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"Self-communication"
- an interview with Igor Stromajer
- by Tilman Baumgaertel
- published by Telepolis (Germany, April 1999)
- German version
Let's start with you online-handle "intima". Why did you pick it, and does it have some relevance for your art?
"Intima" is an artistic mark, something like a "trade mark" for everything I'm doing - both in the territory of art and the territory of life (art <--> life), because I see those two fields completely connected. And beside that: I'm interested in only one receiver of the particular net.art project at the time. There is always an individualised receiver sitting behind the computer on the other side and she/he is convicted to deal with the particular net.art project very intimate and with all her/his individual frustrations and pain that are positioning her/him inside the displaced structure of the net.art project. Being behind the computer one is always communicating with herself/himself, so she/he is performing a kind of self-communication, masturbation based on the artistic impulses that are coming out of the project. I call it the artistic communication.
Basic substance of my work is the individuality and the key words for all my activities are seclusion and ascetics. These imply intimacy, which after all is emphasised in the name of the artistic mark. That's why I'm convinced that net.art is the most intimate art ever. And the most dangerous one.
Why and to who and what would it be dangerous if people sit isolated in front of their computers?
"Art is never chaste, one should keep all innocent buffoons steered well away. People who are not prepared well enough for art should never be allowed near it. Yes, art is dangerous. If it's chaste, it's not art." Pablo Picasso.
Being faced with the computer is like going to the very deep process of the most intensive self-communication. It is a kind of art that puts you as a user/participant into the co-creators position: you have to be active to survive in this kind of digital environment. On the other hand - being inactive results in a very dangerous situation: you become impotent and not able to control your co-ordinates inside the project and not able to let your body to react (to activate your hormones and emotions).
This is dangerous.
But a lot of artists were drawn to the net not because it allows "self-communication" as you say, but because it enables them to communicate potentially with the whole world, not just with the interface. What you say seem to relate more to computer-based art...
Let's be precise and not discuss about the surface of the problem. Of course, the ability of communicating with the whole world is great as it's pleasant to be invited to many festivals and exhibitions abroad instead of showing your work in a local gallery only. But this is not the most important matter. Even more: it's a kind of fancy argument of many wanna-be-artists to be known world wide. When I'm talking about an active self-communication I'm referring to the intimate process that is going on when a user is getting in touch with the net.art project not to the communication with the interface. Interface is not the case here because it's just a tool, virtual material only. I wasn't talking about it. What matters is the story, the message. Communicating with others over the net is just a surface - in fact everyone it talking to herself/himself. Like having an e-mail conversation: it's more a monologue with delay as a dialogue. Being faced with a net.art project and it's dynamic and displaced structure, the user is taking project's signals, transferring them to her/his body and using them as an encouragement to explore her/his actions, reactions, feelings, emotions - and even bones, meet, blood, sperm: everything we have. That is why I call it self-communication.
With these thoughts in mind: what would be the connection to your things on the web? I noticed that you use a lot of found material in your works, they are almost like collages. How would this kind of generic, pre-fabricated stuff foster the self-communication you are talking about?
I'm trying to collect things all over the net and I see myself more as a collector than creator. What to create if everything is there already? I just have so search for the already created useful and useless material and recombine it into the new statement in a new environment, which becomes my personal intimate statement. On my search missions on the net I very often find the material that provokes me and I want to fight back in some way. I always let the material to touch my emotions and that's why I want to archive it and intimately touch other people. I often cry so I want to show to the others that they can cry too. This is how I encourage their self-communication within my net.art projects.
But most of these images on the net are there for commercial or information purposes. They were not meant to touch us emotionally, and for technical reasons (low resolution, blurred pictures etc.), it is actually hard to imagine that they do. Why do you want to turn them into something that touches peoples emotions?
Emotions are not the privilege of living beings, nor of the art only. Even businessmen, supermarkets, political propaganda, cellular phones, satellite technology, multinational corporations, medical equipment and stock exchanges could be and are full of emotions. Do you suggest that low resolution and blurency excludes emotions? On the contrary. I see it as a low-tech solution for high-tech art.
And: does the combination of very different images that have nothing to do with each other in some of your works on the contrary *empty* them of all meaning?
It certainly gives them a new one. I very much enjoy in redefining the basic meaning of the images into something new if it fits the concept of my project. Sometimes I'm surprised and shocked because of the alternative suggestions that a particular image is offering to me very aggressively. The universe outside the Internet is exactly the same. We consume images and we combine them in many different ways. Our brains are capable to make fantastic combinations and so is the net. With a little help of the net artist, of course. Because if we are talking about net.art we are in fact talking about unlimited options of views and perspectives that can make one image with the combination of others meaning whatever we (the artist and the user together) want. Although the images are not my primary concern anymore.
Well, one of the primary concerns of your art seems to be spirituality; even a statement like "Cellular phones have emotions" seems to support that. Would it be correct to say that an important aspect of your work is the spiritualizing of technology - such as the net?
Spirituality has nothing to do with emotions. If the spirituality is something undeterminable and undefinable - emotions are real, they have a physical effect on our body: tears are the real material, chemical substance that already exists in our body but has to be provoked by something.
I see emotions at the same level as physical irritations. It is the orgasm that plays the key-role. Because there is no collective catharsis anymore if the user is individualised, so the individual orgasm could be understood as the highest condition of the user being inside the art project. And the orgasm is always individual - even in a group sex act. A metaphor and spirituality are dead elements here. You can not achieve orgasm with a metaphor. You have to do it in a hard way. Like with technology. Indeed.
The net art scene is really the first art development after the second WW that transcendents the border between East and West. How do you localise yourself in this context? Do you think there is something specifically "Eastern" about your art? Or do you think that these paradigms don't play a role anymore?
Both. I do believe in something which could be called an "Eastern soul" and of course it is somehow present in my art but maybe it has more to do with myself as a person/artist that grew up in the East and not so much with my projects because it would be very difficult for me to define and locate it inside them. It is more like a general feeling, an atmosphere of being open, honest, not very rational all the time and quite curious.
But - since these are the categories that are far away from being the exclusive property of Eastern artists :) I'm not very preoccupied with searching for the border between East and West and trying to locate myself. Maybe it's easier for me because I'm a kind of double personality. Sometimes I feel very Eastern and I often declare myself as a virtual communist and revolutionar: I dance, I sing and I drink. But sometimes I feel so nihilistic, exhausted and even democratic which could be understood as me being Western.
I have the feeling that net art being primarily the design of web pages is loosing in importance. How do you feel about this notion, and what direction do you think things in general and you work in particular are going to develop?
I strongly believe that net art as a web design doesn't exist - or I don't see and recognise it as net art and even not as art at all. Because design has a task to make things look beautiful but art in general has nothing to do with beauty of course.
As the Internet as a medium will develop it will become completely connected and compatible with other machines we have, like washing machines, toasters, refrigerators, cars etc. If today some are already talking about interaction as one of the principle of net art, they have to know that they are wrong because what we have now is just the unimportant surface of something what we would like to be an interaction, but it's not. The real interaction is still coming. It will bring us the complex interrelation of all the machines into out live and into our body. Nano-robots will settle our flesh and each individual will become something like a computer-server walking around and communicating, interacting and interrelating with everything in a close and long distance. Internet as such will disappear or will transform into very personal/intimate/micro and very global/macro total medium at the same time. It has to become a physical and material part of our real body if it wants to survive in any way.
So, the future is in body-integrated cellular phones and GPS's. Can you imagine art in those circumstances?
To finish this interview, let's discuss a specific piece of yours. Can you comment a little bit on "b.ALT.ica", which is to my knowledge your latest work...
The latest pieces are "Oppera Teorettikka Internettikka - Stromajer is singing the theory of Internet" (also available on www.intima.org in RealAudio format) which is a performance on stage and "zvrst3" which is a net.art.trash collected for the festival in Russia.
It's very hard for me to comment b.ALT.ica. The project is dedicated to my father because b.ALT.ica is the place where he lives now. It is the land at the end of time. Beyond. And it is emotional. It is about the relationship between communication and communism. About "Was ist Kunst? and "Was ist nicht Kunst?". About uncensored sky view, no-time zone, definition of net.art, viruses and the last mind game.
About not hurting me because every time you say goodbye I die a little. And about where have all the flowers gone? That's b.ALT.ica and that's what's on my mind all the time.
dr. Tilman Baumgaertel: net.art 2.0 - Neue Materialien zur Netzkunst, herausgegeben vom Institut für moderne Kunst Nürnberg - Zweisprachig (Deutsch/English) - ca. 260 Seiten mit ca. 100 Abb., davon ... in Farbe, Broschiert, 20,9 x 24 cm, EUR 32,- / ISBN 3-933096-66-9 - Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg, 2001 [interview with I. Stromajer]
Igor Štromajer Intima Virtual Base Virtualna baza Intima Igor Stromajer www.intima.org Igor Štromajer
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