – Situations

– Information), Szeemann,

Harald (ed.), Kunsthalle

Bern, 1969.


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ths exhbton has frequently been the subject of

academc and curatoral research, but t has never

been studed from the perspectve of an artst.

Sarks and “When Atttudes Become Form” makes

t possble to take a look at the creaton process of

the exhbton and ts hstorcal perod, through

Sarks’ eyes, n lght of the “lvng work” concept,

an dea that guded the artst’s own practce, sup-

ported by archval photographs that document

ths dea. The publcaton creates a crtcally and

ntellectually fertle ground where Sarks’s thought

processes of the s can be dscovered as part of

the relatonshp between art and the transformedproducton and exhbton contexts, as well as the

dynamcs of nterpersonal relatonshps and the

nternatonal art system.

—Nazlı Gürlek


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- Bac en Attente (le révélateur ) [A Water Tank

Watng (callng mage)] (-) s n the

collecton of Center of Contemporary Vsual Arts

(CAPC) n Bordeaux today. You had made ths

work orgnally for the London verson of the

exhbton When Atttudes Become Form2 that was

to be held at the Insttute of Contemporary Arts

(ICA) n London n . It underwent a seresof changes untl t became part of the Bordeaux

museum’s permanent collecton n , and t

bears the marks of your thnkng and creaton

processes of more than thrty years.

Back n , t was an ron tank meters n

length and cm n wdth. I sad, “Put water n

t”. It becomes ncredbly heavy wth water nt, so I sad, “Put stays on both sdes, and then

mmerse a projector nto the water showng an

mage”… It was the mage of a resstor, and you

could see the red, burnng heat of the resstor n

the water.

- You drafted the work and asked

the ICA to produce t.

Fundng became a problem

at the London exhbton. Ths s

what they proposed: ether you

draft a project and we produce

t but cannot nvte you over, orwe get one or two of your works at Krefeld and

nvte you here. But the museum at Krefeld dd

not want to gve the two works t had bought, and

I dd not want to exhbt the other two. So n the

end I drafted a new work and let them produce t

n London.

- And after the exhbton?

It remaned on the balcony n Pars for twenty

years, untl . Lke a rusty shp (!), lke a shp

excavated at Yenkapı… Untl t re-emerged n a

museum n Rennes…



Processes – Situations –

Information), Institute of

Contemporary Arts, London,

August 28 – September 27,

1969.


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That s actually the dffculty wth my works.

Everyone s so used to statc works! Everyone

wants the work to reman constant so that t can

be analyzed. Thnk of ths lke a play – you want

to comment on t as you watch t, but that would

be wrong. You can’t lsten to a pece of musc wth

such dstance, ether, because once you put that

dstance between yourself and the musc, you can

no longer feel ts exstence.

- So, when compared to a play or a pece of musc,

s a work a matter of producton or a matter of

performance?

These days I’m tryng to understand how

orchestra conductors perform a pece. [Sergu]

Celbdache s tryng to remove the term “per-

formance” and to “gve brth” to the musc;

when you lsten, you have to reach the place

n whch the musc s born and experence that

brth.

- In that case, how wll we overcome the herarchy

mposed by the dea of the stage?

Ths s not a matter of herarchy. If you want

to be a part of a perod narratve and want to

thnk about that n terms of the work, then you

have to come to the place n whch t s born and

try to experence that brth, because the thngs we

wll dscuss here wll lead us nsde art.

- How wll we stop all these documentary pho-

tographs before us from lockng the moment

nto the past? Wll t suffce to take them out of a

-year old archve and brng them together n

ths book?

Look over there [Sarks ponts to the room

on the rght sde of the offce where we st]. I’mgong to Rotterdam on Thursday, and my asss-

tant wll come here wth my neon maker and

mount a brand new neon work n the empty space

on that wall you see there. Now I’m preparng the

brth place, the stage; I have rearranged the works

already on the wall, changng ther places. I wll

not be here on the brthday; I wll come after t s

born, take ts photographs, and then I wll take tout.

- Together wth the works surroundng t?

I don’t know; for now, I’m busy preparng the

brth place.


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- But the photographs you wll take may one day

be rendered vsble n place of the work tself, as

n the Ste exhbton.5 In the archve, hundreds of

them wll come together, and once they are taken

out of the archve they wll stand together wth

dfferent mages and objects as part of a totally

dfferent confguraton. All of ths wll be possble

only f the photograph that documents the work

gets to have a lfe of ts own.

That’s a great pont.

- It’s clear that ths meanng you have gven tophotography wll always keep t and the archve

alve, but I don’t thnk archvng s the only rea-

son why you want to take the work out after you

have photographed t n the studo. The way the

work exsts n the studo, or at home, s also a part

of ts lfe and requres attenton, doesn’t t?

Yes, the photograph of the work wll lveamong thousands of photographs n the archve,

just as the work tself lves

among ten other works, at frst

n the studo, because the pho-

tograph needs to go through a

process of blendng. [Janns]

Kounells shows one or two photographs of all hs

works and never takes them hmself. I always take

my own photographs, because I never lke the

ones taken by professonal photographers – they

work lke wall panters. For me, a photograph may

not be a drect part of a work, but stll t s a sup-

portng part.

- Thanks to the fact that your atttude of gvng

lfe to your work extends to the photographs

depctng your work, the part of the archve we

wll present n ths publcaton may just make t

5 Sarkis: Site, İstanbul

Modern, September 11, 2009

– January 17, 2010.

Sarkis’ studio/storage converted from a garage on Choisy

Boulevard, 1969. Photo: Sarkis. © Courtesy of the artistand ADAGP, 2013.


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possble to brng the s, whch we wll dscuss

here, alve n the present day. There’s another

thng I’m curous about n relaton to ths dea of

the lvng work – the degree of control you hand

over to the museum staff once you draft the work

and allow them to produce t, or reapply the pant

for each new exhbton. At the very least, chan-

gng technology may requre a seres of new dec-

sons when the objects or materal you used need

to be renewed.

Keepng works contnually n progress does

create such dffcultes, that’s true, but I thnk Icompensate for them by ncludng everythng

possble n the work n terms of technology. I

performed a work of mne years after t was

frst exhbted at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf 6 n ,

and [Centre] Pompdou bought that performance.

Durng the frst exhbton I had

used one of those cassette pla-

yers used at the tme, but nowt s very dffcult to fnd them

or even to use them – every

mnutes the tape ends, and

someone has to be there to turn

over the cassette. The queston

here s ths: how can you show

ths work today? My proposal to Pompdou was

ths: leave all the machnes as they are, make

dgtal copes of the tapes, stck small mp players

onto the old cassette players usng duct tape, and

use old speakers to play the sound.

- Usng current means to keep the work alve and

achevng ts contnuty by adaptng t to the con-

dtons of the day places t n the ever-changng

flux of lfe; t puts the work nto contact wth the

changng economy, technology, and producton

technques.

Because everythng that appears to be statc

has a lfe, t s alve nsde and undergoes change.

- The way you gve a seres of drectons or sugges-

tons to the museum staff to keep the work alve,

and the questons asked by Lawrence Wener

concernng the relatonshp of the artst wth the

work – how close are the two?

years ago, n the s, and - years before

he created Magcens de la Terre [Magcans of the

Earth]7, Jean-Hubert Martn was the drector of

Kunsthalle Bern. There he opened my exhbton as

well as Wener’s, [Marcel] Broodthaers’s, and [Ilya]

6 Opération Organe,

Kunsthalle Düsseldorf,

September 15 – October 15,1972.

7 Magiciens de la Terre

[Magicians of the Earth],

Centre Georges Pompidou

and Grande Halle, Parc de

la Villette, Paris, May 18

– August 14, 1989.


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Kabakov’s. That was Kabakov’s

frst solo exhbton. They selec-

ted about or statements for

Wener’s exhbton8 and asked

others to produce t. But f you

ask me, f you allow your work

to be that opened, the result wll

be too unrelated to the orgnal.

And that’s what happened…

- When he was years old,

Wener was openng holes by

smultaneously frng explosveshe had placed around an empty feld.9 Later he ca-

me to thnk that he could make do wth only the

verbal expresson and that there would be no df-

ference between the two n terms of artstc value.

If Wener’s statement s powerful enough,

then t should reman as a statement, and pro-

ducng t n your mnd wll be enough; that’s thereal work.One day we nvted Wener to gve a talk

at the Insttute10 Pontus Hulten, I and the others

had founded together. He confessed then that

he would never try somethng lke that agan.

People always say that vsualty s not mportant

n conceptual art, but t s.

- Then how does a work turn nto talk?

I had nvted another artst, Ian Hamlton

Fnlay, to my exhbton at Kunsthalle Bern.11

I nstalled all hs works because he was agorapho-

bc. That nvtaton s an example of what I mean

by talkng, and t s also smlar to the Atttudes

exhbton where we were all together, helpng

each other, talkng wth each other.

- Ths remnds me of somethng Glles Deleuze

sad – “Language states the possble, but only n

preparng t for a realzaton”.

12

When I frst met [Mchelangelo] Pstoletto

n , he sad he dd not want

to go on workng wth mrrors,

that he wanted to step out of

that style that had become hs

sgnature. He was contempla-

tng a seres of sculptures calledOggett n Meno [Mnus Objects].

He wanted hs own beng to

emerge from the relatonshp

between the works. When we

met n Pars, he told me about a

theater group called the Lvng

8 Lawrence Weiner,

Works & Reconstructions,

Kunsthalle Bern, August 19

– October 16, 1983.

9 Cratering Piece, Mill

Valley, California, 1960.

10 Institut des Hautes

Études en Arts Plastiques

(Directors: Pontus Hulten,

Daniel Buren, Serge

Fauchereau, Sarkis),

Paris, 1983-1995.

11 Ma Mémoire est ma

Patrie [My Memory is MyHome], Kunsthalle Bern,

June 14 – August 18, 1985.

12 Samuel Beckett, Quad ve

Diğer Televizyon Oyunları

& Gilles Deleuze, Bitik,

Norgunk, Istanbul, 2010,

p. 46.


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Theater.13 They were nvolved n a form of acto-

nst theater that was totally outsde the bureauc-

ratc structure, stagng ther plays on the streets

and n houses, gettng nvolved wth the people,

and Pstoletto was takng part n ther plays. In

fact, he had feelngs for one of the members…

Oggett n Meno stated that n order to reach

the level of beng a sculpture, the object requred

readng, that t was one step away from that level.

I regard ths seres as Pstoletto’s most mportant

work, and I thnk the Lvng Theater had an nflu-

ence n t.

- In terms of addng a temporal dmenson to the

sculpture?

These works show ther bodes. For theater to

be theater, the play has to turn the vewer nto the

audence. If t can do that, t s a play. Daro Fo’s

plays always functon on that prncple – he saysthat you have to sculpt the per-

son who comes and sts there to

watch you.

- So theater s also a form of

sculpture, s that rght?

Sculptng means gettng that person to look

at you n a certan way. Such as when you go nto

the hall where Psoletto’s Oggett n Meno are

placed, and ask how these were brought n n the

frst place, because you realze they wouldn’t

have ftted through the door.

- Were they constructed nsde?

They were constructed nsde to get people

to ask that queston, to make the audence work.

The audence come n from the outsde, and

see the body of a sculpture that was not brought

n from the outsde. The body of a sculpture

that could not have been brought n from the

outsde! Then the sculpture gets them to ask

themselves, where dd I come from and how s

t that ths body can exhbt tself here? Then,

when they contnue to the second hall, they

come across a sculpture very smlar to the one

they have just seen. As soon as they say, I haveseen ths before, the work gets them to queston

ther memory. That stuaton, that approach

created a dfferent te between the work and the

audence, and ths te began wth the queston of

the audence. But t was the work that made them

ask that queston.

13 The Living Theatre was

founded in 1947 by Judith

Malina, Erwin Piscator,

and Julian Beck in

New York City.


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- Untl that tme, sculptures were always made

n studos and brought to the exhbton space n

fnshed form.

They were brought n and placed; n other

words, they were dsplaced. For the frst tme,

Oggett n Meno dspensed wth the dsplacement

of sculptures.

- So you are sayng the theater taught the vsual

artst how to form drect contact wth the audence?

Rght, and my guess s that the way the Lvng

Theater forms drect contact wth ts audence

comes from [Bertolt] Brecht. Brecht’s players always

emphasze the fact that they are performng aplay

on the stage. One way to do that s to act by lookng

at the audence. Ths dalectcal ssue of the thea-

ter can be found n most of the works of the s.

- In the collages you made durng those yearswhen you came to know Psoletto, newspaper

clppngs of photographs showng solders n

unforms and people n shabby clothes are placed

one after the other as n a flm reel and colored

wth gouache. In the second half of the s

when you were creatng these works, the Algeran

War of Independence had just ended and the war

n Vetnam was stll gong on. I see that the sub-

ject matter carres a crtcsm of war; what was the

formal relatonshp of the works wth the perod

n whch they were produced?

I thnk those collages tred to reproduce and

accelerate a vsual event; they seem to be descr-

bng a moment of exploson. I was very confdent

of the content of these works. But somehow the

audence was nterested not n the content but

the vsualty of them. They were exhbted once at

the Pars Bennal n , and gven the frst prze

for pantngs. I don’t know how, because they

weren’t even pantngs, just collages… After the

award, these were used for my frst gallery exhb-

ton n Pars, and there was great nterest n them

n terms of sales as well. The gallery kept callng

me to ask f I had “blush” or “md-sze” collages.

These began to be exhbted at other places, too,

and all these developments told me that theseworks could easly be mass-produced. That was

the frst tme – and I hope the last – I fell nto dep-

resson and mmedately stopped producng…

I wasn’t n a state to meet those knds of demands,

my mnd was somewhere else entrely… For a few

months, I wasn’t able to do anythng…


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From the selection of May, 1968, Paris protest photographs by Sarkis. © Courtesy of the artist.


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- How old were you?

… It was shortly before the events of ‘,

when a new perod began. Museums were beng

crtczed, galleres dd not know what to do, and

everythng was extremely poltczed. So I began

to look beyond art. We could feel that the world

was shakng and changng. It was then that I

went n a dfferent drecton, lookng for a mate-

ral that carred a potental nsde tself.

- What knd of a potental were you lookng for?

I always had an ssue wth war, and at

the tme, I began thnkng about war n terms

of resstance. I felt that a materal that was

ready to explode but kept ts energy nsde

tself could gve that to me. I ddn’t care whether

I was makng a pantng or a sculpture, and I

looked for somethng durable, somethng alve.

That was tar… Tar s a functonal materal, fyou put t on rooftops t protects, but f you put

t on fre t gves off the heat nsde t, and then

you can even stck somethng on t, because

the heat you gve t pulls everythng nsde the

tar and stcks everythng to ts surface as t

melts.

- How dd you procure t?

Once I gave up collages and began dong ths,

I no longer went to stores that sold pants but to

retalers lke La Samartane. Ths s a store where

you can fnd everythng from clothes to nals. It

has a bg branch n Hotel de Vlle… That became

my materal warehouse.

Rouleau en Attente [A Roll Waiting], 1968 - 1969, aluminum

covered tar rolls pressed between iron sheet. Photo: Sarkis.

© Courtesy of the artist and ADAGP, 2013.


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- Alumnum-covered tar rolls were placed nsde

ron cases; what was the reason you chose ron?

Because I needed materals that would serve

me under all condtons, even n war. By that I

mean actual war – at the tme I dd a lot of work

on the troubles caused by war. I wanted mater-

als that could put up as good a fght as weapons.

I even coned the term “qualté mltare” for the

materals I sought. I never want to gve the upper

hand to my opponent, so I use the same materal

they use. You don’t thnk of thngs lke that when

you lve n the lvng room of a pett bourgeosehouse lke mne, but f you beleve your work wll

go on a mltary campagn, then you choose the

approprate materal. Iron was a materal that-

was durable and could carry heavy loads… If war

breaks out, t wll defntely survve, no matter

what…


covered tar rolls. Photo: Sarkis. © Courtesy of the artistand ADAGP, 2013.


covered tar rolls pressed between iron sheet. Photo: Sarkis.



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covered tar rolls and Masse Chauffée [Calescent Mass],

1968 - 1969, fire brick and white neon. Photo: Sarkis.


Rouleau en Attente (avec néon blanc) [A Roll Waiting (with white

neon)] (1968 - 1969), aluminum covered tar rolls and white neon

inside metal crate. Photo: Sarkis. © Courtesy of the artistand ADAGP, 2013.


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Rouleau en Attente [A Roll Waiting], 1968 - 1969,

aluminum covered tar rolls. Photo: Sarkis.© Courtesy of the artist and ADAGP, 2013.


covered tar rolls. Photo: Sarkis. © Courtesy of the artistand ADAGP, 2013.


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- … or t s a materal that wll bear the weght of

all the water put nsde t. Just as n Rouleau en

Attente (avec néon blanc) [A Roll Watng (wth

whte neon)] (-) and Bac en Attente

[A Water Tank Watng] ()…

There s a lamp nsde the water and above t

a neon… The hot lamp causes water to evaporate,

and that vapor turns on the neon above. As the

water evaporates, you have to supply more water,

whch could be - tmes a day dependng on the

temperature of the place.

- Ths physcal relatonshp creates contnuty

and gves lfe to the work.

The way you keep eggs warm so that they wll

hatch, a warmth lke ther mother’s, but an artf-

cal warmth. It’s the same dalectc here. The lght

above goes on burnng as f t feeds the water and

wll contnue dong so for a long tme. The con-cept of tme comes nto play, and somethng new

takes place! That water comes alve; that tar roll

starts to wat n the water and preserves ts energy

there. The lght nsde the water feeds t contnu-

ously wth a very small amount of heat. The mate-

ral stays as t s, yes, but t s also alve…

- And n order to stay alve t needs to be fed wth

water agan and agan.

Rouleau en Attente [A Roll Waiting] and Conversation

installation view, When Attitudes Become Form (Works – Concepts

– Processes – Situations – Information), Kunsthalle Bern, 1969.

Photo: Sarkis. © Courtesy of the artist and ADAGP, 2013.


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Let me show you somethng

you wll lke. I’ve got a jar of

honey here, sometmes I need

t and eat a spoonful [he takes

the jar n hs hands]. A frend of

mne made ths honey, and sent

t to me two years ago. It crystallzes wth tme,

and then I put t n warm water, and t turns lqud

agan. We had never asked these questons n art!

- What meanng does an artwork gan when t s

placed nsde a rtualstc structure?

What changes does that repetton brng to

the work? What knd of a memory does t gene-

rate? When you see or hear a work for the second

tme, what knd of new rchness do you focus on

even though the work s the same? What knd of

rchness does the performer add to the work?

- Durng the exhbton, Rouleau en Attente (avec

néon blanc) [A Roll Watng (wth whte neon)]

(), wth ts neon lamp and alumnum-covered

tar roll, and Conversaton (), wth ts electrc

current submerged n water, were placed at the

bottom of the stars connectng the two floors

of the Kunsthalle, rght by the last step, where

people comng down would almost tread on

them.14 Ths choce of place turns the works nto

threats for the vewers, and also forces the vewer

to come face to face wth ths threat at least twce,

because they wll have to go down the stars when

they walk through the exhbton, and then up

agan. How dd you decde to put the works there?




Information), Kunsthalle

Bern, March 22 – April 27,

1969.

Rouleau en Attente (avec néon blanc) [A Roll Waiting (with white

neon)] (1968 - 1969), aluminum covered tar rolls and white neon

inside metal crate filled with water, and Conversation (1968),

lamp and white neon inside metal crate filled with water. Photo:

Sarkis. © Courtesy of the artist and ADAGP, 2013.


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I had never nstalled my work n a museum

or another nsttuton before, I had no experence.

When I arrved at the door of the Kunsthalle on

the day of the nstallaton, I saw Szeemann lea-

nng aganst a column, lookng out. We sad hello

and kssed, and when I asked hm where I should

nstall the works, he sad, “Wherever you lke”.

So I chose the bottom of the stars, consderng

the fact that they posed some danger. Of course,

as you have sad, my am was to alarm people

comng down the stars n that frst nstant.

- I can’t thnk of any nsttuton anywhere n the

world today that would allow a work lke that to

be placed at the bottom of stars. Wasn’t securty a

problem?

Securty controls then weren’t as strct as

they are now, but of course there were certan

rules to be obeyed. In one corner you see thngs

burnng, and n the other corner there are water

and electrcty together… Installng the exhb-

ton was no problem, but when people from the

fre department came to check one day before the

openng, there was a huge problem, naturally;

I don’t exactly recall how, but thngs worked out

n the end… Personally, I was much more careful

about nstallng t at home, because my daugh-

ter was very young then and wanted to touch

everythng. I thought that people comng to the

museum were adults and they wouldn’t touch

thngs. Everyone told me I was buldng a bomb,

but frankly, I ddn’t thnk t would pose a threat to

anyone’s securty except for my daughter’s.

- Upstars, next to the wall where the starcase be-

gan, Kounells put some sacks wth dred food n

them. Rchard Artschwager put a sgn n the cor-

ner where two walls met, whch was nspred by

the “blp”s – a mltary sgn system showng the

speed of a launched rocket. Alan Jacquet lad a

cable between two floors wth no current passng

through t. Together wth your cases flled wth

ready-to-explode water and tar, ths part of the exhb-

ton was a group of works thnkng about concepts

such as war, dsplacement, survval, and dstance.

It was a complete concdence that these

works all used the same space; we hadn’t talked

beforehand and decded on the places. But the

ssues we thought about, and the materals we

used were smlar, and they created common

atttudes. None of us was nterested n makng

pantngs or sculptures, and we easly put the


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works on the floor. And yet, we dd all ths wth

utmost respect; between Panamarenko’s work

and mne there was one meter, and wth Wener’s

there was a meter and a half.

- On the other hand, Lawrence Wener opened up

an area of one square meter on the wall by scra-

png off the plasterwork and barng the concrete

under t, rght around the mddle of the starcase.

A second square of the same sze was opened by

Ger van Elk rght outsde the Kunsthalle.

And what’s more, Beuys was there n a small

hall, next to Robert Morrs’s felt works; Claes

Oldenburg was wth them as well, and who would

have thought that the three could share the same

space wthout pushng each other around!

- How were the spots decded?

Everyone decded upon ther own spots; net-

her Szeemann nor the other staff asked us any-

thng… Each work dctated ts own place. As for

nstallng the exhbton, we were all n the same

poston, we were all novces; the only thng we

knew was how to keep the work alve, lke refllng

the case when the water ran out...

- Was everyone nvted to nstall ther own work?

Yes, no one could nstall someone else’s.

Only Morrs was mssng, so I nstalled hs

pece. Most of the other works had been crea-

ted rght there, and agan most of them dsappe-

ared afterwards. There weren’t many that were

made n a studo and transported over. In those

days we used to transport the materal, not the

work tself. After I fnshed nstallng my own

Plomb/Eau 2 [Lead/Water 2], 1969. Photo: Sarkis. © Courtesy ofthe artist and ADAGP, 2013.


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work n half an hour and then dd Morrs’s, I hel-

ped Beuys because he needed some help placng

the felt peces on top of each other one by one.

- What do you remember about the openng day?

I remember the vewers were qute bad-

tempered. Phlp Glass gave a concert on the ope-

nng day and we were all there. Durng the concert

one person from the audence attacked Glass and

attempted to nterfere wth the pano, but after

a fst fght he calmed down and went back to hs

seat. The concert contnued, but then the man

attacked Glass agan. [Rchard] Serra stopped hm

and they threw the man out. Serra was a close

frend of Glass’.

- “Ant-form” s one of the frequently used terms

for the works n the exhbton; do you thnk ths

term was comprehensve enough to represent all

the dfferent atttudes, affntes, and dfferences?

The term “ant-form” emerged n the US,

wth the exhbton15 [Robert] Morrs organzed

at Leo Castell’s warehouse n . Except for

[Joseph] Beuys and [Govann] Anselmo, every-

one n that exhbton was Amercan. I got to

know Beuys n , and Morrs

n . But Morrs met Beuys

before all of us, and that must

have happened around -

, when Morrs was chan-

gng the materals he used. Both used felt, but f

you have notced, ther atttude towards felt s as

dfferent as nght and day. For Beuys, felt s not

just any other materal; t s protectve, t warms,

t can be charged; there s an autobographcal

element to t. Morrs, on the other hand, seems

to be sayng, “What’s so specal about felt, look,

I cut t - f t were alve t would have screamed”.

For Morrs, felt has only formalst qualtes, t s a

form. I’m much closer to Beuys on that account.

- Who do you thnk Amercans are closer to?

Amercans don’t lke to talk about ths at all,

but f you look carefully at Carl Andre’s works n

whch he uses wood, you wll see that they are

very close to [Aleksandr] Rodchenko’s wooden

sculptures. [Rchard] Serra’s black pantngs are

close to [Kazmr] Malevch. One naturally feels

oblged to respond to these works, but you have to

do that through your own art. The Germans were

very good at that. Italans, too, but between them

15 9 At Leo Castelli,

Castelli Warehouse,

New York, December 4 – 28,

1968.


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I fnd the response of the Germans stronger and

more passonate; I don’t really lke the ethereal

qualty of the Italans. Ths s undoubtedly beca-

use I love what Beuys gave to the German artsts

around hm.

- And who s Beuys closer to, havng to say later

on, “I Lke Amerca and Amerca Lkes Me”?16

A few years after Beuys staged that perfor-

mance n , we met n Düsseldorf. He asked me

to analyze that work. Here s the analyss I gave

hm, and I stll feel the same way. In , Beuys

was gong to stage a performance wth Morrs;

Beuys was to be n Berln, and Morrs n New

York, on the same day, at the same hour. Beuys

was there at the specfed day and tme, and he

remaned wrapped n felt for about hours, but

for some unknown reason, Morrs dd not partc-

pate n the performance.

- And the performance was left ncomplete…

Exactly ten years later, Beuys took the same

poston n New York, and was taken from the ar-

port to the gallery n an ambulance amd blarng

srens, wrapped n felt. He took the rhythm of

that ncomplete dual performance and contnued

t. In my opnon, what took Beuys to the States

was that desre to fnsh the ncomplete work, to

sttch together the two parts.

- In the meantme, n the background of that de-

sre was Germany, tryng to rebuld tself by repa-

rng the heavy damage created by World War II

and to confront ts own hstory, don’t you thnk?

Towards the end of [Raner Werner]

Fassbnder’s flm De verlorene Ehre der

Katharna Blum [The Lost Honor of Katharna

Blum] (), there’s a scene where the gas s left

on n the house and there’s a bg exploson. The

rado announces that even though Hungary was

seen as the front-runner of the World Cup n ,

West Germany won. That exploson s lke the

metaphor of the exploson of German economy

n the s; t takes place after a war whose

hstory was hdden from the youth for a long

tme. Wrters lke Henrch Böll

began for the frst tme to rp

that hstory apart through ther

“Lterature of Destructon.” In

those years, Beuys created works

by usng certan objects laden

16 I Like America and

America Likes Me,

René Block Gallery,

New York, May 1974.


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wth symbolc meanng, wth no formalst aspect

whatsoever. He had ths atttude of dggng up

the hdden hstory of hs country, and Beuys s

unthnkable wthout World War II.

- A Beuys who was the creator of myths, takng t

unto hmself to remnd hs socety of the common

values they shared…

The greyness and colorlessness of hs works

reflect the pan of a country that had carred out

a holocaust. Ths dea of bearng the burden of

pan s a very Chrstan concept; Jesus Chrst

carres the sns and pan of all humanknd, and

Beuys’ works have the same feelng. A couple of

years after he started teachng at the Academy

of Arts n Düsseldorf n , some artsts fleeng

from East Germany gathered there, and an

mportant atttude began to emerge. [Gerhard]

Rchter, [Blnky] Palermo, and [Anselm] Kefer

were all there. They were attached to ther own

hstory, but they were also able to keep a certan

dstance. In addton, they were opposed to the

formalsm of Amercan art and Pop aesthetcs

Rouleau en Attente [A Roll Waiting], 1969, tar roll covered withaluminum. Photo: Sarkis. © Courtesy of the artist and ADAGP, 2013.

Le Rail [Rail], 1970, iron structure. Photo: Sarkis. © Courtesyof the artist and ADAGP, 2013.


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Pour les Oiseaux [For the Birds], 1969, red neon on iron structure. Photo: Sarkis. © Courtesy of the artist and ADAGP, 2013.


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of [Andy] Warhol and [Roy] Lchtensten,

whch we called “cold pantng.” Aganst the

mechancal aesthetcs of the latter, whch hd

the human touch, the former began to create

“warm pantng.” The queston they ndrectly

asked was, “You beleve that the machne creates

somethng perfect, but when you enlarge the

scale, s t really perfect?”. [Sgmar] Polke’s

pantngs are all about that queston of larger

scale… Recently I have been thnkng a lot about

those days. Celbdache was the conductor of the

Berln Phlharmonc durng the years -,

along wth Wlhelm Furtwängler. A book has been

publshed recently on the rft between them,

whch I bought and read – I have always been

nterested n fndng out the artstc outcomes of

such rfts. I’m studyng Celbdache’s conductng

style, along wth hs poltcal stance at the tme

and hs body movements whle conductng.

- Because body movements have a poltcs, too?

Yes and n those movements

you try to come closer to some-

thng, you try to look lke some-

thng, but you also try to move

away from somethng…

- The heat emanatng from the heated tar rolls

enabled us to approach or move away from them.

They had a , watt resstor on them. The

, watts heated the one-meter long roll as

well as the museum at Krefeld.17 As you camecloser to the work, you could feel the attracton

of the heat. Yes, the heat created a relatonshp

between the work and the audence. It s true,

though, that mnmalst objects are not very

dfferent n that sense; they fnd ther place n

the venue wthout makng us forget our exstence.

They always reman n touch wth the space and

wth us.

- What other atttudes n other parts of Europe

caught your attenton at the tme?

Italy was the place where the gallery-artst-

hstoran network functoned the best. The young

art hstoran [Germano] Celant and the young

gallery owner [Gan Enzo] Sperone were together

wth the young artsts n Torno. They were all

about the same age, only Maro Merz was qute

a bt older than they were. They formed a group;

they adhered to a clear poltcal lne, but they also

created some very ndependent works.




Information), Museum Haus

Lange, Krefeld, May 9 –

June 15, 1969.


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- What was the common poltcal atttude that

joned them?

They were aganst Amercan captalsm;

those who have created the Arte Povera move-

ment of today bult ther atttude by constantly

engagng wth the lterature and flm of ther

own country and by formng ntellectual tes.

They had strong tes wth [Per Paolo] Pasoln

as well as the New Realst cnema, whch began

around . Later on, some of the Arte Povera

artsts created baroque works, and f you study

them closely, you wll see that they have an

ethereal qualty they share wth [Federco]

Felln.

- If we look for symmetry between the populst

tendency at the core of the New Realst cnema

and ts antagonstc approach to Hollywood, and

the antagonsm of the Arte Povera artsts aganst

Amercan captalsm, as you have mentoned,

what s the movement they oppose the most?

The Pop feld n the States. Many hstorans

clam that Mnmalsts came after the Pop artsts,

but n fact, they were nfluental n the same

perod. I can demonstrate that wth the parallels

between the works of Morrs and [Jasper] Johns.

As we have sad, n Morrs’s work datng from

- , when he hadn’t yet begun hs geomet-

rcal forms, you can see a change n materal that

s the result of Beuys’ nfluence. That change

s a slghtly dfferent expresson of the change

of materal that you see n Johns. The reason

Sculpture Flottante avec la Résistance [Floating Sculpture

with Resistor], 1968 - 1969, resistor inside metal basin.

Photo: Sarkis. © Courtesy of the artist and ADAGP, 2013.


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Sculpture Flottante avec la Résistance [Floating Sculpture with Resistor], 1968 - 1969, resistor inside metal basin. Photo: Sarkis.



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Les 3 Bacs [3 Water Tanks], 1968, film negatives of photographs from May 1968, Paris and white neon inside a plastic basin filled

with water. Photo: Sarkis. © Courtesy of the artist and ADAGP, 2013.


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BLACK OUT I installation view, Galerie Handschin, Basel, 1974.Photo: Sarkis. © Courtesy of the artist and ADAGP, 2013.



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Lveran, who asked for an exhbton fee from

the nsttutons wantng to show works of hs

artsts. Hs gallery was called La Salta; that’s

where Rchard Serra had an exhbton wth lve

anmals. Kounells and [Gulo] Paoln also had

ther frst solo exhbtons there. I learned the

dea of askng for a fee n return for an n stu

work from hm, and practced t from the early

s onwards. Just lke actors gettng pad for

each performance, we too should take nto acco-

unt the fact that our work s lve and for the most

part t s not sold.

- Speakng of sellng – what happened to

Conversaton and the peces of the Rouleau en

Attente [A Roll Watng] seres after the Bern and

Krefeld exhbtons?

Szeemann called one day to tell me there was

someone who preferred to reman anonymous

and wanted to purchase the tar roll work, but

that he ddn’t want to gve t to the exhbton at

Krefeld, and that f I were to sell t, Kunsthalle

would receve a commsson. I multpled

my rent by three, made a lst of thngs I needed,

and that was the prce I gave Szeemann – I don’t

remember now how much t was. The prce was

accepted and the works were sold. That’s how

I found out about the Krefeld exhbton; I had

no dea my works were gong to be taken there…

I made four new works for that exhbton, and

agan went n person to nstall them; at the tme,

I was makng money nstallng exhbtons andSzeemann had especally called me there beca-

use he wanted me to nstall some works other

than my own. Whle I was there, the drector of

the Museum told me they wanted to buy one of

my works for the Museum. I gave hm my prce,

whch he found very reasonable and decded to

buy one more.

- What was the prce?

I had asked for , Francs for the two of

them, whch s Euros today, but at the tme

that was a lot of money. He wrote me a check, and

advsed me to cash t as soon as possble, because

he had heard that the Franc was about to be deva-

lued. So I went to the bank straght away and ex-

changed t, and bought hm a nce bottle of cog-

nac as a present. Years later, recently n fact, I

came across a catalog… The hers of the collector

who had bought the works and gven them to the

museum had sold them agan, and they ended up



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n the Zwrner & Wrth collecton, where they are

today.

- Dd you never hear from the person who bought

the works at Bern?

Two years later, I had my frst exhbton18 at

hs gallery n Basel, and the second one19 n .

That second tme around, I made one of my favo-

rte works – Blackout ().

- In Blackout, a part of the gallery floor covered

wth tar was set on fre and that burnt part emer-

ged as a ptch black area. A copy of that same area

was reproduced on the wall rght above t.

It was the tme of the Cyprus War… The

rado kept announcng forbdden alttudes and

lattudes for shps. I recorded

these, marked them on the map,

and the result was that shape. I

put t on the floor and marked

ts contours, and then set t on

fre, so that the black of the tar

emerged. Blackout was word

play: taken lterally, t means the

emergence of black. Blackout

s also a mltary term, used for turnng lghts off

durng war; a momentary loss of conscousness s

also called a “blackout”; and fnally, blackout n

photography s the totally dark daphragm wth

no hole for the lght to pass through. Strangely

enough, no one stepped nsde ths shape durngthe exhbton, except for a dog! People who saw

t sensed that somethng had

passed through that area…

- And the fact that ths was n a

gallery remnds me of the ad pla-

ced n a magazne by Sperone,

sayng “In spte of everythng,

art s stll a real mysterous

comfortng hard dream”.20 The

fact that the magazne n ques-

ton was Avalanche, and that ts

founders were members of the

group21 that organzed aganst

MoMA n January , explans

to me how the rghts you had

at that tme as artsts were won

through a jont struggle aganst

the system at varous locatons

throughout Europe and the

States.

20 “In spite of every-

thing art is still a real

mysterious comforting hard

dream”, Galleria Sperone,Torino advertisement,

Avalanche, Summer 1972.

21 A group of art workers

organized in January 1969

around Takis against MoMA

in New York City. Some

of the documents con-

cerning Takis’ protest

against MoMA and the Art

Workers Coalition even-

tually triggered by this

action are available on

the Primary Information

website: http://pri-

maryinformation.org/

index.php?/projects/

art-workers-coalition/

18 SARKIS, Galerie

Handschin, Basel,

September 1 – October 30,

1971.

19 BLACKOUT I, Galerie

Handschin, Basel,

September 30 –

November 30, 1974.



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All those jont atttudes were beng develo-

ped n order to shake up the stnkng system that

never changed. But you have to see that even

though ths matter of atttudes and the wnnng

of rghts started then, t lasted for years. I star-

ted teachng at the School of Decoratve Arts nStrasbourg n , and my job was to prepare

th and th graders for the natonal dploma. In

my frst year, I took the students to the th grade

natonal dploma jury. There were fve people on

the jury, and all were men! Rght after that, on my

own, as f representng the school, I went to the

Mnstry of Educaton and told them that I wasn’t

gong to let my students take the exam next year

f there weren’t at least two women on the jury. I

also added that I was prepared to start a natonal

campagn dependng on ther response. And the

next year there were two women on the jury; ths

s now the norm n France.

- Do you agree that the art system s an extenson

of the establshed structures of socety and that a

change ntended for the system has to be trgge-

red wthn that socal structure?

Yes, exactly, and only f ths s the struggle

of a totally poltcal atttude can change occur.


covered tar rolls, 1000 watt resistor. Photo: Sarkis.



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For example, I had to do other thngs to wn

certan other rghts at the School n Strasbourg.

It was a century-old art school and extremely

conservatve. There were workshops for fab-

rcs, prnts, accessores, etc., but not a sngle

workshop where students could thnk and talkabout art; what’s more, once a student was

enrolled n one of these workshops, they were

unable to transfer to another for fve years. It

was lke boot camp… students revolted,

demandng to use more than one workshop

and to have greater freedom for ther work, and

two nstructors asked me to see these students.

I had gven lectures at varous schools n ‘, but

I had absolutely no teachng experence. I accep-

ted seeng the students on one condton – that

the School would have to assgn us a space for

our use only, I would go n wth my works, and

ask the students to come wth thers. We would

stay n there for four days and no one would bot-

her us, and I would gve my decson at the end

of those four days. That’s what we dd, and at the

Untitled, 1968 - 1969, clay on wood sheet and film negatives of

photographs from May 1968 (detail). Photo: Sarkis. © Courtesyof the artist and ADAGP, 2013.

Untitled, 1968 - 1969, clay on wood sheet and film negatives

of photographs from May 1968. Photo: Sarkis. © Courtesy ofthe artist and ADAGP, 2013.



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end of the four days I agreed to open a studo,

because those four days were terrfc! I founded a

studo called Art Department, I had - rooms, all

of them were open door, and everyone was free to

work wth whatever materal they lked. I kept t

gong for ten years.

- Gvng young people the freedom of choce

entals shapng current condtons to accommo-

date that freedom.

Art can be nstructve and an artst s

someone who teaches not only a producton

technque but also a behavor. Ths s a poltcal

matter. The polce raded Düsseldorf Academy

because Beuys let people nto a studo

ntended for . Beuys regstered mmgrants

who needed to stay n Germany as students

at hs studo, thereby enablng them to have

offcal papers. He used to say, “They need to

be there at that moment, and we must not ask

why they have come, but help them meet

ther urgent needs”. Atttudes lke that resulted

n rghts beng ganed.

- How dd Szeemann fnd out about your works?

Actually, even today, I don’t know how he

found about me. But he always asked around

– the nght I met hm, he asked me about some

names to fgure out whch artsts I knew…

Our professon was just beng born at the tme,

but so was hs.

- When was ths?

One mdnght n the Fall of … One day he

came wth [Perre] Gaudbert to vst me at home.

I hadn’t known hm before that, but I knew

Gaudbert – he was the terrfc drector of Musée

d’Art Moderne. He was a very poltczed man.

He took part n the ‘ ncdents, and then n

they somehow fred hm. The room we sat n at

home was no bgger than you see n the photog-

raphs; there was a table by the wndow where we

ate and where I worked, whle my wfe worked on

her translatons. There was a sngle armchar, a

couple of chars, a TV set, and a bookcase. And a

kd runnng around. At the tme, I was workng on

the ron cases flled wth water and the stuff made

of clay nto whch I had placed the photographc

flms of the ‘ ncdents; when I brought them

all out, three-quarters of the room was occuped.

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So we had been watng for them to come, n that

state, snce four o’clock. They came late n the

nght; I looked out the wndow and saw the tax

that was watng for them. They came up, and I

told them I was showng nothng f they dd not

send the tax away. All my works were alreadythere, but I was pssed! Gaudbert went down

and sent the tax away, whle Szeemann was

examnng the works. When Gaudbert came back

Szeemann sad, “These are not for you, they are

for me”.

- What dd that mean?

Gaudbert was contemplatng openng an

exhbton smlar to Szeemann’s, and perhaps

the two of them were gong to do t together. Later

on Gaudbert gave up for some reason, possbly

because France wasn’t yet ready for works lke

that. Szeemann started tellng me about t, but

the exhbton had no name or even a formed

content. “I have a number of thngs I stll don’t

know how to combne,” he sad, “but that’s what

attracts me.” They kept talkng about “concept,”

and that’s when I frst heard the word. After that

nght, I ddn’t hear from hm for a month or two.

At the tme, I had a Chnese mtaton Rolleflex

SARKIS installation view, ARC / Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville,

Paris, 1970. Photo: Ugo Mulas. © Courtesy of the artist andADAGP, 2013.


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they dd not look lke anythng

that had gone before; he sensed

these and attempted to brng

them together.

- Were you surprsed whenhe wanted to set the Kunsthalle

on fre?

We ddn’t have any pror experence to com-

pare t to, we had no hstory on our backs! I went

to the exhbton at Stedeljk Museum24 as a vs-

tor, because Pero Glard was my frend and had

worked a lot for that exhbton. As an nsttuton,t was much more mportant than Kunsthalle

Bern, because t held a very mportant collecton.

But t never became an exhbton that artsts ns-

talled, t remaned a museum.

- Whch one was more beautful n your

opnon?

The one at Bern was wld! All contrbutons

were passonate… You know how people always

talk about frst date, frst thrll, frst love – you

are n no poston to make calculatons, because

you aren’t set n your ways yet. That was what t

was lke there. It has always stayed fresh n my

memory…

24 Op Losse Schroeven:

Situaties en

Cryptostructuren

[Op Losse Schroeven:

Situations and

Cryptostructures],

Stedelijk Museum,Amsterdam, March 15 –

April 27, 1969.

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Sarkis, installation view, ARC / Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris, 1970. Photo: Ugo Mulas. © Courtesy of the artistand ADAGP, 2013.

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Sarkis, installation view, ARC / Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris, 1970. Photo: Ugo Mulas. © Courtesy of the artistand ADAGP, 2013.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

MANY THANKS TO LIZA BÉAR FOR SHARING HER FRIENDSHIP

AND EXPERIENCES WITH ME; JAMES HOFF FROM PRIMARY

INFORMATION FOR ENCOURAGING MY RESEARCH AT THE MoMA

LIBRARY; AND THE TEAM AT GALLERY MANÂ FOR THEIR

PROFESSIONAL COOPERATION. MY VERY SPECIAL THANKS

GO TO SARKIS FOR BEING A SOURCE OF ENDLESS INSPIRATIONAND LIGHT DURING OUR COLLABORATION.

—NAZLI GÜRLEK

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SALT/Garant Kültür AŞ (İstanbul)

ISBN: 978-9944-731-36-2

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the creator or the lcensor, but you can’t change them n any way or

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Intervew: Nazlı Gürlek

Translaton: g yayın grubu

Book desgn: Project Projects

Artwork: Gülsüm Kekeç

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Sarkis and when attitudes become form

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