enterview

• a: there’s something wrong here
• b: things start to get interesting when they go wrong
• a: but there’s nothing new
• b: you could see it like that
• a: your art looks like second hand imaging, like a reproduction of a reproduction
• b: the idea is to reorganize something that’s already there, re-present something that already exists
• a: yes, the impossibility of creativity
• b: remake, reuse, reassemble, recombine – that’s the way to go
• a: it questions authorship
• b: originality is a myth, or even a lie
• a: sort of like talent through sleep
• b: importing, changing, interpreting and positioning everything
• a: hammering away and tinkering with everything
• b: simply a cut and paste operation
• a: to be modern is to know what is no longer possible
• b: well, andy warhol traced the whole pattern, and it’s just happening again
• a: one time when warhol was interviewed , he let someone answer the questions for him – he just sat there smiling, like he was throwing his voice
• b: i’ve always had great respect and fascination with warhol – in a way, i thought of it as both recycling duchamp and predicting what was to come
• a: duchamp comes back all the time, like a boomerang
• b: maybe another big question is, what can you do after the readymade
• a: it may well turn out that there is no such thing as a readymade at all
• b: well, it is one, and yet at the same time, it isn’t
• a: it just required an external element which would encourage people to reflect on the internal
• b: something you cross, where you suspend your conclusions and resolutions
• a: irrational cuts, where the rupture with the outside world is visible
• b: irrational, but not necessarily destructive
• a: juggling with known elements, governed by the throw of dice
• b: at some point, it suddenly occurred to me that when you put representational images under a microscope, they become different kinds of entities
• a: existing available images, taken out of context, appropriated and recombined
• b: indicating that the world and its representations do not match
• a: relations of unlike things
• b: appearing in a shattered mirror
• a: unmade, remade and made over
• b: pushing forward and simultaneously receding
• a: shifting through different forms and temporal slippages
• b: an endless series of permutations
• a: renegotiation is always possible
• b: the matter is far from closed
• a: all fed by a continuous dialog
• b: expands to include the entire universe
• a: it’s a weird mix
• b: things are amiss and at the same time normal
• a: you don’t know what the hell to think – whether to take it seriously or whether it’s a joke, or both at the same time
• b: this is visible in many artists’ works
• a: certain ideas are just in the air
• b: things are twisted, distorted and made productive in a new way
• a: every viewer of the picture hears something different
• b: there are no facts, only interpretations
• a: misconceptions can be beautiful, and histories are always being rewritten
• b: and each time, just one of many possibilities
• a: a problem of information
• b: it’s full of misunderstandings
• a: there is a very complex relationship between visual and verbal language
• b: the way words act on images, and images on words
• a: words play a considerable role – they change the very visibility of what is
• b: and words on top of words
• a: it just snowballs
• b: the best thing is just to take a deep breath
• a: it’s a question of collision
• b: running like a scarlet thread, as it were, through all
• a: the permutations between the person whose story is told, the one doing the telling and the one to whom it is told
• b: promoting narrative speculation
• a: and the relation between the voluntary and the involuntary
• b: leading to a different relationship with narration
• a: the picture sets in motion an experimental universe
• b: any depiction is an act of construction
• a: it’s something dynamic, constantly changing and that you constantly see differently
• b: associations are temporary and more diverse – they disappear and reappear, taking on new forms elsewhere
• a: not knowing where the twists and turns of these peregrinations will take us
• b: generating it own randomness
• a: people are caught off by it and need an immediate interpretation
• b: their reaction is to come up with a blanket definition without really examining the structures underneath
• a: to be fair, none of us is free from this problem, since it is institutional
• b: picture us as little parrots
• a: independent and attached at the same time
• b: victims of the rules
• a: we live in an empire of marketing, spectacle and seduction
• b: one risks becoming what one critiques
• a: being accepted can be more dangerous than being refused
• b: success is always crass, but so is failure
• a: the laws of the market are stronger than the effort to fight against
• b: the worst thing is to take it too seriously
• a: play with the logic of the spectacle
• b: respond to the way things are framed
• a: people are still lifting and recycling, they just don’t care about the sources
• b: for me, jeff koons and richard prince offered a whole new set of possibilities, and made me think to try that kind of art
• a: work derived from the media that deals with a sort of media feedback makes sense to me
• b: my version of it is second generation, but at the same time it’s like giving new life to something
• a: by playfully introducing doubts and confusion
• b: the way desire travels though objects and images
• a: desire translates into the things with which we ritualize our lives, and into the way we communicate and portray ourselves through objects
• b: projecting one’s self onto objects
• a: the psychological and sociological dynamics that bring about self definition
• b: and the common misuse of contemporary symbols, myths and social regulations
• a: their relation to language
• b: through the overt construction of it as fiction
• a: this relation is blurred in various ways
• b: between public and private
• a: a chain of scenarios
• b: with a series of unfoldings
• a: grafting one thing onto another
• b: and adapting to whatever circumstances
• a: here, now
• b: it’s a little mysterious

thanks to maurizio cattelan for the idea, and to all the artists and interviewers whose words were cut and pasted to assemble the above

copy write jim laser subject to change

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