MEETING OF MINDS

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer puts five questions to Jochen Gerz

Published: November 1, 2008

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“Most of my work attempts to amplify public participation to an architectural scale; I frequently use audiovisual special effects to accomplish this. Jochen Gerz’s work has taught me that often the best special effect is, in fact, a disappearance, a silence, an interruption. In my opinion, he is the most elegant artist working in public space, and by elegant I mean focused, committed, and poetic.” —Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

I find that artists who make intensely critical artworks are secretly optimistic. Is that true of you?

Yes. It is important to be optimistic. The more critical we are, the more optimistic we can be. To be critical alone is not enough.

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Have you ever felt comfortable with people labeling your work “antimonuments”?

Not really, but it is important that artworks create misunderstandings. Understanding a work can wipe it out. For me, the works you refer to are simply monuments of today.

Have you ever been disappointed by the commercial artworld’s vampirism and necrophilia?

Since the ’60s, I have seen the art market, the artworld, for what it is. In German, to be “disappointed” means to “lose one’s illusions”; I never had any. I decided 10 years ago to stop producing for the gallery wall and to return to public space, to the street. Today I think that was rather late.

You once said, “I believe in a society in which people are the media.” What is your opinion of user-generated content online?

I see the potential. I really liked doing public work on the Internet during the ’90s, because it is a great space for authorship. I like to think of art as aspirin. It drops into water, dissolves, disappears, and hopefully does the job.

If you had to cite one of your artworks (or someone else’s) that succeeded in bringing about public empowerment, which one would you choose?

2–3 Streets (2008–10). I have asked three cities in the Ruhr district in Germany to give me a street for one year. I will not change the streets; I will only call them an art exhibition and invite people to visit. I would like us to look at normal streets the way we look at Rothko. Whenever I am asked a question like this, I will always cite my next work, the one I have not yet done. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Under Scan (2005–08) will be on view in London’s Trafalgar Square from Nov. 15 through Nov. 23, and Pulse Park (2007) will be on view in New York’s Madison Square Park through Nov. 17.

"Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Puts Five Questions to Jochen Gerz" originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' November 2008 Table of Contents.

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