Santiago SierraTeresa Margolles

X 62 BOMB WINTER 2003/2004

Santiago Sierra's work generates vitriol and enthusiasm in

equal amounts. Known efo:r his controversial installations

*; ;1in which hired laborers perform useless tasksin whte-cube

. spaces-masturbate, crouch in cardboard boxes, have their

hair dyed blo:nd, sit for tattoos, hold up a: he'avy blocl ofw:ood-Sierrasaims to unmask-th power relations that keep

Sworkers invilsible under capi

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tSan ' ^-t-iag Sierra, rbjaoe que no pude sepa

dos emunrado pampermnceren eintediorde caja;caton (Worker wh cannot b paid, re:munerated toremain nsde cardbar bo, 'ift :i.<f St | 'nstallation view5uanstiaerke, Berlin. Courtesy of Lissn Gallery, London.,

italism3. He increasingly relies on techniques ofobstructi and, ,concea1mSeint,: creating a variety of artificbar,ers that:

point :to ,real,--if ofte,n unremarked, accsibiliissues:

immigrants' persistenttandrimpriso poverty; laborers'

'f disconnection from thework they doand fr6om tPrdut

thatis its ultimate resut vryone's complicity ireserv-

ngte struictures thiat keep cla8siseanpolssprt.

Inzoo he paid a mian to live hidden bhnabckAtfo

: j days, discovering in the process§thehiht i

piqued byliteal insibility. In 2002 heelebr Lson

Gallery'snewspaceb blockingtheecorMrugatedmetal, thoroughly4offend ope htvis-

itrslis project focr this summther'sveieinnaefo

whch -he cvrdthe word, ",Bspania"othSpns

Pvlon's facade with black Iplastic andseldtebi-

ing's entrancewiih cinderblJock s, causedan s lm otg.

Visitors who walked around to6the back do

Spanish passports, to"' the uniiiformedgurs hrew re

allowed vto enter, butall theylfbund inthepavilionwerescat-

tee 0 remnants; fromthe,previous ye illation.

Teresa M,','';argolles shares Sierra's pO*ccupaton withthe workingQ t class, but her work focuses tn vitolence in

.Mexio City and oftenf takes -the fformofhuman body

:;I'VX :S: g i parts orbodily,materialsscavenged from morges. Oftcen:0:

*-\X0 i-P 21un,~clamdvci4msofcnrnime adovrt, Iilaolles'se

4 ;5,'.X'?smeared fat an ;wfoggy roomns ofvpoatedwtr used to0

Sieraad Mrgoles aruaby te to most cot-

;000 0 :0afiversial a rkinineio today, sat down in

Madrid this fall todiscuss iigni,fa,censorship and

national boundaries.

-THE EDITORS

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WINTER 2003/2004 BOMB 63

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ntia Serra, o Cea Ido u -d= pa tR (a I a sac-,w , 0Santiago Sierra, Muro Cerrando an Espacio (Wall enclosing a space), two views, 2003. Instal lation view, Venice Biennale. Courtesy of Gaferie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich.

teresa margolles What did you think of theVenice Biennale?santiago sierra When you participate insomething like that, you don't have muchtime to look around.

tm What about your piece, though: theempty Spanish pavilion blocked off to anyonewho couldn't present a Spanish passport?ss In the context of the biennial we are allplaying at national pride, and I wanted to revealthat as the principal system of every pavilion.I had fun covering the word "Espafia" on thefacade of the building. In other situations I canplay a bit with themes, but the biennial piecewas already marked: it had to talk about theconcept of the nation, of the representationof Spain, about the significance of those pavil-ions-because you can't forget that thecountries that participate in the Biennale arethe most powerful ones in the world. I mean,there's no pavilion for Ethiopia. So the themewas already a given. People have received itvery well, although the Spanish press took it asa provocation, when it was simply a reflection.

tm Why was the pavilion empty?ss A nation is actually nothing; countriesdon't exist. When astronauts went into spacethey did not see a line between France andSpain; France is not painted pink and Spainblue. They are political constructions, andwhat's inside a construction? Whatever youwant to put there. And in fact the pavilionwasn't empty: there were leftovers there fromprevious shows. It was an act of respect to thehistory of the place. But the work was also thepeople who were passing by it. The piece wasnot the empty space but rather the situation.

tm Did the fact that people couldn't enterwithout a passport cause problems?ss The only problems were caused by theambassador, who wanted to enter withoutdocumentation, but I had told the' guardsthat their salaries depended on him, so con-trary to my will and that of the patrons, hegot in. In the art world you always work forthe powers that be: banks, governments andso on. Who else can pay for an exposition ina museum? You have to be conscious that weall work for a machine. Even if we're waiterswe feed the machine of capital. Besides,what is truly important is not where one canenter but rather the act of leaving deter-mined places, such as countries or jails. Thepiece was a game because you deprive aninternational artistic community of the rightto access a place. It was taken as a joke.

tm Are your pieces intended to be chrbniclesof reality or society?ss I try to do things that are the most naturalin the world. At the moment I do the work ofan interior decorator or an organizer of exclu-sive events for the cultural elite. What I do isrefuse to deny the principles that underlie thecreation of an object of luxury: from thewatchman who sits next to a Monet for eighthours a day, to the doorman who controlswho comes in, to the source of the funds usedto buy the collection. I try to include all this,and therein lies the little commotion aboutremuneration that my pieces have caused.

tm What is the work like that you've donehere in Madrid?ss Lately I've done some pieces that havesurprised me. I hid a hundred unemployed

people in one street in vacant apartments,empty commercial spaces, warehouses.Nobody saw any of this, because neither thepeople nor the places have any visibility.When you hide something instead of teach-ing or revealing it, you provoke a response inthe imagination of the spectator. Forinstance, the museum watchman I paid tolive for 365 hours behind a wall at PS I in NewYork told me that no one had ever been sointerested in him and that he had never metso many people. I realized that hiding some-thing is a very effective working technique.The forgotten people want to communi-cate-something that you also express inyour work.

tm Yes. The first piece I did on my own is agood example. I had been thinking about thebranding of a bull, the desperation of the bullin the ring once his horns have beendestroyed, his body punctured and urinatedon. I wanted to put all that desperation onthe table. There was no money to do it.which limited me. but then I found a boy inthe morgue, a murder victim who wasmarked in exactly the same way as adefeated bull. I wanted to display his pierced,fucked-up tongue: he had been a punk singer.I had to go talk to the family, but they helpedme because we understood each other. Iwork with emotion, not reason. So the pieceis the tongue itself. It has an initial impact ofshock, but what's important is that afterdeath the tongue keeps talking. even in dif-ferent languages. It keeps reminding me:Death is not pretty, and it sucks to be dead.I've stayed with it; I keep working with it,changing around the same piece.

64 BOMB WINTER 2003/2004

, - - - . - - -- --

tion view, Venice Biennale. Photos courtesy of Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich.

ss What led you to work with death? Howdo you approach it?

tm I approach death like everyone does, as aloss. I wanted to be an artist, but I didn't knowwhat to do, so I tried to write a poem, butpoems just weren't coming out of me. That'show I wound up doing art. In the '80s a bunchof us sold books outside the university to earnmoney, and we got to know each other. Wewere musicians, theater people, artists. Wedecided to do performances about death andviolence and to call ourselves SEMEFO, whichstands for Servicio Medico Forense [ForensicMedical Service]. The performances were verytheatrical, and there was no codification oflanguage. Everyone said what they wanted tosay. It was an explosion for the ears, eyes,mind, stomach. But we didn't really knowwhat we were doing. Then I went to Englandand happened to see Beuys's work, and whenI saw that I almost fainted. I felt like vomitingand leaving. I said to myself, Would you dareto do something like this? Would you have theballs to do it? The power of art scares me somuch. I realized that I didn't know how totalk about human loss, human pain. I thoughtmy own pain was the most important, butthen I discovered that there is a collectivepain. I am frightened by death, by what's hap-pening in the world. I am scared of the twin

towers falling, I'm scared of war. It reallyscares me to work in the morgue because thepeople there know what pain is. Although Imust say that working with live people ismuch harder than working with dead people,and even more painful. I learned that when Iwas working with you.ss Well, I have been called an exploiter. At theKunstwerke in Berlin they criticized mebecause I had people sitting for four hours aday, but they didn't realize that a little furtherup the hallway the guard spends eight hoursa day on his feet You wantto stickyour fingerin the wound and say that the work is defi-nitely torture, that it is indeed a punishmentof biblical proportions. And when you putyour name on the work it seems that you'reheld responsible for the capitalist systemitself. Many of the people who make thosecriticisms have never worked in their lives; ifthey think it's a horror to sit hidden in a card-board box for four hours, they don't knowwhat work is. Also, if I compensated thesepeople more, they'd be talking about how"good" I am. But if I find someone who doessomething that's hard for 50 euros and itusually costs 200,1 use the person who doesit for 50. And of course extreme labor rela-tions shed much more light on how the laborsystem actually works. A yuppie is also aservant of capital and he also has a price, but

he's sweetened by a certain glamour and isthus not useful in terms of what interests me.

If I thought about how to give real visibil-ity to these people, I wouldn't have chosenthe art world as a platform to do it, but rathera determined political activism-but I don'ttrust that either. Let's say that I do thingsbecause I think they should be included in theart world, but I don't have grandiose dreamsthat I'll actually achieve anyone's redemption,because that's absurd. When you sell a pho-tograph for $11,000 you can't possiblyredeem anyone except yourself.

tm Your work has also been called amoral.ss It's possible to have dignity in society, butit costs money. A person without money hasno dignity. Whenever you pay for your dignity,you put your body and your time in the handsof a third party. By saying these few things inmy work, I think that, as an artist, I've achievedenough. In any case, I don't see a connectionbetween politics and morality or between artand morality. A banker who buys one of mypieces is like a newspaper that accepts lettersto the editor. Self-criticism makes you feelmorally superior, and I give high society andhigh culture the mechanisms to unload theirmorality and their guilt.

tm Do you think the only viable anarchism

WINTER 2003/2004 BOMB 65

7 :^ ~~~~~~~~~~- m 9!a

Teresa Margolles, Secreciones sobre el muro (Secretions on the waIl), 2002, human rat on waIf. Installation view, Mexico City An Exhibitionfabout the Exchanige Rate of Bodies andValues, Kunstwerke, Berlin. Courtesy of Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich.

is neoliberalism?ss I think that happiness is not possible andunhappiness is. The rich man is in a state oftremendous slavery to money. His level ofsuffering is very much reduced, but it'sslavery like any other form of it.

tm I remember when I was in Barcelonahelping you install your show, and I boughtchemically altered Ecstasy from a dealer inthe Plaza Mayor that nearly killed me.Afterward, I went to help you at the unem-ployment place where you were hiringpeople for your next show, and there was theboy who had sold me the drug. I told himwhat he had done to me, and he said,"Forgive me," and he thought I was going todemand my money back, but no one doesthat around here. Later we went back to theplaza where he deals and I sat him down andexplained that I am an artist, and I showedhim my work. He started to get scared andsaid, "What are you going to do to me?" Itold him I needed someone to shoot thevideo and take the pictures for my nextshow, which was in Cerda: I was going tosmear body fat from a corpse on the floor of

the gallery. Normally I do the documenta-tion myself, but in this piece I'm busysmearing the stuff. When we got there and Istarted to smear it, it was like a caress. I wasmad at the dealer, and I was still feeling bad.but when I started smearing the fat I wasn'tangry anymore. Later I figured out the piece:My misery is your misery. That's what it wasall about. We don't level ourselves throughpurifying ourselves but rather throughsharing our misery.ss Negativity is the only coherent reactionone can have in a society where the battle'salready lost. I re-create those battles, which issometimes more dangerous than poetic. I'vebeen focusing on how a worker sells his body,and I also look at what happens when he's notworking-where he's going to stop all thatnegativity. I think that negativity is an expres-sion of how the class struggle takes us in adetermined direction and how the art worldfunctions, and the real world as well. I thinkthat is what's behind Pollock's drips and what'sbehind a person who's inside a trash cah.

tm In one of your most lyrical pieces, youwalked around Dublin raising the windshield

wipers on every car.ss I had to do that piece during a rugbygame, because if they caught me they'd bustmy head. And no one caught me, becausethey were so predictable: Ireland andEngland were playing, so there was no pos-sibility that anyone would see me on thestreet. The photos look very good, but youcan feel the impact of real life that we seeconstantly. Photography serves as a kind oftransmission system between informationand the necessities of the marketplace.

tm Is leisure time a small paradise in ourindustrial society?ss I think it's part of industry. Going out onthe weekends is part of industry becauseindustry needs the worker to be preparing togo to work on Monday. What interests me iswhen there are ruptures, when the workerloses it and expresses his negativity, in aplastic way, that is, normally. The hordes ofhooligans that pervade Europe do it withindetermined structures-the structure of rockand roll, the structure of soccer-in whichrebellion is centralized but from which all ofa sudden things escape that have a link with

66 BOMB WINTER 2003/2004

Santiago Sierra, Space Closed by Corrugated Metal, 2002.

art. The Expressionists, the Dadaists and the

Situationists tried to draw that out.That point

of destruction is useful for capital, becausewith this controlled violence the people

recharge themselves. It's better to punch the

wall than your boss. In the end, it's not a heroicor liberating or creative act-in the same way

that war regenerates capital and benefits

capital, even though it's another process.

tm Have you suffered censorship?ss I don't talk about censorship, because Ithink that when you launch a work it func-tions in many ways, and one of those is that

society blocks it. So I don't consider a cen-

sored work as failed. I think that artists who

work to have their installations or their

photos prohibited, and then cause a ruckus

in the newspapers claiming censorship, are

pathetic. If you do that, you give up your

freedom of expression, because the work is

determined by the censors. I do not allowconcerns about censorship to undermine my

creative freedom.

tm But has your work been censored?ss In the U.S. I have experienced a form of

censorship that is now much more common:not someone saying "Take that down:' butpeople making it difficult for the piece to

come out. I suppose I was censored at PS 1. I

wanted to line up all the PS 1 workers accord-ing to the position they occupied and

photograph their backs. Of course they knewthat if I did that, there would be a perfectgradation from white to black, because thepeople who work at the door are black, butwhen you go upstairs, the watchmen aremore Latino, and at the top, it's the paradiseof the white man. So they stonewalled,telling me I was trying to create a problem

that didn't exist. But I'm going to keep theidea and try to do it again.

tm How do your works come about?

ss It used to be very different I did everything

backwards. I tried to see in which place I could

launch a proposal, and from there I traced a

determined strategy so that I could achievewhat I wanted to do. Now I do things in

reverse: I receive so many offers I can't get toknow the places with any depth, so I note sit-

uations and ideas and the places where I can

do them. Once I have everything in order then

I look for the go-ahead, or I directly deceivethose responsible so they'll accept the project,then I look for a work group to come up with

a concrete solution to a problem.

tm Have you deceived a lot of people?

ss Quite a few. Many times, you can't giveall the information about a piece, and no oneasks you to. If you did, you could jeopardize

the realization of the work. It's a necessarymechanism, a survival trick. It enters into the

realm of seduction as well.

tm Why do you turn to minimalism as an

aesthetic solution?ss There are two reasons: it helps me avoiddistraction'and residual motives, and it'srelated to the development of the mer-chandise-merchandise is cheaper and easier

to transport if it's cubic.

tm The Biennale catalogue talks about theimportance of "obstruction" in your work.

What does that refer to?ss It has to do with impeding access, or sepa-rating two communities. There are determinedforces that, in order to create order, generate

WINTER 2003/2004 BOMB 67

Santiago Sierra, 133 personas remuneradas para serteenidas de rub (133 persons paid to havePeter Kilchimann, Zurichl.

5 ¢' t,sc ! ¶n;

I blond), 2001. InStallation vie%v, VelliCE

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68 BOMB WINTER 2003/2004

Santiago Sierra, Person remunerated fora period of36o consecutive hours, 2ooo. Installation view, PS i Contemporary Art Center, New York. Courtesy of Lisson Gallery, London.

borders, and this has to do with visuality.

Society administers images, and it marks the

path of what is visible and what is notTherefore, the obstructions that I createdelimit things that can be done and things that

cannot be done. The art spectator can accessany site. He lives in a privileged world. It's very

strange to be denied entrance to an image,

and I insert these wedges that put him on the

other side.

tm To generate empathy?ss To get people worked up.

tm Do you think the obstructions of realitydevelop from a generalized fear?ss The visual order of politics becomes con-

crete on the wall.

tm What is the worst evil of society? Youtalk about racism, drugs, prostitution-

ss The worst evil of society is its broken

promises. That's why I choose these themes.Equality and sexual liberation are a catalogof promises of a liberation that has been

taken away from us. What damages societyis its structure: everyone works for the pro-

duction of capital. The problem is not whatyou shoot into your veins, but what societyyou do it in.

tm Do we live in a camouflaged medieval

society?ss Completely. Nothing has changed since

the Middle Ages. As the philosopher AgustinGarcia Calvo said, "Things change theirnames in order to keep quiet." It's a way of

taking words away from us in order toimpede any kind of analysis. And the new

terms are usually very well received, becausethey're refreshing and they make us forget

old theories.

tm What do you think of the political situ-

ation in Spain?ss It's very sad. The extreme right is in gov-ernment, and their opposition is the right, sothere are very few solutions for Spain. There'sa bubble of wellness that's being sold on tele-vision, which seems like a guarantee that this

absolute government will continue. There'sthis inherent happiness in being Spanish, in

being as much of a bastard as anyone else in

the world. And that isn't going to change.

tm What about on an artistic level?

ss It's very difficult to create national art. It'snot like before, when art had to do withsmall organizations of power, like theacademy, or the cafe where people met.

Right now none of us is working on a national

level. We work with people who live fivethousand kilometers away, and seeing art in

national terms is just inviting ridicule. It'ssomething that is still useful as a form of pro-paganda for governments, but I don't

consider it to be useful myself.In terms of artistic creation in Spain, I

don't follow it that way. If I see something

that interests me, I find out where the artist

is from.

tm Do you think that current art tries to

make a star out of the creator?ss Art is conceptual entertainment.Regardless of how radical it is, it has a greatpenetration on the market.

tm What does Mexico bring to your work?ss You don't know why you go-there are

many reasons and there are none. Maybe the

place you go to is not as important as the

place you leave. I was fed up with beingwhere I was, and Mexico is a catalog of situ-

ations. It's a miniature planet Earth. You can

pass from Ethiopia to Switzerland in a

second by taking the bus-that's what

Mexico brings you. I don't have to take long

trips to see how everything functions. o

Translatedfrom Spanish by Kerry Hegarty

WINTER 2003/2004 BOMB 69

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