Interviews | Marita Batna: A conversation with artist Michael Morgan

 

This conversation is taking place upon the conclusion of Michael Morgan’s exhibition ‘Impermanent Vessels – Rebirth’ (8 – 25 May 2014). The project is a milestone – not only for being his second major exhibition (the first was held in 2011) but also for bringing together his conceptual explorations in a new format – an immersive installation of sculpture and its interplay with digital imagery, video, sound, as well as smell.

Focused on the fragility and decay of all material things, the exhibition presented the recovered legacy of the 50 artist’s head casts in raku clay that were subjected to a year-long interaction with the environment of ocean water. Curating this exhibition was a unique experience for me and a privilege to follow the stages of the objects’ creation, placement and recovery.

Presently, Michael is working towards completion of a mosaic wall – the second of his thematic studio walls composed of cut out fragments of numerous dishes, tiles and kitschy souvenirs – modern but old and mostly unwanted representatives of the 20th century consumer culture.
The relative and overlapping formats of Michael’s work is painting, print, ceramics, mosaic, sculpture, and most lately – video. ‘Impermanent Vessels’ introduced his interdisciplinary practice engaged with physical processes.
More than the scale (which is often present in his work) – the honesty and directness were the qualities that first struck me about his art. It has estranged others. Indeed, the usual system of knowledge through which one tends to screen various modes of art expression seems to be irrelevant. Free from didactic, the essence of his work appears descriptive of reality, of idea. His ongoing focus–interrelationships of the human and nature is engaged with deconstruction of the intellect. The beautiful is always ambiguous in his work, and the dramatic always resonates with the beautiful. Our conversation touches some of the themes that informs Michael’s work – the issues of the human animal and the collective mind in the context of the globalized world.

A glass mosaic wall, in progress

MB: The interesting feeling with your mosaic walls is that they appear as chaos of tens of thousands of elements and yet you have been using this chaos to create some order. Which is more prevalent for you – chaos or order?
MM: I am trying to create a rhythm. The only order that I am aiming for is energetic flows, and I am using different textures in different places of the surface, so that creates order, but even within that order there is a chaos.
MB: To what extent is it important to achieve a completeness of the image: if I look at the Tree of Life – its composition reflects wholeness, even a metaphorical representation of the universe.

"Tree of Life" mosaic

MM: This [glass mosaic] is more like a complete portrait, here I am coming back to the Rorschach dream (an earlier painting using reflection symmetry of image around human figure – self-portrait – MB).  Everything is reflective: I am wanting to mirror the images, use the principle of self-reflectiveness. You see bits of your own light reflected back off it. That interests me.
MB: Does this relate to the dynamics of fractals which you have been referring to as inspiration?
MM: Yes, the self-reflectiveness and patterns within patterns. I am not trying to create fractals, it’s about that process happening naturally. We create fractals unintentionally. It will be full of fractals and I didn’t intend that.
MB: So what you are dealing with is the natural order, natural rhythm?
MM: Yes, it probably is. Perhaps it is similar to what Jackson Pollock was exploring with an absolutely chaotic surface that developed a rhythm within it. Whether that was intended or not, it turned out to be incredibly harmonic way to generate images. I think this is what it is about – the harmony of the surface through the rhythm.
MB: What I see in the first place is the expression of the beautiful.
MM: True, I haven’t tried to make it an ugly thing, I have been aiming to make the wall into something like an Aladdin’s Cave. That makes the surface look quite precious I suppose – as a jewel cave.
MB: And there are some elements – jewels – that speak for themselves creating very special dynamics.
MM: Every part can be looked at in isolation. I am painstakingly working through each part – I can’t rush it. It is like painting a picture and just damping on one brush full of colour using an incredibly large surface. I love the textures and different types of surfaces. What I am working with is the energy.
MB: What would be the ultimate mosaic?
MM: I don’t know if there is an ultimate of anything. I think you are always just exploring, aren't you? If I could cover the whole house with this surface it would be fantastic. But even that will be just a step to something else. Even bigger. I have seen somewhere something about a mirror house – in landscape it becomes almost invisible – reflecting everything around it.  I am doing it in my studio, so I am creating a space which also makes it interesting.
MB: What was the first interest for you – science or art?
MM: Probably, both. I have one bright memory from my childhood: I was lying and feeling this incredible vastness...  That epiphany of the world and the universe I experienced when I was five or six – scared the hell out of me. I loved both those things – science and art simultaneously. Art and science are both about exploring the world by different means of experimentation. Maybe we get too much hang up on differentiating things, putting different labels on them and not understanding that everything is part of the same thing – ourselves and life. All these things are about being creative, whether you have a maths mind, a science mind or an art mind, but you are going to be bits of everything. Our knowledge is limited but that is what makes life interesting – you can explore your space.
MB: Is this what experimentation is about – being directed to truth?
MM: It is about curiosity and making connections. Maybe that is related to truth, but from my perspective I am attracted by reality. When I was young and was hunting with my father, I found it a very natural thing to be doing. When you are out in the wild, you see the animals and you also see dead animals, and you observe the way farmers work. In general, it’s a very practical approach to things – if the animal is sick, they put it out of its misery, they need to deliver a lamb – they deliver the lamb, they need to kill it to eat it – they kill it to eat it. The reality of nature can be quite brutal but I also found it amazing – such a small part in a vast existence. I was just thinking of the natural beauty of nature, and the truth about how things really were, not some contrived way people might have imagined it.
MB: We can assume the animals can sustain natural order in life, but if humans are involved, they can also manipulate nature and parts of it die out.
MM: They can, but you are straight away taking the high ground view that the humans are disconnected from the animal world, but we are not, we are part of it. It’s only when you become intellectual and moral about it that you start thinking about it differently.
MB: Right, so a human is just another form of animal with advanced brains…
MM: We think we have special brains but it does not seem to be that way. Today’s massive humanity suggests that it must have termite mind, and it is driven not just by food, but greed as well. Our collective termite mind is very animal-like, very herd, and easy to manipulate especially by politicians and media who use this mind.
MB: Obsession, passion, urge for power – is that what differentiates humans? We don’t strictly follow the rules of nature?
MM: The natural world is all about that power and control and that natural hierarchy about where you sit in the food chain and what dominance you have over someone below you. But as long as this system is founded on practical reasons it is not cruel.  I don’t think animals are generally cruel to each other – they just do things out of the need for survival. Whereas, humans can be completely brutal, and there are huge contradictions [with nature] in that. They can be the most cruel animals in existence really – considering what they can do to each other. Fundamental to cruelty is apathy – an apathetic person doesn’t have any empathy to relate with another person: they just don’t bother.
MB: A lot of your paintings seem to refer to that human mentality: dark and unnatural sides of it that you use in an allegorical way.
MM: All my art is about the human condition, human impact, and human beauty. I explore different things that are relevant at a particular time, depending on what’s going through my mind, but it’s usually about how people are treating other people or how they are linked – as termite mind. I am interested in this unseen connection and how it creates morphic resonance – something that transmits through: one person comes to an idea, and the others come to that same idea. It is like ripples in the pond – it just goes out. Same generation, almost instantaneously. This knowledge goes to deeper understanding of nature and our place in the world. It could be positive or negative knowledge – any sort, say, some scientific breakthrough – suddenly it all makes perfect sense for everyone else.
MB: Is it the distorted evolution and utopian development called progress? Do you believe in it?
MM: I am not sure whether we might have real evolutionary change for ourselves – that might be intervention. Like the eugenic manipulation, for example. Progress… Progressing towards what? Complete extinction? More than likely – at some point. A big aspect of evolution is extinction. At this moment, all is driven by economic development. As long as they [politicians] keep talking about ‘sustainable growth’ – to me, it’s just emphasizing the inevitability of extinction, driven by short term views of politicians. They don’t need to think about a hundred years in the future as they are elected for few years.


MB: The tension between communism and capitalism is over but we continue to experience the negative sides of globalisation.  How do you see the world’s ideological picture now?
MM: As extreme polarisation. Extreme Islamic philosophy – total simplicity and brutality towards people and the orgy of capitalism which, in the name of profit, exploits everything it has its hands on. It’s really just the opposite reflection of the actual extremes. The Islamic extreme philosophy is almost like an ultimate communism I suppose – all is controlled by Sharia Law, whereas, the capitalist governments quite clearly refer to Christian fundamentalism. When you hear about serious consequence of capitalism happening in, for example, the US – it is all seen in light of ‘god’s blessing’. Capitalism and extremism are gone insane. They make people powerless and defenseless, and I find that a scary progression towards the future.
MB: You have admitted having observed the cruelty of people, and being an outsider as a child paralleled your interest in art and science.
MM: Being an outsider is my earliest memory. I only had a few friends, and they were just as much outsiders as myself. I enjoyed doing things that other kids didn't generally enjoy – such things like art, hunting, and shooting. And when people knew you were hunting they were a bit confronted by that. My view was different – I didn’t think it was some cruel thing. In earlier generations it was understood that the whole purpose of having an animal is to consume it. Now people don’t like to have that direct connection, they just want to imagine things remotely. Someone kills animal in the factory and you just pick it up.
MB: Now people minds are influenced by various environmental protection movements.
MM: I think that this influence comes to making people feel guilty about existing and interacting with the environment. The whole agenda of any ideology is to make you feel guilty about being alive – so you change your way. Ideological figures instinctively go for that approach because it is quite effective. That’s a cruel way to treat people: by guilt or fear. Being aware of what’s unacceptable is one thing but then making you feel guilty is different.

MB: Economics is probably based on all that – guilt or fear.
MM: I suppose, it is how both capitalist system and Islamic groups –in fact all religious groups – are working. Catholicism is based on making you feel guilty about the original sin. It works quite well for religious groups, it works well for lobby groups too. It’s all about control.
MB: It is interesting when you think of us – humans as being same as animals. But inquiring about being, and, for example, making art – that is supposed to be only human ability.

Chemo Boys

MM: I think we make ourselves too sophisticated. But we are just a very simple organism. Very frail – skin and bones, living organs, breathing lungs, beating hearts. Exactly the same as every other mammal. The collective mind of termites builds a termite mound – is that art? If you are trying to analyse the intellect of the termite – I don’t know if you can do it, but there are millions of them and they have the capacity to do amazing things. That’s why I find insects, like ants quite fascinating. I think that separating what is considered art is a superior view – it is just an innate need to express yourself, an instinct. Procreation might be art and all animals have forms of it. Not every human is born in the ideal way or perfection but this magnifies the animal instincts we have such as to procreate, to protect yourself. And probably the reality is that everyone is quite capable of killing in the right circumstances, purely to survive. Instincts have taken modern ways – which I realized as a kid by seeing that there were bullies and predators. The predators frightened me – some of them, the most dangerous ones, are almost invisible: they look for the vulnerable and are brutal in how they would take an advantage of them. Whatever the motives, predators are contradicting the nature. To me, it is natural to have networks of people who look after each other: when you are in a position to have a good influence on people, that’s easy, you don’t have to be cruel.

"Crystal Azan" time-lapse video still

Michael in his studio, working on "Impermanent Vessels"

fitness | Roya Siroospour: an interview

After dragging, bouncing, hopping, lifting, bending, jumping and bopping my way through several states and three countries worth of gyms and myriad exercise classes, I am pretty clear on what circumstances make me want to work hard, and which conditions catapult me into threatening to bag the whole fitness thing and reconsider purchasing a muumuu and lifetime supply of crunchy cheesy snacks to enjoy on my new sofa. To maintain a certain level of physicality takes ramping up at various intervals in ones progress through time and space.

My "gym du jour" possesses an Instructor who manages to get me cranked up into struggling through routines that leave even the "big boys" with bulging eyeballs. The fact that there are males at all present in a fitness classroom is an anomaly; grunting through a set of rusty metal weight-lifting sets in front of other males and a smattering of nubile females is a more accepted behavior in the masculine tribe ritual. Taking direction "from a girl" is not in the Male Behavior Manual last time I looked.

Over the past several years I have been happily following a certain instructor; Roya is a bundle of kinetic energy and unending good will towards the sloth-like behavior of the average class attendee. Recently I began questioning why Roya, specifically, makes me want to work that hard; which in turn leaves me with a great sense of accomplishment and contentment. I have never been hurt by her class but have often ached with deep and prolonged muscle-usage, which, by the way, I consider a good thing.

To overcome perceived physical short-comings, which all too often are self imposed in origin, is proof that if you can push through the physical barriers, it is a short mental / emotional hop to a realization that one can override other difficulties .

I asked Roya what part of her motivational aspects were unscripted and which were purposefully calculated to control the energy in the room. I wanted her take on how this body-mind thing worked from her front-row seat.

How she gets the energy in the room rolling?

Roya: "When I come into the (exercise) room, I shut down all processes. I grew up a performer, so I know how to turn it on."

No matter what is going on in her life, physically or mentally, she makes it a point to put that aside and re-formulate the mood before entering her classroom.

" It is important to take control of the room. Who is in there also adds to the energy. There is an energy field and it has to be in a certain spot or I have to work harder to bring it up."

Roya needs the front row to be responsive and create the dynamism which will ripple into the receding rows and create a vibrance everyone feeds from and returns back to the group. If the right situation is not in place, Roya will have to work harder to bring it up. Occasionally she will feel logy energy in a class, leaving her drained from working without the aid of reciprocal exuberance. A group can merely take vitality and not give in return, or conversely share their joy and vigor. It becomes a spiraling eddy of "group think", much in the way a car can be sucked up in the "draft" of a large semi truck on the road.

"It's as if we're all rowing and someone's sipping a cocktail. I am consciously cranking up the energy" Roya explains.

In any social group, you can tell who is providing the "juice", the lower energy people plug into the other like an EV battery from a new electric car.

Roya: "I was always super energetic and loved big groups."

When she first moved to a Miami gym from Colorado she was concerned that no one would be interested in what she offered. It did not take long for her classes to fill to capacity. I was there......it happened quickly. The draw is that "super energy" that creates others to want that degree of explosive pizazz. At first I didn't think much about it, but now find myself ruminating as to what, exactly, produces the magnetic force.

Gunning is a relatively new piece of exercise equipment in our gym which resembles a spinning cycle, but using the upper body, your hands on "pedals". Gunning on the KrankCycle was created by the same person who brought us the wildly popular "Spinning", John G. Krank. Adding a personal heart monitor linked to a screen above the class area, allows each participant to track and regulate his own heartbeat. The heart monitor is attached to each class member's torso and flashed onto the screen, allowing the student to note how his body is responding. The student adjusts his energetic output to stay within various zones prescribed by the instructor as the class progresses.

Roya can see how the mind and body are disconnected in some individuals when they first enter the Gunning arena. She notes, " It can be very hard to get people into Gunning because they are so detached; it can be as simple as too much caffeine and too little hydration."

Music is an integral part of the feel good dynamic. Roya's choices? "If it works for me, it works for everyone. I move better when there's music; it makes my body move....it's part of my soul. If you can follow a rhythm, every part of your body will start to move; musical beats are cyclical, like your heartbeat or breathing. With Spinning (a repetitive movement ) you begin to feel trance-like and focus on the beat."

Yoga is about becoming one with your breath. Roya is taking this same yogi thought and bringing music into creating the "one-ness" quotient: music, the heart's rhythm and the breath become an intertwined beat. Fitness movements provide an environment to forego over-think mode allowing mind and body to meld completely into a cohesive whole; the body moving as one unit instead of a series of disparate parts threatening to to fly apart at any given moment.

I asked Roya about her experiences with one-on-one training; "I worked one woman hard for 2 months, but she never lost weight. Her background was fried food and cream, so I had to physically take her to the grocery store, walked her through, reading labels." The woman got it with that last ditch effort to educate, and lost 47 pounds. She began to make her own juices and recipes, excited by the new connection to her own destiny.

Roya has the added support of having a family on the same page with the mind-body connection; her father spent 30 years as a Yale-educated Surgeon, and is now an Holistic healer.

Roya always loved the gym, at 16 years old, the gym felt like home. She competed in gymnastics and rode horses. Today her schedule is exceptionally full of physical exercise. As well as a killer schedule at 3 Miami CRUNCH gyms, Roya manages to have plenty of energy to perform freestyle dancing. A prime example of positive energy breeding positive energy, which, happily she shares with her clients.

Roya Siroospour is Group Fitness Instructor And Personal Trainer

CRUNCH, Miami

An excerpt from the "in-progress" project MOVING MIND

by daniela bertol and irene sperber

Interview with Christo and Jeanne-Claude

A WORK OF JOY AND BEAUTY:

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Art

Interview by Daniela Bertol

New York, March 17, 2008

Daniela Bertol: I think, as many other people, of your work as one of the greatest examples of public art. What motivated you initially to create art outside the museum and gallery settings?

Christo: Our first project was in 1961….

Jeanne-Claude: Our motivation never really changes, it has always has been to create a work of art of joy and beauty.

DB Beautiful definition!

C Absolutely useless, absolute unnecessary, with no justification… that is very important….we want the art to happen, no corporate executive or some senator or some mayor decides what would be good for the people. After 40 years we have realized 19 projects but we failed to get permission for 37.

JC Do you live in NY?

DB I have been living in NY for 20 years, 21 years

JC Welcome! We have been living in this building for 45 years; we moved to this building in 1964.

DB What made you leave Europe?

C I was born in Bulgaria. I escaped from a communist country in 1957, during the Hungarian revolution. I went to Prague, because I am a quarter Czech. I was 21 years old, I tried to go to Paris, like any artist in the 50s. Paris was the city of art. I was a political refugee, with no passport, with no money, no relatives or family. And in 1958 I met Jeanne Claude.

JC We lived 6 years in Paris.

C And also in Italy, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Belgium…many different locations.

JC We were traveling a lot outside Paris for exhibitions, meeting collectors, museum directors. But it did not take Christo 6 years in Paris to realize that Paris was not the center of the art world any longer. Already starting in 1961 we were telling all our friends in Paris “next week we are going to New York” but we never had the money to buy the ticket. Finally in February ‘64 we could buy a round trip ticket; we did not want to buy one-way ticket, but round trip. We could not get the visa without round trip, but it was mostly because “What if we don’t like New York? We could be stacked there?”

DB You met in 1958 ---can you mention how you met? Was it love at first sight?

JC No, it was not love at first sight, it was sex at first sight. I believe Christo really fell in love with me when I was pregnant with our son. That’s when it was real love, before that we had a lot of fun.

DB And your son was born I believe, in 1961…

JC No, he was born in 1960. He was already walking when we got married. That’s why in our biography we never put our date of marriage, out of respect for our son. We were married in November 1962. He was 2 and half. We got married because of you, Italians! We were going to Italy a lot. And in Italy, if you had different last names in passports you had to pay for 2 rooms. And we had no money even for one room. We were sleeping in the car most of the time. I told Christo “that is ridiculous, if we are going to Italy again in the next few weeks, let’s get married first, so if we go to an hotel every 3 or 4 nights to wash up, we can pay only for one room.”

DB So you had a very hard beginning…

JC Don’t miss understand, Christo and I were never poor, we were only temporarily without money, that is very different, because poor is a mind set. We were rich to invite our friends for dinner in our one-room in Paris, I would open a can of ravioli, we had bread and a bottle of wine and we had a wonderful dinner, a rich dinner!

DB Where did you live in Paris?

C We lived in a very old house, on Ile Saint Louis, in the back of Notre Dame.

DB Very fascinating beginning… in 1964 you move to the US, when you finally got money to buy round trip ticket and move to US.

C We went back to fetch our son.

JC Because we had left our son with my mother, so in June we went back to Europe and in September we came back with our child Cyril.

C For three years we were illegal aliens …we arrived with a tourist visa and after three months we disappeared.

DB Canada?

C No, hiding in the city, illegal aliens!

DB And still you wanted to live here…

C First we were living at the Chelsea Hotel, February, March, April, May ’64 and in October ’64 we found this place, where we still are now. The building was empty since 1940. We were renting the two top floors.

JC We have no elevator- the 5^th floor is still today Christo’s studio, the 4^th floor is still today our home and office. We rented two floors, and one wonderful day we bought the building and now we have 5 floors plus the basement. The rent for each floor in 1964 was $70.

DB The early work was quite unconventional: wrapping, oil barrels…

JC The barrel from 1958 at the other end of the wall (JC point at the wall of the living room), done in Paris.

DB Did you find Americans to be more receptive to unconventional work?

C In the early ’60 I met the American dealer, Sidney Janis. In 1962, Janis showed two of my Packages in the “New Realists” exhibition; one is now in the National Gallery in Washington DC, and one is in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. We had no money to come to the US for the exhibition. In 1961 we met Leo Castelli in Paris, and he said that when we will come to New York he would show my work.

JC The title for the show in 1964 was "Four at Castelli."

C I showed a large Storefront, now in the collection of the Hirshorn museum in Washington. That sculpture was built at the Chelsea Hotel in our room.

JC Everybody was living in the Chelsea Hotel: Claes Oldenburg, Larry River, Arthur Miller…

C Arthur Miller’s daughter was playing with our son.

DB You mentioned the exhibition "Four at Castelli." Who were the other three?

C Robert Watts, Richard Artschwager and Alex Hay. I believe only Artschwager is still alive.

DB Your work back then was mainly small or medium scale…

C The first personal exhibition we did was in 1961 in Cologne, Germany; we showed packages.

JC The second one was the Iron Curtain in Paris in June 1962; that was not small, compared to what other artists were creating then, it was very big, it blocked the whole street…

DB Did you start making enemies?

C We had no permit, we did initially photomontages and collages. It is a long story… In September 1961, the wall was designed to be a poetic response to the Berlin Wall, which was built in August 1961. The Paris prefecture refused the permit.

JC We did it anyway and the police was not very happy with us. Yes, we started making enemies…

DB Your work is at unprecedented scale: The Mastaba is envisioned larger than the Pyramids, Running Fence covered 40 km, The Umbrellas covered 29 km only in California. How is scale influencing the initial concepts of your work? When did you start conceiving work at such magnitude of scale?

JC You have to add the Japan part…

C The Umbrellas is a joint project. This is a two-part work of art to involve the two richest countries in the world, which hold a lot of similarities and differences.

JC 19 km in Japan and 29 Km in California.

DB When did you start to envision works at such large scale?

JC You think it is a grand scale only because it is a work of art, human beings create much larger things: highways, airports, skyscrapers. Our Australian friend told us that there is one rancher who, to protect his ranch against wild dogs, had a fence running 2000 miles. In Australia it is not a work of art, it has a purpose, while our works of art have no other purposes other than being a work of art.

C Your question comes really to how these projects work. These projects have a lot of affinities with architecture. One must read our work is very easy to understand, very natural…For instance the Wrapped Reichstag involved architecture, sculpture, painting and urban planning; it was similar to construct a building, we had to go through the same complex decisions. For Over the River our application to the Federal government in Washington, it is 2029 pages and $1,500,000 of scientific research.

JC The Wrapped Reichstag had the same dimensions as the building, it is not the largest building in the world. The Bonart Wrapped in Paris has the same dimension of the bridge. The Pont Neuf in Paris is not the largest bridge in the world. The Pont Neuf is a small bridge. We do not do such big things [JC laughs]

DB Perhaps compared to the China Wall…

JC That’s for sure, and ours have not purpose, the China Wall does.

DB Have you ever considered doing something related to China Wall?

JC Never.

DB We talked about scale and size ---what about the use of colors? Is there a meaning? Are colors associated to the countries which host your work ---thinking of The Umbrellas, blue in Japan and yellow in California…

JC Do you call this use of colors consistent?

C The Running Fence is the only white one, and then the Pink of the Surrounded Island…

C The color is not the work of art, the work of art is many things together. The pink color fabric in Florida is not the work of art. The pink color goes with the tropical vegetation of the islands, with the emerald green, turquoise, light blue of the shallow water; altogether is the work of art.

One gate is not the work of art, two gates is not the work of art, 7,503 gates on 23 miles (37 kms) in Central Park is the work of art.

DB What about orange for the Gates?

JC The color is not consistent. But it is perfectly relevant to each specific project.

C And of course color relates to the seasons of the year. The Gates project was a winter project The Florida was a spring project before the hurricane season in Miami. And “Over the River” is a summer project, because of the rafters’ use of the river. They all relate to the seasons of the year, the moment of life, to many things.

JC The time and where it is.

DB Does the saffron color of the Gates relate to Autumn?

C The Gates started with a warm color in 1979, like a ochre, yellow gold, orange… because we always like to have changing colors.

JC To replace the autumn foliage, there is no notion of color of Fall in Europe but to replace the vision. The last vision of Central Park before the winter is the extraordinary colors, mostly saffron, golden, red. The specific hue of saffron we chose, it was because it was changing color all the time, in the sunshine it was golden, when it was wet it was tomato red, it kept changing all the time.

DB Interesting, I had this impression that the saffron color was chosen as a sacred color…

JC No, no: there is nothing sacred in our life but for our love, that’s all.

C All our projects are unique. We will never do the same thing again. We do not know how the projects will look like…

JC And we do not know how to build them….

C This is why we do one to one test, this is how we finalize the aesthetics of each project “Over the River” project started in 1992. In 1998 we did four full size tests, far from the Arkansas River to choose what color of fabric to use for the Arkansas River.

JC We had to make many choices, we had to choose how the fabric will be sewn, we had to make the choice. This is the fabric! (JC shows DB the fabric)

DB Wow!

JC Hold the fabric against it the light

C You can see the sky, the clouds, the mountains behind…

DB Do you use any computer simulation program?

C & JC No, No...(laughing)

JC We live in reality! You may wonder why we love to work with fabric ---in addition to aluminum and steel. It is an old story. This bronze is 4,000 years old (JC shows DB the photo of a Greek statue)

DB From which civilization?

JC Greek, probably Tanagra. Artists of the past have always loved folds and drapery. You can see her legs in the sculpted bronze…

DB Transparency, sensuality… So instead of dressing the body you dress trees, lands, wall buildings like sculptors with the human body

JC But, we are sculptors!

DB You mentioned perception, light, transparency, color and how the fabric is seen in a certain way when we are looking at it sitting at the table and changes when it is placed against the light…

JC When you look at our web site you see images of sculptures we have created but they are static, they do not move in the wind, they do not change color. In reality our works of art are alive, the fabric moves in the wind and changes color at different time of the day.

C An important part of all our work is that we pay ourselves all the cost. We do not do commissions.

JC We do not accept sponsor.

C The important part of the story is that for Over the River [Christo points at two large binders] 2029 pages for the permit process.

JC Do you understand these two words? We inherit what is inherent.

C For example, we did not invent the politics of the Reichstag., the politic was there.

For Surrounded Island we did not invent ecology in Briscane Bay, Florida, the ecology was there. The photographs of the Wrapped Reichstag, the film about the Wrapped Reichstag they are about the Wrapped Reichstag, But for 14 days in 1995 in Berlin, it was not about the Wrapped Reichstag, it was the Wrapped Reichstag!

JC Another analogy: if you go to see a movie about the Vietnam war when you come out of the theater you are not bleeding, the person sitting on your left is not dying, you don’t have one leg cut off, because that was not the Vietnam war, that was about the Vietnam war. It was only a movie on the subject of the Vietnam war.

C The real Gates lasted 16 days.

JC It was not on the subject of the Gates, it was the Gates.

JC Did you see the documentary on HBO? It was shown about 17 times….

C The work of art absorbs all the meaning only when people are there and they see the real thing. Our works of art have no precedents, they are totally unique. There is no precedent about how to suspend fabric above the water. It is not in the construction manuals.

JC But of course all the projects we complete create precedents...

DB All the work you do is ‘ephemeral”, lasts I believe 14 days, but for a few exceptions, the Gates 16 days Why 14 days?

JC Not always. The Wrapped Coast in Australia was I believe 10 weeks

DB But I believe 14 days is the duration of most all the works…

JC When the project is completed, we have worked very hard to create it, and we are completed elated, because of course it is even more beautiful than in our wildest dreams. But at that precise moment, Christo and I are no longer creative artists, the creativity is finished. We are taking care of the different teams. We become the two bosses of the garbage pick-up teams. We make sure our workers have water, foods and we take care of their many other necessities… No more creativity, and for us probably one week would be enough, because we are eager to go to the next project. But we cannot be so egoistic, one week does not give enough time for many people to see the projects so we decided two weeks to give people enough time to enjoy it.

C For Over the River project, we decided about two summer weeks,between July 15 and August 15. We try to work with the local authorities and communities.

JC But there are many considerations: we want the drafters but on the road there will be a lot traffic, we do not want to do it after school has started, so the school bus will not arrive late, many considerations…

DB That’s really wonderful ! Local authorities must appreciate that...

C Well some appreciate, others do not appreciate.

DB Have you ever thought of doing your very large scale interventions as a permanent work?

JC The Mastaba will be much longer, but not forever. There is no forever on Planet Earth, the dinosaurs are gone. If well maintained can stay 4,000-5,000 years. Not so long compared to the life of planet Earth and the presence of humans.

DB What’s going on with that project?

C We traveled there extensively in the late seventies and early eighties.

JC 7 trips; 2-3 weeks each. The region became dangerous. The war between Iran and Iraq, next door, I was afraid. We went back last year, in 2007, after 25 years of absence.

C Our associates Wolfang Wolz who works with us already went back. However the engineering project requires a lot of work

JC “Over the River” we think could be completed in 2012 at the earliest.

C After we get the permit we have to fabricate off-site the elements of the project. This will take two years.

JC For all our projects, the fabric is the least expensive and least complicated.

DB Is it more what holds the fabric that is complicated?

JC Yes.

C We have to install 8000 anchors

DB Did you anticipate how many workers will be required?

JC No, we don’t, it is too early. That’s really a question for our chief engineer/director of constructions, Vince Davenport and his wife, Jonita Davenport, project director. They are the ones who worked with us on the Umbrellas and the Gates.

DB Next question, is in fact about the relationship with your engineers….

JC They are part of our working family.

DB Do you have an ongoing dialogue, such as “I want this structure to span 3 km” and they reply “I don’t think is possible”

JC No, it is not like that. Even the length is not decided in advance. The interaction with the local professionals is decisive. If they say, for instance, in Over the River “this is the place where every year we have to rescue rafter” Of course we do not put any fabric there.

C It is too early to make such decisions; even the title was not definitive at the beginning.

JC “Over the River” is not the right title In 1992 the project was called the river. We had not found the right title. It was only an idea.; it is only an idea. When we started we did not know yet what we are doing. We have never done it before. And we have driven 14,000 miles inspecting 89 rivers in the Rocky Mountains of United States only, not in Canada. Out of the 89 rivers, we found 6 possible rivers. With our engineer, we decided that the Arkansas River is the best. It has high banks so we can hang the cables. It has a road running along the river so people can see the work of art by car, it has a railroad along the North bank. It is not far from Colorado Springs, the second city in Colorado where we can find the workers, the machine and the equipment. It is quite arid; there is no curtain of trees blocking the view. So you will be able to see it from the car. When you put everything together, that’s the ideal river for us.

C It is an east-west axis, high mountains, gorgeous…

DB Next question is about the perception from different scales and viewpoints. You mentioned that the people seeing your work from the roads, the drafters seeing it from below. Your work has many different perceptions, can be seen from a plane, if you are a rafter from below…In classical art the composition is framed and you have an ideal perception. You don’t have a static view but so many kinetic perceptions: flying, driving, walking. When you first have an idea of your work of art, what do you have in mind as preferred view?

JC We told you already, we wish to create a work of art of joy and beauty.

C In real life, we enjoy the weather, the dry, the cold, the wind.

JC What Christo is saying is that we do not understand much about flat surfaces, but if we are in Florence and we are looking at the Birth of Venus by Botticelli, I have tears in my eyes and it is flat.

C Our works are not static.

JC None of our projects were designed to be seen by the birds

C Of course it can be seen by plane, there are multiple perceptions.

JC When we say we want to create a work of art of joy of beauty, we are talking only about us. This is how we are built, we are joyous and we love beauty, any kind of beauty. If you look at Hieronymus Bosh, it is horrible! Demons and hell, but what a great artist! If you look at Francis Bacon, there is no joy and beauty there, but what a great artist! It is only for us that we wish joy and beauty because that’s how we are built.

I remember when our son was 10 or 12 we were walking on Madison Avenue and I told Christo “Look at the girl across street, she is beautiful.” Christo said: “Yes, but her legs are not perfect”. And we started a discussion. Our son said “But mom, I thought that men look at beautiful girls, not women.” I said “We must look at everything beautiful; sunset, birds, flowers, women, everything that’s beautiful. that’s how we are built.”

DB It is a correct interpretation to say that your work is in collaboration with nature?

C We work in urban places.

DB Rural?

JC Yes rural. We have never worked in real nature.

DB I mean interaction with natural light, sunrise, sunset, weather…

C Oh, natural elements!

DB Yes.

JC The Mastaba is away from the city, in the desert.

C In every project we try to have human scale elements, telephone poles or houses or roads to give a sense of scale.

JC Even for “Over the River” the South Bank is not only the rocks that mother nature placed, but the rubble which came down when the dynamite blasted to make the highway. The North Bank is the rubble which came down when they blasted for the railroad. Only the water is from mother nature, all the rest is man-made.

JC Along where we want to place our work of art, there are seven villages. It is rural, like the Running Fence was rural, 4000 cows!

For more information on Christo and Jeanne-Claude:

http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/

A video of the Gates:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvnBZjhZ6JI