ARTWORKER OF THE WEEK #21

Rirkrit Tiravanija @ Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK

Untitled (monk and train), 2000
Ultra glossy c-print on vinyl frame in MDG
(52.1 x 37.5 cm)
Edition of 3


Food, travel, sleep, socialising, community, music and film -- everyday staples in the life of most any global citizen? More precisely, these are the elements of an artmaking process that defines the work of artist Rirkrit Tiravanija. And, all in the name of critiquing Western institutional practices! Best known for his events that involve Thai food and the museum/gallery audiences that consume it, Tiravanija's artmaking fosters a multitude of relationships that blur social, political and cultural lines. Born in Argentina (1961) and based between NYC and Berlin, he sets up situations where circumstances are collectively open-ended for both himself and his audience, the result being always unpredictable. Tiravanija was the co-curator and an artist in the Utopia Station section of the Venice Biennale, and is included in the inaugural group show of Gavin Brown's new space in New York City.

Rirkrit Tiravanija is exhibiting at the Ikon Gallery until 25/01/04


This interview was conducted via email between London, LA, Berlin and NYC.

Jill Martinez Krygowski: You're best known for your cooking events, which began in the early '90s in galleries and museums. These events are inherently imbued with a festive air of lively interaction with audiences eating, drinking and socialising in the context of "art only" spaces. But there is also a marked impermanence, a longing feeling that counters the sense of community that is temporarily created, when the audience is finally left only with remnants (cooking utensils, trash, left over food). Also, do these relics then become artwork (as with Joseph Beuys)?

Rirkrit Tiravanija: I think in general the audience for art in the context of the art world is generally very primitive, and incapable of reaching beyond the object or the picture, the image of art. To think that we are in the 21st Century and we still have to deal with such questions seems to reflect an incredibly short attention span and a great lack of curiosity and creative free thinking. The experience of the ideas of art is very narrow and public expectations are an incredible mix between market capitalism and Zen which equals perhaps Joseph Beuys (no dissing). I don't make relics, or I attempt not to make relics. I am interested in use, perhaps (in usage) one can make it into a relic, but I try to anticipate such conditions and avoid that relationship in my own conditions. No vitrines, no museums, no artists, just a lot of people. So, it has never been about making, just more living, less working, less object, more kitchenware.

JMK: In contrast to your ephemeral cooking events, you also work in the more permanent genre of film. These are long-term projects for you, as "works in progress". Describe your filmmaking and fascination with this medium.

RT: Well, again, a lot of people. A lot of people doing something together, in this case it actually could be an image, but nonetheless one can use it only in memory mode... it's never still but instead moving in time... perhaps film is as ephemeral as making an image can be. I particularly like the anticipation of distribution as well, more people, more context or, rather, the possibilities of having different contexts.

JMK: You often work in editions and multiples, creating a framework for engagement with a broader audience. This way of working ultimately reifies the status of the art object. Do you have this idea in mind when you work with editions?

RT: The question was anticipated above in similar relation to the ideas of making a film, as well as some of the other questions. Yes, it is a lot of the question about the status of the art object and more in general. I see the editions as a working plan for ideas.

SS You mean so that you can reach a broader audience?

RT: Yes, a broader audience. Film has completely different distribution structures from art objects, and with the possibilities of copies, piracy and downloads, it can be distributed in places where art can never arrive.

SS: You were born in Argentina but you work in Bangkok, Berlin and NY. Do you find the constant moving between studios and countries an inspiration? And is the more "conceptual"/found nature of your "artwork" a result of this necessity?

RT: I tend to think that it is out of my own choice or out of nature to migrate perhaps at the moment between these three points, and the movements are based on comfort, and indeed from the need to be fed or to be inspired. But also the movement anticipates the possibilities for interacting with a lot of people.

JMK: You have reconstructed replicas of past apartments and habitations in museum and gallery spaces, collapsing the relationship between public and private architecture. Do these projects reflect a personal embracing of the transitory, or is it a more general comment on the impermanence of material life in general?

RT: I would think that the collapse of the public and private is linked to the collapse of ownership and in that sense to material life. Yes, transitory and migrating and more points -- less place.

SS: Rikrit, I think that we were thinking along the same lines, just that we wanted to circle the topic a bit from general to specific so to speak.

JMK: Can you tell us about your recent project and artist residency in Kanazawa, Japan?

RT: It's going to be a bridge. Not a station but a bridge -- with three points, a bridge with an intersection taken from the formation of flying migrating geese. It's not precise as it's still in process.

SS: On a web page you describe your work as less about the gallery, and more about the people you’ve met, had conversations with, and seen things with. Would you say that this is on the one hand like a diary -- that is, artist responding to the environment -- and on the other, another way to respond the world?

RT: Yes, less art, more something else.

SS: Something else.... perhaps communications?

RT: Something else is possibility, undefined, unnamed, uncategorized, uncatalogued, unplugged, unglobalised, understanding...

JMK: In reading about your work over the years, a lot of your artistic activities remind me of the best and most positivist of '60s art. (I hope you take this to be a compliment, because I mean it that way.) You were an artist in, and co-curated (with Molly Nesbit and Hans Ulrich Obrist) the Venice Biennale section entitled Utopia Station. It has been described as having "a free-for-all collective approach" And, indeed has that "utopian" quality to it. How much of this input was yours? And did you think that it was successful? Did some of the artists find themselves bemused by this artistic-curatorial approach?

RT: Indeed, it was a collective approach, we (Molly, Hans and myself) worked through discussions between ourselves and as well with many of the artists we invited to participate in the exhibition. Since it was a collective of thoughts, it's very difficult to qualify where or how the ideas developed. We were certainly anticipating the station becoming layers of discussion and a multiplicity of thoughts. I think I could only approach the idea of curation as an artist, and as an artist who is practising in very similar structures to the station. We are part of a process and the station is on the move; the presentation in Venice is a starting point for more stations to appear. We are not looking for success or failure but a discussion which can flow into the future, to future station, to possibilities. I think in most cases the artists we are working with have a great deal of understanding of the premises of the discussion, and are quite capable of understanding the flux and flows which occur within the discussion, which in turn are the conditions of the station. The artists were not amused but rather celebratory about the open possibilities for work and not work, and more or less togetherness.

SS: The "future stations" are also other Utopia stations, or would something like a "Dystopia station" be a possibility? The form it would take would be similar to the collective approach in Venice or would that depend on circumstance? Absolutely. I hope that things are changing today, but I wouldn't bet on it.

RT: Well, its difficult to name. I think of the station as a fluid construction, so naming it would put too much of a frame around what we are trying to open up for discussion. I think it's all in one Utopia and Dystopia; there are no longer possibilities of a singular order, just layers of possibility. Yes, I would think that it would carry out the collective structures of Venice, but in many ways be a more flexible and diverse collective.



Jill Martinez Krygowski is an independent curator living and working in Los Angeles. She has organised exhibitions at LACMA, the Korean Cultural Center, and ART2102, and published in LACMA's magazine. Recently she has edited an issue of the online artzine, periscopes.org.

Sherman Sam is on the staff of KultureFlash, and is also an artist and writer. He has written for Blueprint, Contemporary, Modern Painters, artcritical.com and Third Text. This year his art works were included in the travelling exhibition Sight Mapping, a group drawing show Flix at the Rubicon Gallery, Dublin, Ireland, and a painting show Photoptosis at the Bilkin Gallery in Bilbao, Spain.

Image © the artist, courtesy 1301PE Gallery

© 2003 KultureFlash Limited