Artist Interviews by Zanny Begg:

Oliver Ressler (Austria)

Federico Zukerfeld (Etcetera) (Argentina)

Arlene TextaQueen (Australia)

Taring Padi: Bayu Widodo (Indonesia)

Contra File (Brazil)

Oliver Ressler, Sydney January 2007:

Video still, 5 Factories - Worker Control in Venezuela.

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Question: I notice that a theme, which you consistently return to in your work, is globalization and its discontents - both the deterritorialisation of capitalism and the rise in the mid ‘90s of the anti-capitalist movement. I was wondering how you felt this tension between Empire and Multitude was played out through your work?

I have done a variety of works with different viewpoints on globalization, some of them focused more on transnational corporations and the existing systems of power as I attempted to analyze and understand them, whereas other projects have gone more in the direction of resistance to capitalism. A big project I started a couple of years ago was Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies. Through this work I wanted to find different approaches to future alternative societies.

To be honest in the last years it has been harder to be positive about the development of resistance, as there are only very few examples of resistance and existing forms of alternative societies. I try to focus on some of these possibilities and one important example is Venezuela. Venezuela does not, in my opinion, present an alternative society or economy so much as it outlines a process, which might lead us to such a society. This process, however, may also be interrupted perhaps by foreign forces such as the United States, or maybe even from the rich opposition in Venezuela, so it is a process where it is not so clear where it will end up.

Question: There has been a lot of emphasis on “political exhibitions” in Europe over the last five years or so. Do you feel the anti-capitalist movement has opened up this possibility?

In my opinion the existence of the anti-capitalist movement and how it is organized as a movement represents a form of alternative in itself. It is, in general at least, anti-hierarchical. There are some individuals who get a lot of public attention, but there is no real leader or a dominating party. In general it’s an egalitarian movement and such a movement can be seen as an alternative to the dominating political players.

I think the anti-capitalist movement is of big importance as it actually represents the only real visible international connected form of resistance in our rich western societies in the last few decades and therefore I think it is the kind of movement that we, as artists, should support and engage with. My experience is that the movement is pretty open, so it is possible to get involved in different activities.

Question: You often use activist forms in your work such as the documentary and the publication and so forth – why do you put these into a gallery context?

I produce different products, and my videos are the products, which are the most closely related to the anti-capitalist movement. They are open to a variety of presentation contexts, the art presentation context being just one of these – they are also shown at film and video festivals, presentations from activists groups, NGOs, parties, alternative TV and open channels and so forth. I have realized a couple of videos in the last few years, which have easily crossed between presentation contexts. To many activists my work does not appear like art, more like a good piece of documentation. So usually there is not a big debate over its status as art, they just use it as a document because it is useful for their campaigns and mobilizations.

It is a little more complicated with a large installation such as the Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies piece which can only be presented in a huge space which has equipment such as monitors and DVD players and production budgets for floor lettering, which almost always pushes this work towards the art scene, as there are not that many other places where these conditions would exist. It would be possible to present the piece in a university or a space from a progressive union, and I would be interested to produce it for such a space, but in comparison with the amount of spaces that exist in the art context there are not many possibilities... From the 21 exhibitions I have realized in the framework of this ongoing project all have been within the art context. Even when I was invited to present the piece by people who came more from an NGO or activist background, the space where the piece was eventually realized was an art institution.

Question: Do you see your projects therefore as inventing a new audience for art? An audience, which comes not just from an art background but also an activist one?

Ideally I hope to create a new audience, and this does happen sometimes, but at least in the case of exhibitions often the majority of the audience comes from an art background. Sometimes you get an offer to produce an exhibition in a determined space in a city in which I have never in my life been before, and then you work over months with the people who invited you to make the exhibition possible. But often I don’t have personal connections to other people in this city, so you depend on the people who invite you and organize the show, and then it can happen that the audience stays within the art scene, even when the piece would have been of an interest for a much broader audience. But for example one of the first presentations of Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies took place in Geneva during the “World Summit on the Information Society” (2003). There was also a counter-summit against this mainstream UN-meeting and many Indymedia activists came along to the exhibition and used the space for their own purposes. They held meetings there, sitting on the floor and had discussions, but also took advantage of the exhibition through watching the videos and discussing them. You can’t plan things like this in advance but sometimes very interesting and positive things just happen.

Oliver Ressler presenting 5 Factories - Worker Control Venezuela, at Mori Gallery.

Question: So you see yourself as providing resources to the activist community and not just an art experience?

Sure, I am interested to present my work in different presentation contexts, and when working in the art scene I want to open up the space for people in NGOs, students, activists – of course without excluding the usual visitors of the art gallery. But my experience is that very often average art consumers are rejected by the kind of art I am doing, by the amount of information which is in it, but also because it does not look so “arty”, and sometimes they see its content as too ideological.

Question: Have you been surprised by your success in the art world given that your work is so ideological? So you see this as a conjectural phenomenon related to the emergence of the anti-capitalist movement?

I started the kind of artistic practice which is similar to what I am doing now in 1994, which is a while ago now, and in the first six or seven years I usually didn’t get invitations and the projects I realized were all self-organized. Like many artists at the beginning of their career I had to put a lot of effort into making them happen, which is not even to talk about the complicated issue of getting production grants. I think I could gain some interest in my work at this time, which was only realized in Austria, usually was very site-specific and dealing with particular local political issues, which made it almost impossible to present them on other locations outside of Austria. At some point after some years I started to work also on projects, which can be presented internationally and this fact, in combination with an increasing interest of some sectors of the art field in political issues, lead to a slowly growing international interest in my artistic production. I think that both the emergence of the anti-capitalist movement and the politization of parts of the art scene are symptoms for the growing dissatisfaction of different groups with the formation and development of the neoliberal capitalist societies. So of course in my work and the work of other people these two phenomena overlapped. If I had had bad luck this political interest from the art field would maybe have taken place ten years later and if I would have been forced to continue as I did at the beginning of my career its not sure if I would have had the energy to continue... Self-organizing really needs such a lot of energy and it is of course much easier if you get invitations and don’t have to find a space every time you want to show.

Question: I notice in your work you use a lot of interviews. Are you trying to convey the voice of the people? Or is it more that in the political context we are in there is no one voice but a multiplicity of voices which could express somehow the opinions and ideas of the multitude?

You already answer this through the question itself. It is both. Of course I am very interested in different voices… For example when I was in the demonstration against the World Economic Forum in Salzburg (2001), which was encircled by the police, I decided for my video to work with interviews of the participants. I could have done it in a way where I just wrote a text and read it while showing the footage I recorded. It would have been possible to do a video like this, but I think it would not have adequately fitted to the situation I was filming. This was a counter-globalization demonstration with thousands of participants and I as a singular individual should not be the only one to analyze and criticize what happened there in the chosen format of a video. So I raised the questions about what happened there to 6 different people who I interviewed for this work. I chose people from different backgrounds and groups, three men and three women between the ages of 20 and 50. Through the choice of these people I tried to reflect the different backgrounds of the movement, I think it gives a wider, and therefore much more interesting focus for the audience who watches the video. I wanted to give my interviewees the possibility to talk about their experiences and their theoretical viewpoints - to provide a kind of open space through my work, which respected their positions, which would probably not have been the case if they were asked for an interview from corporate media. Of course in the editing process I had to choose from the video material I recorded but at least I don’t cut within a sentence and I try to respect the general viewpoints of the people I interview, and therefore they feel better represented through my work than they do in the mainstream media.

But it is not always the case that I use interviews in my film work. The last film I finished titled The Fittest Survive (2006) is about a training course conducted in Wales, Great Britain, for surviving in hostile regions. The participants are business managers, mainstream media worker or governmental workers and in this film I didn’t carry out interviews. The concept was not giving these participants a chance to express their opinion or to talk about their reasons for being in such a course, but I recorded material during the survival course as a kind of backdrop to say something about the aggressive formation of capitalism. The film outlines connections between the military and the economic sphere and how far competing individuals seem to be ready to go to meet the needs of corporations and capitalism. In comparison to the other films the structure is very different, because the reality it documents is already a constructed one, and the critique appears through the combination of the recorded material in the editing process and some text inserts. It is maybe more arty than my other works, and people also consider the film funnier… My film work is very often reduced to being based on interviews, so The Fittest Survive can also be seen as the attempt to defy these people’s expectations who already know earlier work from me.

Federico Zukerfeld: Arlene TextaQueen: Bayu Widodo: Oliver Ressler: top of page: home:

Question: For the newspaper for this exhibition we have an article by Hito Steyerl called Articulation of Protest where she draws on Goddard’s films to criticize the idea of the “voice of the people.” I feel there is an interesting dialogue between her article being in the newspaper and your work being in the show because there is an element to which your work could be an attempt to articulate a “voice of the people.” I was interested in your thoughts on this.

I am not sure if my work really represents the “voice of the people” in the way Hito presents it in her article... So far as I remember her arguments in this article she focuses on the film Showdown in Seattle. This film is also a piece about a counter-globalization summit but I think it uses a completely different visual and artistic concept than I. I am of course interested in the film because of its content, but I could not imagine doing a film in such a way. In my opinion it follows the format of mainstream news reports and fills it with alternative content, and I don’t think this is enough. I believe that a film has to go a little further than just exchanging content. I also don’t think that the way how it is edited, how it cuts the spoken word of people within arguments just to make the film shorter and faster and maybe more interesting for the spectator, and how it fills the parts between the interviews with music, as we are used to it through TV, is a way I could imagine doing a film. I think there should be more restfulness and time be given to interviewees so that they have a chance to make their arguments and the audience can get a deeper understanding about what is going on.

For sure through my work I give people a voice. I try to bring together different viewpoints within a movement in a film so that it does not just consist of one perspective but on different arguments, which may also contradict each other. It is very interesting for me to learn in discussions about some of my films that sometimes people don’t realize the contradictory positions of the protagonists within my films. For example in the recent film I made with Dario Azzellini, 5 Factories – Worker Control in Venezuela, there appear a couple of arguments which are quite contradictory, but probably because all the interviewees are so strong and supportive about the Bolivarian process and they are also such great speakers – these disagreements remain hidden for some viewers.

I like Hito’s work a lot, but like myself she is not just a neutral observer of political film, but a very active participant as well. I think she wrote in this or another text about the two main different concepts of political film: One goes in the direction of addressing viewpoints through interviews, and the second is more based on a deeper analysis from one person, the artist or film maker. The second format is usually more critical and self-reflective of the format of film, and Hito is definitely one of the most inspiring film-workers within this category. I consider both concepts as important. You could also easily criticize the second concept because it is so much centered on the opinion and reflections of the filmmaker. And many of these films could be criticized, because of their often highly complex visual language, which may exclude a potential audience, who might share the political viewpoints but may find the film unreadable and inaccessible.

Question: So your argument is that your method of film is more democratic or accessible?

I think it is more accessible for people who are maybe not academics or professional participants in the art field. If you take for example Goddard’s and Gorin’s film Letter to Jane I recently saw in a film festival, I think it’s a fantastic piece, and I really love how it combines this single news image with the spoken text, but even if you present it in an art cinema half of the audience tends to leave the presentation soon because they cannot stand the reduced format and continuous repetition.

Question: It is interesting that you bring up Goddard as our discussion reminds me of an interview with him at the end of Tout Va Bien where he discusses the relative merits of political film techniques. He is critical of those who claim to stand outside their subject matter to allow a “voice of the people” to be expressed as if all they provide is the camera and film technology, when these forms are relatively democratic in any case…

I think it really depends on the context and the accessibility of these forms of technology. When we talked about Chiapas yesterday in the evening I mentioned the Kinoki project. I think in such an area where there is no technical equipment such as video cameras available, because most people are extremely poor and have not even got electricity, it can be very interesting for people to talk about their lives and expectations and political struggles and share them with other neighboring communities. I think it can still be a valid concept to provide people with the capacity to speak to a larger public, but it will probably only have some broader meaning if the people whom you supply with the technical equipment have something to say. If you do it in an average community in our western society, where people have been forced into jobs from nine to five and they never participated in political struggles, then it would maybe not be very interesting... But I think the people in Chiapas, even if they haven’t got electricity and a lack of formal education, gained far more knowledge and experience in political struggles than the worker or farmer in Western Europe has.

Question: You have spoken about democracy in art, what then would you say about the idea of the avant-garde? I am interested in your response to Adorno’s idea that art need not be necessarily accessible or particularly democratic to still be important; that art needs to be radical not only in its rebellion against society, but also in its rebellion against the traditions of art itself.

Well, I did not really speak about democracy in art, more about accessibility… The avant-garde made very important steps in the last century, but I think somehow we have come to an end of the avant-garde now, because it seems almost impossible to create something new formally. But I don’t see a problem with this. Today there exist a big variety of different forms of visual strategies, which are all available. Every student in an art academy can just get a hold of the information in the library. The avant-garde provides us with a resource that we can use nowadays for the production of art. Even when almost every expression or format has already been used in the art context, the existing formats can be used and connected with important contemporary political themes.

Question: So you don’t think there is something new you can do with the medium, just the message?

Yes. And even if there are new things to be investigated I am not an artist who would be particularly interested to find them out and drag them into the art context, because I really see positive aspects in using existing formats from different contexts and fill them with new content. I also think we have to get rid of the term of avant-garde, and not only because of its origin in the military. I think the Adorno quote lost its meaning at least to some extent over the decades, since in my opinion art should be mainly seen as a way of communicating, and for that you need a language which is being understood at least by some people. But I think it is still true that art should be a rebellion against the tradition of art itself, against the art markets and the use of art for representational purposes of the rich classes.

Question: How significant then would you describe Holloway’s critique of vanguards and power in you work? Are you interested in his perspectives on power in an ideological sense or are you more interested in him as a current of opinion within the anti-capitalist movement?

That is a complicated question. Holloway is primarily interesting for me because of his permanent orientation towards the thinking of the Zapatistas, which are very influential for my body of work. Not only because they are an interesting movement but also because of different strategies they use like “asking we walk.” This means we don’t need to know all the necessary answers in advance, that revolution has to be seen as a question rather than an answer, and that the course of political struggles will lead us towards different forms of organizing of our societies. You cannot reach a new society or economy at once but it needs to be an ongoing continuing process over years or decades. One of the main authors who really uses these ideas of the Zapatistas and has tried to theorize them and bring their ideas to a wider western academic audience who may not have thought about them otherwise, is Holloway. So that is why Holloway is very inspiring for me and has some influence in my work.

If you relate his ideas of changing the world without taking power to the Zapatistas in Chiapas, you can see what he says is true to a certain extent. But I am not so sure that you can generalize his argument when we have larger political struggles in mind than just those in a limited region in Mexico. I think it is true for struggles, that they should be anti-hierarchical and that power structures within our movements should be limited, but at some point you have to think about state power, because whether we like it or not the state exists as the dominating rule of power. I hope that there are possibilities to find a way to organize a society without such a structure, I am not sure if it is possible, but I think in the meantime you also have to focus on state power to understand how we could possibly wind back its power, if the movement should ever be in a position to do so.

Question: I spent a long time in a Marxist organization which had one vision of how you change society and I think this vision entered a crisis mode after both the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the anti-capitalist movement, the idea that there is a vanguard or that there is one correct line is no longer particularly attractive and for many good reasons. In a work such as Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies you have many conflicting views about the visions for a future society, it’s incredibly polymorphous and many of these visions are contradictory or even incompatible with each other. I am wondering; are you just putting them all out there as alternative models without trying to prescribe a particular one, or do you think it is no longer possible to have a “correct line”?

The idea of the Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies project is to create a space where a lot of concepts are presented to give people who visit the exhibition the chance to find out about these concepts and to strengthen their own imagination how an alternative society could look like. I think nowadays capitalism is so overwhelmingly strong that the main thing we can do at this point in history is to initiate discussions. We have to start thinking about possible alternatives and this should go hand in hand with struggles for these alternatives. Maybe the Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies exhibitions can be seen as a proposal for such a space, which could initiate discussions about the future of our societies. There are many concepts and models in the exhibition, because in my opinion it cannot be the case that you just have one concept and try to carry out everything exactly how it was written by a person or a group of people. There should be a variety of possibilities, and people should be brought into the position to be able to make responsible decisions to choose the way of organizing and structuring the society and economy. Maybe the Zapatistas idea of “asking we walk” could provide the practical framework of how such a democratization of decision-making processes and processes of self-determination could happen on a regional level.

I don’t think that we should aim our fights towards an immediate complete breakdown of capitalism, because this would primarily cause terror and huge no-go areas where there is no law at all, which maybe sounds good from an anarchist point of view but in reality would probably mean rape, racist violence and murder. I think there has to be some organization of the revolutionary processes, otherwise this might lead to catastrophe.

Question: Do mean a party? Would this organize the revolution?

I am really not interested in parties at all. In my opinion the counter-globalization movement actually shows that it could be a combination of different groups where no one has a leading position - where many discussions and then also decisions are being made, with many necessary compromises. But the counter-globalization movement hasn’t got the power to effect political changes on a larger scale. It can shut down a G8 summit at best, but even shutting down a summit doesn’t mean that the political agenda of the G8 will change, it might more work on a symbolic level as the destruction of an image of power.

Question: I am interested in how you balance between your interest in the Zapatistas and the polymorphous voices of the Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies with another important aspect of your work, which is obviously Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. In some ways you could say that although the Venezuelan revolution is incredibly geopolitically important and represents a key break against US hegemony, it also represents an older model of social change, one which comes from the Cuban revolutionary event which is somewhat at odds with the visions of the new left springing from the event of Seattle.

I would reject the opinion that the Venezuelan revolution goes in the direction of the Cuban model. I think it is something completely different. When the whole thing started in 1998 after Hugo Chávez won the elections there did not exist a socialist concept of how exactly the society should be changed and organized. There were certain initiating ideas, like introducing a new constitution, a constitution, which was discussed by the grass roots and democratically drafted, but there was no blueprint for the future society. I think this is a big and important difference with the Cuban experience.

The Venezuelan experience can be called a “process” – “process” is one of the significant terms, which is being used to describe the development in Venezuela by the people themselves. This so-called Bolivarian Process means on the one hand big levels of self-organization by the Venezuelan people and on the other hand, which is the contradiction in the whole process which probably lead you to ask this a question, there is still a state with a strong leader, Hugo Chávez, who might appear to some people as autocratic and who has in any case a lot of power in his hands. I think that this contradiction should be criticized and I also would criticize it, but we have to recognize that the historical situation in Venezuela with this strong opposition against the Bolivarian Process from the US and the former, rich ruling classes in Venezuela would probably not be possible without such a strong, but unifying leader.

Parties don’t play such a big role in Venezuela today. Chávez is related to a party but I think if he decided to get rid of the party and there were elections a few weeks later he still would win, as the Venezuelan people trust him as a person. There is a discussion now about the creation of a new socialist party, which should push the Bolivarian Process a few steps further. Chávez proposed this party should not be founded by him or his ministers but from below and, committed to the aim of developing and creating the socialism of the 21 st century. I think this also outlines differences to Cuba, where, as far as I know, the Cuban communist party was founded by people around Fidel Castro who carried out the revolution, and it was the only permitted party in the state.

Question: Well, the guerilla movement in Cuba was a grass roots movement and survived on popular support…

As far as I know the guerilla movement in Cuba was still elitist in some way, they tried to bring the political ideals and concepts they thought would be the right ones into practice.

Installation shot Oliver Ressler, Gallery 4a.

Question: So you are not concerned by moves by Chávez to strengthen and consolidate his own personal power? Is this not a countervailing factor against the role of grass-roots democracy?

Chávez ruled on decrees some years ago and it is maybe necessary to some extent to continue with the Bolivarian Process like this... The problem is that the state, the bureaucracy itself, is of course not a revolutionary institution, so it’s very hard to transform certain aspects of the state, which devolve power towards popular movements. It is very hard for bureaucracies to accept that they will have less power and I think this is one reason that Chávez fought for some changes in his personal capacity to push forward changes, which would not have been possible through the bureaucracy. This can be criticized of course, but it worked before, so I hope that it will work again and does not go in the direction the media outline, namely dictatorship.

Question: Do you think that the anti-capitalist movement has become much more defensive since 9/11? Has this knocked the wind out of its sails, or can it regain the initiative?

Its true that the so called “war on terrorism” has had a big impact on the movement, those in power took advantage of 9/11 to describe the anti-capitalist movement as a kind of terrorist force. The movement changed, but I think it also changed in a positive direction. The most obvious change is that through the social forum movement discussions and meetings seem to be a higher on the agenda right now than demonstrations, and I think this is OK, its important to discuss ideas. But demonstrations did also continue and have been successful to some extant. The demonstrations in Gleneagles (2005) were a great example of collective intelligence and indeed very successful, particularly the strategy employed by the network Dissent! of blockading the rural streets around Gleneagles. I read several articles which argued that the blockades would have shut down the whole meeting if the bombs in London had not taken place, because Gleneagles is a small town and many of the staff for the G8 meeting such as translators, catering employees, secretaries, security people and so forth, who make a summit happen, stood in neighboring cities overnight and were not able to get to the summit venue in time, which disrupted the whole schedule of the meeting until it almost collapsed. It was a big help for Tony Blair and his administration that they had the excuse of the bombing in London to leave Gleneagles without having to admit in the public that they had been forced to leave as it was not possible to continue with the G8 summit.

I think the struggles of anti-capitalist movement will continue, but media do of course not always focus on the positive successes of our struggles. I still have faith in the multitude, and expect interesting things taking place in Heiligendamm in 2007, otherwise it would be very depressing.

Question: How did you feel the “If You See Something, Say Something” exhibition here went?

I think it is really fantastic that you managed to bring all these projects together in the exhibitions and presentations in Sydney, which might be known to a well-informed public in the art field in Europe, but have never been presented in Australia before. I think it was also a very important decision to combine these projects by international artists like Hito Steyerl, Dmitry Vilensky or Etcetera with projects of local Australian political artists, which I did not know before. I was very surprised, how positive our film 5 Factories – Worker Control in Venezuela was received by the audience in Sydney and Melbourne. Many people living in this reactionary political climate in Australia really seemed to enjoy learning more about how the political struggles looks like in other areas of the globe.

Federico Zukerfeld: Arlene TextaQueen: Bayu Widodo: Oliver Ressler: top of page: home:

Arlene TextaQueen, Sydney, March 2007:

It Could be Anyone (Vanessa), drawing by Arlene TextaQueen, 2007.

Question: I notice that an important element in your work is a sense of community - a process of documenting, recording and chronically the people who form your community and I was wondering if you could talk about this element of your work?

I have been thinking about this element of my artwork quite a bit recently. It has been good to step back and look at this as usually I am so inside the process - I am drawing my friends and people within my various communities and I am so part of it - and then in the end point you show it in a gallery and you are like selling it to people who are not part of that community. But I still feel OK about it as I feel like my drive to make the work is for the people who I am around and who make up this community and it is of and for them.

That is also why I make postcards, calendars, stickers and playing cards which I can give or sell cheaply to people. Like when I did a series of performers in their rooms – I gave them all postcards with their contact details on them so they could give them out to whoever they choose to. I always try make things which the people in the actual pictures can have and share. It is a really weird idea when all this is put in the gallery, I can feel quite removed from that space and its weird hearing people like gallery owners saying I have “drawn the underground” – I don’t even know what that means, I don’t even think of my work as being this alternative…

Question: but I guess you draw activists, queer performers, people who are perhaps marginalized in some ways…

I guess from the mainstream perspective yes, from my perspectives I don’t like to think of them, or me, or us as marginalized I like to put more emphasis on doing things for ourselves and this having as much importance as anywhere else in society

Question: how does your work communicate outside your community? Is it understood by people who are not part of this community who come along and see it? Do they understand it?

Maybe in a voyeuristic way they can get it – from my perspective the people I draw are not that different from myself, but from the viewers perspective they may be strange exotic characters. I think my work can definitely be popular among many spheres as refers to this whole tradition of the female nude.

Arlene TextaQueen presenting the prize to the winner of the annual Squatfest film festival.

Question: I am interested in knowing why most of the people you choose to draw are women and why you draw them naked?

I have been drawing nudes for a long time – the reason I started was because someone asked me to draw a soft porn web-site – like a manga soft porn site but with a different drawing style – and I was like Ok but I will need to draw from life. And then the person who asked me flaked off but I had already started drawing all these pictures of people I knew and I just kept going. I don’t really think of my work as soft porn but that is how I started.

I have drawn men naked but it’s a very, very different dynamic. I have drawn Mickie Quick (from SquatSpace) in the nude and with a big erection. Have I told you that story? He helped me hang a show as I was on crutches and I was like I will draw you any nude you want as a gift and he rang me up and told me “I want you to draw me naked and hanging a picture of Amity and I will have an erection”. And I was like OK… I have known you since we were 13 and this is kind of weird, but OK.

Question: did he manage to keep a stiffy long enough for you to do the drawing?

No… I did the drawing from the head to the waist and then I did the feet to the waist and then he went into the bathroom and Amity fluffed him and then he came back out again and then I quickly drew it… It was pretty strange to draw someone like this who has been my platonic friends for like 17 years or something.

But it’s a very different dynamic to draw the male body to the female – male sexuality is eroticized so differently to the female body. The dynamic between me and another woman is very different then with a guy. I think I have drawn maybe one other guy before and he didn’t know how to pose, he didn’t know how to accessorize, he didn’t understand the vibe… I drew Taylor Mac, but he is a trannie…Woman are different they have a sense of style, of conversation, how to pose… I feel there is enough I want to explore thematically with the female body. Men are showcased enough and I want to showcase these really interesting characters and I want to do that with women.

Question: you usually combine text with the images, how do you choose that?

For each of the pictures I choose a quote from the conversation we have during the drawing session. While I’m drawing I might write down up to half a dozen lines that I think epitomize the character they are modeling and then at the end we choose one that works well with portrait. People often want me to write something they ‘always say’ but I like to pick something from the conversation that will allude to what’s in the picture but not too literally. Though if they are a performer I might quote a line from their rap or poem.

Question: can you talk about the experiences of being involved in the Broadway squats? From what I remember that was one of your first shows – how did this experience shape your understanding of community?

Sydney can be a really hard place to feel and see your community and at Broadway I felt it everyday. We were a motley bunch of people who had initially come together over a need for housing who then had this amazing opportunity to open up this space to other things too, for the free-to-exhibit gallery and dumpster dinners, film nights, parties, a meeting space. It was such hard work, so exhausting, but I don’t think my life, day to day, ever felt so purposeful and politicized. And the crossover of communities was great, like that Squatspace brought artists to see and show work in this political context of a squatted space. We didn’t all identify as ‘artists’ or as ‘activists’ or as ‘punks’ or ‘queer’ or whatever but, as squatters defending our home and everything else it became, I felt more part of a community than I’d ever felt before or since. It was definitely the most formative experience of my adult life.

My show there was the greatest I will ever have. It was in our own gallery, everyone had helped to fix up the space, I’d drawn pictures of some of the people living there, I’d coloured in the work there with the help of residents and visitors, people helped hang the work, and it just happened during that crazy time. It was my first gallery show of Textanudes, and so many people saw it, and from that I got white walled gallery shows, fame and fortune (kidding).

Federico Zukerfeld: Arlene TextaQueen: Bayu Widodo: Oliver Ressler: top of page: home:

Question: how do you feel your work between the gallery and the out of gallery contexts?

I definitely put more energy into the stickers and the calendars than I do the gallery stuff. I get more out of the return from doing stuff in the street and seeing stuff up and other people seeing my stuff or people coloring in the calendars. This gives me more joy then the gallery – but its nice too having a show and people buying the work sometimes so I can buy some organic veggies or whatever it is that I like to buy… they feed off each other, I was doing postering and making stuff like t-shirts and undies before I started having big gallery shows so it just feels natural to keep doing it.

I’ve painted in some empty buildings with others and in Montreal we did a show in an empty church there. I have been doing a lot of wall painting along with the works too in galleries.

Lucas Ihlein, Squatspace, and Arlene TextaQueen, Chrissie Cotter Gallery.

Question: do you consider yourself a socially engaged artist? Or a political artist?

I definitely see my work as political. I don’t even see how anyone could not see it as that. When I was doing the art studio in NY we went to see some old famous art woman who likes people to go and show her our stuff and the assistant was like in her forties and she looked like a ‘Lesbian’…

Question: what does a ‘Lesbian’ look like?

I don’t know she had beige pants on or something… and no style… and she was so offended by my work she was like “when I was your age women fought for equal rights and you are sexualizing woman and putting everything backwards and undoing all the work that we did.” I don’t see my work like that. I see it as making these women so individual and proud and themselves. I don’t think sexuality is bad, I think some drawings are quite erotic but I think that is political and good.

Question: do you get labeled with the tag post-feminist?

When I got interviewed last week for that paper I was asked if I made nude feminism. And I have been labeled that term post-feminist before. But to tell the truth I was happy with just feminism.

I don’t think you can be turned on by the people in my pictures unless you know their whole character and then if you do its OK – its OK to be turned on by these people because its not just about their body its about them as a whole, not just a body disassociated from who they are.

Question: you also draw women with a variety of body shapes and types which I guess is more democratic then the usually stereotypical eroticized female body

Yeah but I make them all look hot. I don’t try and flatter but I think they look good.

Question: do you aspire to innovate within both medium and content in your work?

I think the context can be more important than the medium. I feel I challenge the medium as I work with textas which are like a children’s medium. Sometimes I think it is interesting if there is a discrepancy between medium and content and that can be enough to sustain the work. But then again how can you really challenge things when there are Nike ads which look like stencils and stencils which look like magazine ads… its more important that the content is there as the medium is just so easily re-appropriated.

I think SquatSpace is interesting as it often takes on the forms of other mediums like unReal Estate – they take on these forms which are just so not punk. But that also makes it more accessible.

Question: you have a thing for punks…

I never listen to punk at home – but I would go to more punk gigs than any other show because it’s so funny. It’s so funny to have such an emphasis on being bodgier than the next person. I always like a scene which is incapable of becoming too big or being too appropriated - I mean it is appropriated but Green Day can sell two million records but there are still crusty punks everywhere.

Question: you work has been very consistent over the years – have ever thought about changing?

I think about it a lot, but I just don’t do it. I have changed my style a lot I can see how my drawing style has improved over the years – and I have worked with characters, pairs of people. I am interested in keeping what I am doing but innovating more tangentially – like doing some more animation. I almost feel this duty to keep drawing these women, plotting my global community…there are so many more women I need to draw, why would I start doing something else when I haven’t finished this project.

Question: so you are a kind of art ethnographer?

Yeah – I feel sort of insignificant to the work sometimes – I am important to it but it’s the people who I am drawing and their characters and how they choose to represent themselves that stand out. If you ignore my drawing style I am just doing this “thing” which reflects all these interesting people.

Federico Zukerfeld: Arlene TextaQueen: Bayu Widodo: Oliver Ressler: top of page: home:

Federico Zukerfeld Sydney February 2007:

Installation shots at Mori Gallery, 2007.

Question: Looking back at December 2001 I am interested in your reflections on this experience. Did you feel that this was an insurrectionary moment? Do you feel that the new left and anti-globalisation movement has the potencia to carry through an alternative program of power? Is it still possible to have a revolution?

To answer that I have to say that today the situation is totally different. In December 2001 it was strange for the people who had been involved in the movement for a long time as we were waiting for that moment for years and therefore it was beautiful for us. But for the rest of the society it was a little bit different. Society lost trust in the banks and money and in capitalist relationships and for six or seven months we had a kind of anarchist situation - we went through five presidents in two weeks - it was very chaotic and there were permanent upheavals. Many social actors came onto the scene; factory workers, the unemployed movement, human rights activists, Indigenous peoples, students from the universities and high school and the people who lost their money from the banks from the devaluation, it was a union of all these different struggles. Looking at this moment today it is not easy because we have been through a process of normalization where people have started to believe again in the old neo-liberal model, the same model just with a few changes. For example the President Nestor Kishner is very smart and has developed a new strategy of permanent inclusion of the left and the unemployed people. The government claims now it is more open and pluralistic and they have created the sensation that things are normalized by including and absorbing their critics. A lot of militants – our friends and comrades – were taken into the government.

Question: was this a process of cooption?

Three years ago we would have used that term, but not now. They take the decision to join the government, and they defend the government, they defend their participation. It was strange for us as a lot of our friends were in the government and they defend the government. Why? Because of power. I could say the distribution of the power but this would not be true when you take a good militant and put them inside the government you must remember this government is the same Peronistic party. This year we have elections, but we are not near to any big changes in society. I don’t believe anymore in resistance. Because resistance can be a new fashionable position: resistance, resistance. But when can we attack the system? Resistance can be years and years, generations of struggle like Cuba. Ok we are with them but if you don’t have a new clear way of organizing something the government and the state take up more and more space.

Question: Would you use the term political sadness to describe the feeling in Argentina through this process of normalization?

The situation of 2001 was traumatic. For people like us it was beautiful but at the same time a lot of people were traumatized, a lot of people were killed by police. It was a strange sensation for people in my generation who were in permanent mobilizations and now have come back to their old model of life. I prefer to use the term trauma than political sadness to describe the psychology of people after 2001. We have had some deep traumas – the first one was in 1976 during the dictatorship, the second one was for us our generation. A lot of people escape in an exodus, the young people escape because it was very unstable, you have your money in the bank and then the United States makes the decision and poof! It’s gone.

The feeling is not frustration at normalization, it is almost relief. But also we have a new experience in the social memory and we know the government can’t make the same situation with us anymore. The government can’t repeat the same mistakes. When you pass through this traumatic situation you know what you can do – one part of the people escapes, one part goes and breaks windows in the city. Things then return to normal, but we don’t lose our expectations for change, it’s just that society is now more quiet.

Federico Zukerfeld, Bronte Beach, Sydney.

Question: Can you explain how Etcetera related to this moment of trauma? How did the artistic and politics experiences merge during insurrection? Did they become one or did they remain for you distinct experiences?

We start in 1997 in our actions with the idea of catharsis. For example to make some form of liberation out of this traumatic situation you need to release the bad memory from your body. This was the idea of the escraches – the liberation from this traumatic situation where art can act like a lubricant. Normally there is friction between the people at the demonstrations and the police and society. Sometimes art actions can be like Vaseline which creates smoother interactions. You have to open relations with society, you can’t say “we are the avant-garde and you are just a bunch of mother fuckers.”

For example CAG they use normally counter publicity, the take the same symbols and change them to create subversive and subliminal messages. We use these methods too but it is not our way, we have another aesthetic. We like to explore how these kind of actions can be inside the demonstrations and the same time create a collective image. We don’t need to explain to the people our ideas, or use the same slogan or the same flag, or the same flyers. We aim to make more fun, you know, so the people can enjoy the situation. We describe our work sometimes as the theater of cathatsis because when we are involved in the situation, we are in the same position with the people and we go through the same traumas and the same release.

Questions: So for example with your work Goose to Power can you tell me if there is any difference in how you would make an aesthetic reading of that work or a political one. It has been exhibited as a successful artwork but was it politically understood by the movement? Do you feel any responsibility to make work which would be considered “constructive” to the social movements?

The reception of this work was complicated. We initiated it at a big demonstration which was the same week as the election where Kishner won. The movement was already in decline. We took the goose from a big park and we bring it to the demonstration. The critique was whether the movement should be inside the two party system – the left or the right. We felt we were facing the same Peronistic situation.

Question: but were you trying to critique social democracy and the political choices offered at election time, or where you also pointing the finger at Che Guevara and the extra parliamentary guerrilla tradition?

Both, both. Our critique is that firstly we work with stereotypes – left and right. We ask questions such as who is the leader, and why we need a leader and how one leader can be created. We create an absurd possibility for leadership – an animal to raise questions about leadership more broadly. But we also wanted to make some critique inside the demonstration, so we took the risk of using the symbology of Che. And people were angry – “you mother fucker’s took our most important symbol.” Some people tried to provoke us, but at the end it was good. When we go to the demonstration now people know our work and sometimes they are waiting for us, the demonstrations can sometimes be a little bit boring and we are not clowns but sometimes we can put something to make people think. The children sometimes come and play with us, they are the new generation who are not as doctrinaire as the older generation.

Question: Do you think that that action could be read as quite cynical?

Yes.

Question: and was this because you felt cynical in a period of normalization? I mean would you have done that action two years earlier when the movement was stronger? Could you have done an art action such as Goose to Power in 2001 for example?

No this action was in 2004, it was after the insurrection was over and was situated within this context. It was definitely cynical, we like black humour, provocation, we have no problem to play with flags, symbols, shibboleths. But also at the same time we try and conserve these symbols but with some questions. We believe in the parties in the leaders but not in one leader, not in one party. It is the same as Subcomadante Marcos, this is interesting representation for us, because of the mask people think I can be Marcos too, I can be a leader too. It becomes a little less paternalistic.

It is cynical yes and this can be dangerous and that is interesting for us.

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Question: Do you think socially engaged art is thus dependent on the ebbs and flows of the social movement?

Yes absolutely. It is always dependent on the context. You know after Marcel Duchamp art is completely dependent on context – you take something which is trash and you put it in the gallery and it is art, but in another context it is just trash. Here art, there trash, art, trash, art, trash what is the difference? That was the point for me. And it is the same for politically motivated art. We took a theory from a much older group from the ‘80s who talked about the “social ready-made.” They introduced us to this continuity, we drew from them although they were working after the time of the dictatorship and they did not relate in the same way as we do to international art movement as us, they were much more focused on democracy.

The social ready made is when the demonstration creates a context and also a displacement. The institution can be the mediator of these experiences. This idea of the social ready made was very important for us as it encapsulated the notion of this displacement and the relationship between the art and the social context. Somebody tells us – you put the art in the streets, but no it is everywhere already, the confusion is you can discover it as art when it is in some place which is white and clean and expensive but this is not true it is everywhere you look.

When you make a displacement between the institutional space and the street and the street and the institutional space something happens, our most big discussion with Alice Creischer and Andres Siekmann [initiators of the Ex Argentina Project] how we can represent our actions inside the museum. And they say we don’t want to show your videos in Ex Argentina. And we were like why not – we want videos, videos, videos! We can show the actions, what happened with the police and the people. And they were like no – we prefer to make frames and scripts. And we say why? And they say we are the curators we have to think – make a reflection. And we had a big discussion inside the group and we argue that nobody can understand the movement and what happened escrachess and Mierdazo inside the gallery without videos. But then we decide to take the position of Alice and Andreas and it was good. It avoided the question of representation of the movement and was able to be about something else.

Question: I am interested in this idea of the social ready-made. If we look at previous revolutionary experiences such as Russia 1917 – there are certain aesthetic experiments which are associated with this, constructivism, the avant-garde and also with the betrayal of this experience with the aesthetics of socialist realism. What is our social ready-made today, what has the counter globalization movement produced in the aesthetic field?

Carnival, it is easy. One the one hand you have the guerrillas who exist in our historical imagination today you have the black block, Tutti Bianche and Zapatistas with the masks and anonymity – all this is done, it is our ready-made.

Many people like Brian Holmes mark Seattle as the beginning of the movement but I hate the exportation and importation of dates. For us it was 2001, not 1999, that was our break point. The problem with these discussions is the exchange of values. One person died in Italy and 30 died in my country. It is like the currency exchange one euro is worth 30 pesos. For me break point, the moment, was 2001.

Opening If You See Something, Say Something, Mori Gallery.

Question: I want to ask you about the role of the political exhibition

All exhibitions are political

Question: Exactly. To be more precise I was to ask you about your experiences in projects such as Ex Argentina which aim to open dialogues between the artistic and social spheres. How would evaluate these projects?

This project went for four years. It was the first time in my life that I do something for four years. In 2002 when they [Siekmann and Criesher] come to Buenos Aires I was a little bit paranoid. In 2002 a lot of people came with cameras and recorders and the all wanted to know our experiences, and we felt a little bit the seduction of a new power, of being the new fashion, we felt like we are the most high point in the world. Not only for artists but also for workers in the factories and the unemployed – some activists started to travel around the world speaking about the movement and for us it was a big risk. When you are a big fighter in your country and then you go to another country and speak about your experiences after a while you start to feel like maybe I am a little bit special because I am traveling the world and your connections to the experiences at home can be a little bit broken.

In the art world it is the same and a little different. Different as we have more ego, more of a narcissistic position. One day CAG call us and they say we met some people from Germany and they want to meet with another group and we give them your names. We have the first meeting and they introduce themselves and only three of my group speak English so we go along and they ask all these crazy questions: how many in your group, where you meet, how long you together, how you fund your actions. And we think are you a curator or maybe you are a spy?

No this is no joke, and I have my own theory that they are spies, from our side but this sort of research is a form of espionage. Why did a German cultural institute put half a million dollars into one exhibition which is about a political experience in my country? It is because the government and the cultural institute are interested in the research for some reason.

The next meeting was better because they started to show some catalogues and we saw they were artists and we could relate to the sensibility of their work. Then they organize a meeting with all the possible participants and they tell us we are organizing an exhibition at the most important museum in our country – the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. It was a moment – we all look at each other and they say we want to invite you to fly to go there and we were like hey there are 40 people here, and they say don’t worry this is the first step the next one will be a congress to discuss the four topics: militant research, negation, cartography,…… For us was quite strange, we had not had such intellectual reflections on our experiences before.

Question: so as a process of militant research how were you changed by the Ex-Argentina exhibition?

I change a lot. At the congress in Germany a lot of people had a crisis and when we got to the museum people start to cry. But for us was very good, we also cry, but privately. It was important we meet a lot of people like Bureau D’etude, Bernadetta Corporation and many other people involved in the project, and we realized that we were not alone there were many people and we made a decision to follow international relationships. That same year Oliver Ressler made his show and he invite us to participate and we realize that there is not only one possibility.

In our work we started with HIJOS and made a little bit of militant research. But we broke with the position of agency with other struggles. We don’t want to act as a propaganda tool for the movement. We work with HIJOS, near HIJOS, inside HIJOS, we made some presentation on representation on the experiences of the dictatorship. But we also wanted to make an abstraction or experimentation. They tell us Etcetera you can’t do it. And we say why not – we are free. And they tell us this is a serious a serious struggle. One day the direction of HIJOS come and say this is your last choice this escrache if you make something wrong and the police take us again we don’t know if we can work with you anymore. I remember we had the most long meeting of our group and we decided that we must continue in the demonstration but independently.

This idea of agency for others can make you feel like a liar. I mean I can talk about workers and the factories but the truth is I don’t work in the factories. I can help them with propaganda and ideas but not take their struggle as my struggle. At one point it is the same, but it is also not the same sensibility. If you are an artist and you can’t express yourselves freely even of the movement you feel like a sheep.

Question: actually this reminds me of a discussion I had with Oliver Ressler about his idea that art can be a democratic form which can allow the voice of the people to be heard…

I don’t agree with the position of Chris Gilbert that art should be propaganda, there should also be some form of sensibility.

Question: perhaps looking at this question a little more broadly do you feel that art needs to be “the voice of the people” or do you see a more avant-garde role for art, which directs its fire at not only at instruments of repression but also instruments of representation, that is not only against society but also traditions or art itself?

We are avant-garde of course. We cannot make concessions, if it is good for the people it is good for the people, if it is not its not. We put the Che Guevara with the goose. I respect the autonomy of art. I can use the example form this exhibition of Bayu and the mural project in Indonesia – who made the mural? The artists, not the people. Usually we are against mural projects, but not in this case as I think they developed this project with the people and they had involvement in its construction but you can see what I am saying.

As another example in the Bruckman clothing factory the Trotskyists were the most radical group and they were inside the assembly one day they were like here is this nice space next to the factory we can make this into a workers cultural centre, and everyone was like what a good idea, and the artists were like this wall can be black, and here is a good place for installation and the workers were like, please I work here, I have to come here everyday and I prefer that you put flowers, or something with beauty.

The confusion is that when people try and represent the working class they try and create a simulation of their life and the reality is that the workers want to change their life, they want things to be different.

I have return to the point of context. Activist artists, socially engaged artists, whatever you like to call them, have to take care of the context. It is the context which creates the definition of political. For me this is the first Marxist idea. It is the world situation which can transform life, it is not our life which changes the world. Global situation changes – we all change. Like 9/11 we don’t decide these changes but we are all changed by them. Different contexts difference repressions, different representations. In the Bolivarian process I hope they can take the way of experimental contemporary expressions in art and not repeat the Russian experience of propaganda. Chris Gilbert says he hates artists like us, because we are too much like artists. Is a doctor too much like a doctor? A musician too much like a musician?

Question: Can you give an assessment of how you felt about the If You See Something Say Something exhibition.

When we read the exhibition title it is important for us as we have a lot of reflections on this slogan and to change the sense of this is interesting for us. We had some preconceptions about the exhibition and the process of its construction, whether we can have some real communications and real solidarity. And that happened for us. For me the selection of the participants was balanced, you can find some continuity between them. Between Dmitry video and Hito’s and Richard’s you can follow a thread. But for me I felt it was more aesthetically complete at Mori Gallery. But overall the distribution of the work was good.

But I felt very good and comfortable with the people here, it was amazing for me. We read the text for the exhibition together in Argentina and we made something special for the exhibition, we can show the same material again, but we made something special for Sydney. And that was good for the performance yesterday at Bronte Beach. And maybe this show can be the first part of something larger. I hope that maybe you can find some words or topics to open the discussion for something bigger and longer. It was very necessary for us to meet the artists from Indonesia too, this has been a significant connection. We need to find some topics and then maybe invite others into this discussion and continue this discussion internationally. 

Federico Zukerfeld: Arlene TextaQueen: Bayu Widodo: Oliver Ressler: top of page: home:

Taring Padi's Bayu Widodo (additional comments Aris Prabawa), Sydney, April 2007:

Installation shot Taring Padi work, Gallery 4a, 2007, and screen print by Bayu Widodo, 2006.

Question: How was Taring Padi formed?

Taring Padi (TP) was formed in 1998, from the artistic community from the Indonesian Institute of Arts (ISI). Initially TP identified strongly with the People’s Democratic Party (PRD), regarding ourselves as almost the same as this organisation – but also different. TP was formed through artist friends in Yogjakarta and emerged at exactly the same time as the mass uprising against Suharto. There was a lot of support at that time for ideas of radical democracy such as that espoused by TP.

In August 1998 ISI moved campus to a new area. Some of the students from ISI, including TP, moved in and started squatting the old art school. The community was very active during this time – there were theatre groups, performance groups, bands and many other groups along with TP living together as a squat in a large community.

TP felt that art could change social and political conditions and be a revolutionary agent against oppression, violence, the military dictatorship and the capitalist system.On December 21, 1998 we declared TP to be a Lembaga Budaya Kerakyatan (Culture People Oriented Institute).

TP identified very strongly with the PRD at the beginning because every time we make action together with other organisations like farmers, workers, urban poor or students PRD always brought the biggest flag. In time TP felt uncomfortable with an occupation of political space like that. This lead us to move in separate and different ways to the PRD. TP is not a political party, but we have a similar aims to resist injustice for the people.

Question: How significant was the uprising of 1998 for TP?

TP always used art for our actions, and there were lots of demonstrations during 1998 and 1999. TP artworks began to be influential not just for our own members but for other communities as well – people would take the works to other places. TP saw ourselves as part of this bigger movement. At the beginning TP has members who were also members of the PRD and the two groups were close but after 1998 they started to go in separate ways.

Aris Prabawa, Mori Gallery.

Questions: How has life changed for the artistic community since “democracy” has come to Indonesia? Is there still repression for those with dissident opinions such as artists? Are there still traces of the dictatorship?

In 1998 /1999 the force of repression was mostly the police and the military. There were many demonstrations demanding the fall of the government. Since 1998 the repression and violence has come more from fundamentalist Islamic religious groups. TP is targeted as it is regarded as “communist” or “socialist.” The government sometimes uses these groups as a proxy to intimidate artists and alternative communities and sometimes they are even more scary as they are totally unaccountable. In 2003 TP and another group made a demonstration on the main street in Yogjakarta and were arrested by the police because some youth from a fundamentalist religious group complained. The demonstration went past an Islamic area and they called the police to complain they were “Punks” in their neighborhood. It used to be illegal in Indonesia to get Marxist or socialist books or even to wear activist or socialist insignia such as the yellow star on your shirt. Now it is not officially illegal. The threat comes more from vigilante groups. For example they did a raid on my campus and I had a shirt which had a yellow star on it in my bag. They took my bag, but my friends did not say that it was my bag. If they knew it was mine they would have beaten me up. I have a friend who was riding down the street and the Muslim vigilante groups pushed him off his bike. But more recently it has become less scary.

After ’98 what TP wanted to voice was the same, we hadn’t changed our politics, but the environment around us had changed. The demonstrations were not as frequent and were smaller – but we still made the same type of artworks with similar themes.

After President Suharto stepped down Indonesia still had a strong military with a tight grip on power. For example the current President S. Bambang Y. is also the General of the military and has a strong position against independent movements or any left wing ideology.

Question: so what I understand is that TP and the social movement were demonstrating against the dictatorship for “democracy” but when this “democracy” was installed and the dictatorship fell – it was not the sort of society you wanted...

The demonstrations in ’98 were only to get rid of Suharto, afterwards social and economic issues did not really change – there is still a need for a more radical democratic reform: anti-capitalist democracy. TP was not satisfied with what eventuated out of ’98, as not enough was changed. So the problems remain the same in many ways, but TP’s methods have changed to relate more to communities in the new political realities of Indonesia.

Bayu Widodo, at the Errorista Action, Bronte Beach.

Question: How does TP see the connection between art and politics?

We see them as the same thing. At the beginning TP rejected the gallery system and any form of “art for art’s sake” we would not participate. But now because TP is making more artworks we see the gallery as a suitable place for putting our artwork. For the first time we were part of the Jakarta Biennale which was in a very big gallery. We had a big discussion before this happened and TP decided it was OK to exhibit in a gallery – as long as it was with the same voice as we have always had. Art can’t be separated from galleries, it is not possible to do this, but it can’t be separated from activism either.

Question: how does TP work as a collective and what does the collective process bring to the artistic process?

Since 2002 we have changed the form of our organization. We used to have President (leader) now we don’t. We used to have membership structure but that has gone too. TP is now an open collective. We have no hierarchy. Who ever wants to work with us, learn with us, is part of us. We have a way of working where if there is an activity or a project we have a discussion and they make a “working party” or “team” who take on the responsibilities for this task. We also have an accounts section to organize for our daily needs and the needs of the project. We make our money from selling our works and we distribute this amongst the collective between individual projects and collective projects.

I am part of the second generation TP. We don’t have a membership card or anything – there is just an emotional link, a shared activity.

There are positives from learning together in a collective, we can have discussions, share knowledge and opinions and this sustains our art practice. There are various styles now in TP, when we began we had the same style, but the artistic development of the group has now seen individual differences develop, but there is still the same overall thematic direction for the collective. The idea of what is political has probably broadened – it’s not only about the government or the military but now also environmental issues and other social issues.

It’s good to work as a collective as there are more ideas. When we lived in the squat we were part of a larger community, now there are less people, but we are still strong as a collective. We have shifted slightly. Our focus has changed a little since ’98. After ’98 there were some discussions about whether TP should be about “art” or whether it should be more of an NGO or activist group because there were so many artists involved in TP this perspective won out. Also we don’t have much faith in NGOs…

Question: Do you think it is easier to make a link between art and politics after Seattle and the anti-capitalist movement? I am thinking here of TP’s emphasis on DIY, do you feel part of this international movement?

The spirit of TP is very much DIY. If it is a world anti-capitalist movement we don’t have any specific organizational links, but if it is about having the same voice then we feel part of it.

Question: what is you assessment of the If You See Something, Say Something exhibition?

It is good to gather with different people from different countries, I felt like I learnt a lot. One criticism I would make was the lack of time to work together, we only contributed finished works and did not make new works together. It would have been great to have a discussion and make a new work all together with all the different styles, skills and techniques. There was not enough relating between the artists – not socially but in their work. We needed to build strong artistic relationships, not just personal ones.

(Indonesian translation by Lauren Parker).

Interview with Contra Filé, Sydney and Sao Paulo, February 2007:

We are not rioting we want our rights, peace, Chrissie Cotter Gallery, 2007.

Question: You describe the practice of Contra Filé as “interventions into public space:” I wondering how much of the axis of this is in the gallery and how much is in the social sphere? Or do you have dual strategy where both are equally important?

Jerusa: We consider the work as the whole process including the meeting with people, the education process, the media, the public responses…our work happens more in the public space than in the gallery, but in the gallery we see a synthesis of the project.

Cibele: The gallery is something which happens after the work process and not before. The subject that mobilizes and creates urgencies, the things that happen that move us to work are always in public life, in real life in contact with society. The great part of our work happens in this space – not necessarily a public space it can be a private space – but not in a gallery or a space specifically for art. The art space normally comes at the end where we can organize this process in another way the work.

Jerusa: like a drawing of the process.

Cibele: for example with the Programme for the De-turnstilisation of Life Itself works, for us it was important when we showed all the work because at some point when making this work the process went out of our hands, out of our control – the inscription of the Monument to the Invisible Turnstile as a symbolic fact, was appropriated by society in diverse ways, by the São Paulo University admission board, by the students movement, by a private bank, the media – a lot of people talked about the work and created different layers of the work and when we take all these pieces and put them together and create as Jerusa says a drawing, a synthesis, it becomes a process which we can organize again.

Installing Contra File's work Mori Gallery.

Question: And this does not stop does it – I mean I notice from the Ex Argentina show to If You See Something, Say Something the work has grown, you have added to it…

Cibele: yes… it is never a final "product" for us, it never stops.

Jerusa: sometimes this is because other things happen like with the Programme for the De-turnstilisation of Life Itself work but sometimes we change out point of view and we like to make the drawing in another way.

Cibele: The work we are presenting here at Chrissie Cotter Gallery - We are not rioting we want our rights peace - we change it too, when we present it in Moscow it was different. We decided to put another panel and to change some things. We felt this was important to make a connection with the rioting which happened in May last year (2006), to build a bridge to the present.

Peetssa: This bridge, the last panel, can open a discussion about the present situation for prisoners in São Paulo.

Questions: So why bring this artwork into an art context? Why is this important for the work?

Peetssa: all work is seen and I think there is a curiosity to know more about this – if you watch the news and the TV you always arrive with little information about the actual happenings and for me this information can never be totally clear for all people involved in this project and all people who are interested…

Cibele: ...in all our projects we aim to bring people together to think about these sorts of ideas.

Jerusa: the exhibition is an opportunity for us to discuss the whole process at the same time, usually we are subsumed as part of the process – so the exhibition allows us to make a join with the whole process and whole event. An exhibition is like a lookout when we stand above the process for a moment and take stock of where it is going.

Cibele: these exhibition projects we are creating can be a space to allow ideas to proliferate, also to exchange sensibilities, experiences, realities, this is very important. Both ourselves and our work change a lot through this process. But I am sure our biggest public is those who are part of the process of the work.

Question: I notice that you use the media a lot in your work – is this a conscious strategy to reach a broader audience, or has it been an unintended result of the sort of actions you do?

Jerusa: The first work with media was with MICO - a group which gave origin to Contra Filé - for the We are not rioting we want our rights peace work and this was a conscious strategy and a successful one. We always read the newspaper and think about it: the official voice, how the newspaper creates reality, what is reality? What is fiction? And these sorts of things.

Cibele: with MICO we used to think about the power of the media, relating where to put the work and where the journalists go with their cars, we were studying these kinds of things. And we were testing this strategy and this work was a success of this sort of idea.

Jerusa: after that with Programme for the De-turnstilisation of Life Itself it happen again – but this time it was not planned, we did not intent to knock on the door of the media.

Peetssa: São Paulo is such a big city – it is very difficult to be visible. The media and the newspaper is a way to amplify what we are saying. All actions in São Paulo feel hidden, we sometimes feel like a "band aid", we get swallowed up by the scale of the city.

Question: it seems a risky uncontrollable strategy – I mean the media have different interests to you – in future projects do you think you can use media again? Or is it more of a love/hate relationship which may or may not work for you…

Cibele: of course, not necessarily, it would depend… the Programme for the De-turnstilisation is a very good example, the media started a process and we used it in different ways as there was such a big debate. But not only the media can amplify the work, there are many other ways, to use other medias, others spaces, other things.

Contra File, workshop, Chrissie Cotter Gallery.

Questions: what about alternative media, blogs, indymedia, webcasts…

Peetsa: no not really, we have not gone in this direction.

Jerusa: the main part of the work is meeting people, the talks, this is the focus.

Cibele: each project asks for a media depending on the urgency of the work. We can in some instances create for example a fake site, everything depends on the necessity of the project.

Question: so did the idea for the turnstile as a metaphor for social control come from one of your assembly of the gazes?

Cibele: in 2004 we were taking part in a project (ZA/Action Zone) which was invented by artists groups from São Paulo (Bijarí, Contra Filé, Cobaia, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and Frente 3 de Fevereiro) and had GAC from Argentina. We sold the idea to an culture institution who supported the project. For ZA we created a structure where each group was given a part of the city and our group was given the east zone. And when the project started it was funny the position we were placed in – the structure was quite uncomfortable for us – we were trying to understand how we can do a project in the east zone if we don’t live there. We felt like foreigners.

So we started thinking about this discomfort and trying to give name to this and understand were it comes from - it comes from the social reality, the relationship with the institution, a lot of things… and the turnstile came as a symbol of this – the feeling was like a turnstile – it was everywhere.

Jerusa: just before our workshop we decided lets go and talk with the workshop group about these feeling of "turnstilisation".

Cibele: we shared in a Public Assembly the idea of a Programm for the De-turnstilisation of Life Itself like a proposition. So we went with the turnstile like a metaphor and asked "does this make sense to you? Does this speak to your life?" And we noticed that the turnstile was a very powerful symbol as so many experiences could be inside this symbol – social, racial, economic… and also many subtle experiences of control.

Jerusa: After this first conversation we chose to make the monument in the public place and we contacted the people who were in the meeting and we chose to put up one first to start the Programm for the De-turnstilisation of Life Itself.

Peetssa: this was our inauguration – an “official opening” of the Programme.

Question: your work is very interdisciplinary – do you consider this important?

Cibele: we are by now very contaminated by each others perspectives – the specific gazes can all be put together.

Question: I wanted to ask you then about the “political exhibition” – how useful is this form for linking the social and artistic spheres.

Jerusa: I don’t think you can separate the art and social sphere, they come together. The manifestation of this connection is what makes art.

Peetssa: the social movement need a form for expression to communicate – an image without concept is empty.

Cibele: I actually believe that these kind of projects that we are creating are artworks, they are important moments which expand our collective understandings… it about collective creativity, practice and experiences not individual works…

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