Nina Zivancevic interview of Joseph Nechvatal
for A
Gathering Of The Tribes Interviews
1)
Nina Zivancevic: When and how did you decide to become an artist?
Joseph Nechvatal: This
might sound a little strange Nina, but I made the decision to be an artist
rather suddenly: in one night and in a split second.
I was a sophomore at
University pursuing a degree in Sociology, deeply involved in the
political/social issues of the early 1970s; i.e. the anti-war, womanÕs
liberation and equal rights movements. I was home in Chicago for the summer,
working at some shit job to pay for my University expenses. Art had been a
hobby-interest with me up to that point. Anyway, I was riding around downtown
Chicago on a motorcycle, somewhat in a psychic funk. As I zoomed pass some
cathedral, a large illuminated stain-glass window caught my eye. It was an
intense moment of color in a black night. Something told me then and there that
the way to social change was the way of art - in that art addresses the inner
unique individual rather than the group, the sociological statistical. In that
sense I saw art as a means to foster social change from the bottom-up, rather
than top down, if you will.
So bing. That was it.
I felt compelled to go around the city and photograph stain-glassed windows for
the rest of the summer. I wanted to try to understand what had happened to me.
Back at University I changed my major to studio art and never regretted it for
an instant.
2)
Nina Zivancevic: Where does your fascination with technology come
from? Why this particular genre - electronic medium - and not something else?
Joseph
Nechvatal: As you can tell Nina by what I just told you, I see art as a means
of practicing politics on one level. In the mid-1980s I could already observe
the coming rise of electronic media (computational media, more precisely) as
the controlling, organizing force of social power. I felt that to adequately
address this topic I should approach it from inside of electronic medium, and
not from an artisanal pre-electronic practice.
3)
Nina Zivancevic: Could you elaborate on your idea of using art as a
means of practicing politics?
Joseph
Nechvatal: The key political notion for me concerning art is omnijectivity, which is
the concept stemming from the discoveries of quantum physics which teaches us
that mind (previously considered the subjective realm) and matter (previously
considered as the objective realm) are inextricably linked. It is a political
concept for me because omnijectivity is possible only with the conflation of polarities;
a stance which recognizes the mutual interpenetration that unites apparent
opposites (specifically the subjectivity and objectivity). For me art which
takes seriously such scientific understanding supersedes the tabular space laid
out by classical political thought. A new sort of political art then may
promote a non-teleological noology that makes use of the mutual
interpenetrational and rhizomatic nature of the thought process typical of the
art experience - multiplicitous and heterogeneous.
For me, the
basic function of a new sort of political art is to create mental spaces that
allow unaccustomed creative situations and sensations to connect socially. My
idea of a political art is where the particular is seen as part of an accrual
total system by virtue of its being connected to everything else. The strategy
of hyper-anything includes principles of networked connections and electronic
links that give multiple choices of passages to follow and continually new
branching possibilities. The total-hyper-being model for a new connected
political art is the self-re-programmable internal function that explicitly
offers a furtherance in envisioning anti-hierarchical models of political
thought to ourselves.
4) Nina
Zivancevic: How do you relate your art to contemporary performance and theater,
such as Pina Baush's? What does it mean to you - and to your work, to your
inspiration, to see such giants of performance?
Joseph Nechvatal: An early formative
experience I had, in this respect, was the time I attended The Jimi Hendrix
Experience concert December 1, 1968 at the Chicago Coliseum and sat in the very
last row Ð far far away from the stage. Hendrix appeared miniscule, however the
speakers were located just behind my head and the sound was earsplitting; an
intensely pleasant, if disjunctive, experience. This experience of
technologically pulling things apart was stunning for me as it suggested an
explosion that collage implosion implies.
Working as an archivist for LaMonte
Young, meeting John Cage, and learning of the famous "9 Evenings: Theatre
and Engineering" of 1966 that Robert Rauschenberg helped organize with the
engineer Billy Kluver was salient to my formation in this regard. Rauschenberg
understood that through the mediation of chance and machines, the technological
built-in can be contorted, thus changing our awareness of what technology is or
can be. Surely I have a great appreciation of Merce Cunningham's dance company.
In the mid-1970s I moved to New York City into the Tribeca area. I was dating a
dancer at the time whoÕs prior boyfriend worked for Bob Rauschenberg and one
day we went to RauschenbergÕs studio on Lafayette for a visit, but he was not
in. Still he soon came to represent for me an exemplary artist, one engaged in
political concerns tied to technological means. He seemed to me capable of
harnessing both the forces of explosion and implosion that manifested a new
hyper-rhizomatic era in the making. This was an era in which the new
technologies of media distribution, virtual systems, computer networks, and
information processing began supplanting industrial production and the
gold-based economy as the organizing synthesis/principle of society.
5) Nina
Zivancevic: You've worked with theory a lot. Is it important for an artist and
what did this theoretical approach do for you; for your creative expression?
Joseph Nechvatal: I can say that it
has been important for me. When I read Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
describe non-hierarchical networks of all kinds in their seminal book A
Thousand Plateaus, my mind was liberated and this fostered a wave of creativity
in me. Through my reading (and thinking through) of Deleuze-Guattari I came to
hypothesize (and hopefully demonstrate through my art) a counter-mannerist
approach to life based on principles of latent excess. The idea was to
establish a new critical distance via viral excess, a critical distance which
Jean Baudrillard pessimistically had claimed was no longer possible.
Through latent excess I wanted to
establish an ambiguous private critical distance: a distance achieved through
the challenge of (and disparity between) pleasurable frustration. This means an
art that demands of society an active visualizing participation in private
interpretations - and thus is a legitimate metaphor for contemporary art as a
form of simulation-shattering engagement.
During the time I was engaged in
these ideas, the notion of the simulation was prevalent. I chose to argue for
the contrary (de-simulation); that is, a post-pop art that would be fundamental
to free thought by demonstrating how an art of counter-mannerist latent excess
(produced in the Baudrillardian milieu of image superabundance and information
proliferation) is an art that can problematise the pop simulacra and hence
enliven us to the privateness - and unique separateness - of the human
condition in lieu of the fabulously constructed social spectacle which engulfs
and (supposedly) controls us. My idea was that this private separateness could
offer us a personal critical distance (gap), and thus another perspective on
(and from) the given social simulacra.
My hope was
that such an art of latent viral excess (circuitous, extravagant and dŽcadent)
might provide us with two essential aspects relevant to our lives. First, it
can provide a private context in which to suitably understand our simulacra
situation. Secondly (but more importantly) it may then undermine this
understanding of the simulacra by overwhelming our immersion in the customary
simulacra Ð along with our own prudent pose as observer and judge. Through the
destructive-creative bacchanalia at the root of an art of latent excess we
might be prodded to lose our position of detached observer, as it is a style of
art that demands our engaged intellectual and perceptual production. For me
that meant that I had to develop a viral style which takes us from the state of
the social to the state of the secret distinguishable ÒIÓ by overloading
ideological representation to a point where it becomes non-representational. It
is this non-representational counter-mannerist representation which I think can
break us out of the fascination and complicity with pop information and the
mass media mode of communication.
6) Nina
Zivancevic: Can art be taught in school - to an artist? If yes - Is it
important?
Joseph
Nechvatal: I think it can be taught, and it is, but that does not mean that it
is the only route to becoming an artist. As a teacher at the School of Visual
Arts in New York City I stress passing along knowledge about radical art ideas
and dada art techniques. I tell the students about what some notable recent
artists have done - and expose them to the work directly. I intentionally avoid
suggesting to the students what kind of art to make or how to make it. That is
their own personal quest, in my view. What is important is for the pre-artist
to be inner driven to become an artist regardless of the fact that it is a
frustrating way to lead a life.
7) Nina
Zivancevic: What do you think about contemporary American art scene? Any
movement you admire?
Joseph
Nechvatal: Yes I admire greatly certain American artist who work primarily
digitally, such as Bill Seaman, Frank Gillette, Victoria Vesna, Robert
Lazzarini, G.H. Hovagimyan and Michael Reese. Of course artificial life art is
one of my keen interests, the basis of my computer virus work. For me
artificial life is a way to do magic by any means necessary. The sculptor Ken
Rinaldo is a very good artist in this realm.
Also there
are what I might call digital conceptualists in the USA that interest me, such
as Jenny Holzer, Patrick Lichty, Suzanne Anker, Kenneth Goldsmith and
Matthew Ritchie. I also have a
keen interest in audio art that deals with noise and/or ambience and have been
following the career of Phillip B. Klingler (PBK), Minoy, Randy Grief and
others over the years. Some painters as well hold my interest, like Benjamin
Edwards, David Reed, Carl Fudge, Chris Finley and Shirley Kaneda. But can we
really speak of art in terms of nationality any more? What about fantastic
European and Asian artist that sometimes work in the US, like Carlos Casado,
Gilles Barbier, Merzbow, Pascal Dombis and Matthias Groebel? It is only a
certain quality of thought and sensibility that I admire. Not their passport.
However, IÕm
not very interested in artists that use capture technology anymore (straight
photography and video). What engages me is the meeting of art, science and
technology in the virtual land of the digital - because I think that digital
technology allows and facilitates changes in consciousness by primarily
allowing artists to act differently with new tools. For example, digital
painters, like myself, work and think much differently from traditional
painters through their mastering of digital tools.
This digital
realm connects to a new sensibility that I am feeling which I have called
Cybism. It is a sensibility based on my observation that art and science, after
centuries of separation, are becoming entangled again through the
discredidation of the concept Ð one might say presumption Ð of objectivity.
Richard Rorty writes persuasively about this as does Manuel Delanda;
particularly in his book Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy.
8) Nina
Zivancevic: Any tendency you despise?
Joseph
Nechvatal: Yes. The Òbad paintingÓ (or ÒMFA outsider artÓ) movement disgusts
me. It is both ugly to behold and stupid to contemplate. It seems blatantly a
creature of top-down marketing to me (think pyramid scheme) and as such it, or
any market driven art, will not stand the smell test of time.
9) Nina Zivancevic:
How is it different from the French scene? Advantages of the French?
Joseph
Nechvatal: Oh la la! Though there are elements of globalized marketing in
Paris, the French scene is much smaller. It is marginal by comparison - and
this can be a good thing. For example I have experienced in France a wonderful
sense of collaborative community and have established important relationships,
like with my artificial life programmer Stephane Sikora. The philosophy and
music scenes here are superior to those in the USA, in my estimation.
One feels in
France a sense of preservation of artistic ideals, such as the idea of art
performing a visionary function, which at this juncture seems increasingly
important given the homogenization of thought and perception that has been
taking place.
10) Nina
Zivancevic: Disadvantages?
Joseph
Nechvatal: No baseball.