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INTERVIEW

Tim Berresheim

Wolfgang Brauneis

Aachen, march 2012

WB: The term Dazzlea special type of painting warships to con-

fuse the attackeris part of a paintings title in the exhibition (in

which camouflage and deception plays an iconographical role as well).

This technique is being addressed here by aligned hand drawings.

TB: Dazzle makes localization almost impossible. With a periscope, you have to

line up two pointsand then you do not know what part of the ship you hit. It is

also very difficult to detect space in a picture in the areas dominated by dazzle

there are strong effects of abstraction. This is indicated by peas and beads gener-

ated by the advanced computer equipment MLT. They allow a form of mapping,

which is plastic, and show what the exhibition is about: a heightened plausibility

caused by proximity and image-based illusionist mapping.

WB: So a plausible representation is a key moment in the whole thing?

TB: Exactly. And not only concerning the images plausibility, but also concern-

ing their physical plausibility. At certain points, the peas actually interact with the

loops in a physical way.

WB: And why is that physical plausibility so important?

TB: Because it is tied to mimesis and because of the kind of apparitions that are

lifted from our worldthe one we experience as a plausible phenomenainto

the world of images. If I would arrange and place the beads, it would lead us right

to the topic of abstraction and ornamentation. The beads arrangements would

only be plausible by having been through modernism.

WB: So the more of such arrangements you liter-

ally let out of your hands, the more plausible it gets?

TB: Exactly.

WB: This central term of plausibility reminds me of the concept of cred-

ibility, which you strove for in your very first picturesnamely your first

photographs in which figures have been incorporated by the means ofmapping. Already back in 2003, 2004 it was about systematically ignor-

ing the additive principle of collage in favor of a cohesive, symbiotic

alternative. Meanwhile, looking at the current exhibition, it is clearly

evidenteven for a laymanthat a lot has happened technology-wise.

TB: Absolutely. What I used to call credibility years ago was, of course, a credibility

that you would expect from a computer screen. Those were unbiased computer

images, because the rendering method was standard ray tracingand that always

comes with a computational look.

WB: It actually does look computational?

Dazzle camouflage, also known as

Razzle Dazzle or Dazzle painting,

was a military camouflage paint

scheme used on ships, extensively

during World War I and to a lesser

extent in World War II. Cred-

ited to artist Norman Wilkinson,

it consisted of a complex pattern

of geometric shapes in contrasting

colours, interrupting and intersect-

ing each other.

At first glance Dazzle seems an

unlikely form of camouflage, draw-

ing attention to the ship rather

than hiding it, but this techniquewas developed after the Allied

Navies were unable to develop ef-

fective means to disguise ships in

all weathers.

Dazzle did not conceal the ship

but made it difficult for the enemy

to estimate its type, size, speed

and heading. The idea was to dis-

rupt the visual rangefinders used

for naval artillery. Its purpose was

confusion rather than conceal-

ment. An observer would find it

difficult to know exactly whether

the stern or the bow is in view;

and it would be equally difficult to

estimate whether the observed

vessel is moving towards or away

from the observers position.

www.wikipedia.com (24.4.2012)

Edward WadsworthDazzle Ships in Drydock

1919oil on canvas

304.8 243.8 cm

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TB: Yes. When you think of the stages, with protagonists, in this strange lightit

really looks like computer and video games. .

WB: So the images did not actually meet the specification of credibility?

TB: Yes, they did, because they were hermetic and deliberately situated in theuncanny valley. They were supposed to look a little bit computational and

alienated. But we have now long gone from this uncomfortable valleystrictly

speaking with this very exhibitionbecause you can now skip it by using the MLT

algorithm.

WB: But who was actually inside the uncanny valleythe deformed

figures or the overall situation in which these figures have been located?

TB: The entire pictorial space. The attribution surreal would always come up in

this context, because you couldnt keep up with it by the means of language.

WB: Uncanny is the translation of the German adjective un-

heimlich, a term that Sigmund Freud used for describing a feel-

ing of being uncomfortably strange or uncomfortably familiar.

Was it programmatic for you to create uncanny images?

TB: No, rather it is the idea of making the dark side of the alarm oscillate. After

the dark side then came the cheerful side: colored hair and what-not, euphoria

and fun. I assume that in between these two poles there is a silent alarm, where

you stand in attention and feel no fear or euphoria, but just a what the fuck

(WTF).

WB: Does this mean that the notion of uncanny or the dark side

of the alarm was caused to a certain extent by technology?

TB: Yes, that was the choice of means. If I had rendered the pictures with a differ-

ent algorithm back then, it would not have become the dark side of the alarm.

WB: So the images were unbiased computer images. And now, with

the possibilities of MLT, there is another form of unbiasedness?

TB: With the MLT algorithm, with which the images are calculated, you get what

you expectbut from a mathematicians perspective. They started using the

algorithm in 1996. And now in this exhibition, we have a form of unbiasedness,

which, I believe, is strongly oriented towards mimesis. I get almost what I wanted,

for example, from staged photographyjust without the dirt and the errors that

flaw the analog world: a wind that is suddenly blowing from the left, an object that

will not yet be in the correct position or the fact that the protagonists eyes just

twitched.

WB: Has the algorithm previously been used for acquiring an image at all?

TB: Yeswhere unbiasedness is the most important thing for the value chain,

namely, in advertising and architecture simulationwhere you may not be dis-

tracted under any circumstances.

WB: Since the late 90s?

TB: Exactly. But in the print medium, with a grainy resolution and on a small-scale

level, because the whole thing is insanely CPU-hungry.

WB: Can you elaborate?

TB: Computing power. For example, for calculating my exhibitions most expen-

The Metropolis light transport

(MLT) is a SIGGRAPH 1997 pa-

per by Eric Veach and Leonidas J.

Guibas, describing an application

of a variant of the Monte Carlo

method called the Metropolis-

Hastings algorithm to the render-

ing equation for generating images

from detailed physical descriptions

of three dimensional scenes.

The procedure constructs paths

from the eye to a light source us-

ing bidirectional path tracing, then

constructs slight modifications to

the path. Some careful statistical

calculation (the Metropolis algo-

rithm) is used to compute the ap-

propriate distribution of brightness

over the image. This procedure hasthe advantage, relative to bidirec-

tional path tracing, that once a path

has been found from light to eye,

the algorithm can then explore

nearby paths; thus difficult-to-find

light paths can be explored more

thoroughly with the same number

of simulated photons. In short,

the algorithm generates a path

and stores the paths nodes in a

list. It can then modify the path by

adding extra nodes and creating a

new light path. While creating this

new path, the algorithm decides

how many new nodes to add and

whether or not these new nodeswill actually create a new path.

Metropolis Light Transport is an

unbiased method that, in some

cases (but not always), converges

to a solution of the rendering

equation quicker than other unbi-

ased algorithms, path tracing and

bidirectional path tracing


The central processing unit (CPU)

is the portion of a computer sys-

tem that carries out the instruc-

tions of a computer program, to

perform the basic arithmetical,

logical, and input/output opera-

tions of the system. The CPU plays

a role somewhat analogous to the

brain in the computer.



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sive picturewhich is equipped with multiple lighting scenesthe latest, most

upgraded computer would need 91,000 hours.

WB: And what was the case for the pictures three or

four years ago?

TB: There, the CPU-hunger is really homeopathic...only once a week would be

calculated then. With the algorithm that is being applied now, we are beyond good

and evil. Talking about unbiasedness, unlike earlier, very different demands on the

physical correctness of the objects in the pictorial space have been raised in this

exhibition.

WB: What do you mean by unlike earlier?

TB: In fact, until last year, image production was still almost entirely based on the

structure of collage and I placed objects in space in a way that satisfied my idea of

composition. That has changed. Now, not only my imagination gets satisfied, but

also the physical correctness.

WB: And the desire for this was already resonating backthen? So basically, a few years ago, only inadequate images

have been produced because there was no other way?

TB: No, I just instinctively avoided that by making use of pseudo-abstraction. That

is to say, for a few years Ive avoided images as they are being made now, with a

real stage, real charactersmeaning that they stem from this world, not from the

pictorial one. However, mappability, depth offield, illusion of depth and proximity

have been resonating the whole timeas in the hair-pictures in the exhibi-

tion Condition tidiness (Rude). The more I was confronted with this proximity,

the more I realized that I have a desire to utilize it. It is simply impossible for

these hair formations just to work well because we had modernism and gestural

painting. There is this one condition that, I believe, is proximity and I can now

go through with it. This means I need physical accuracy; otherwise it cannot be

produced in a plausible way, with the viewer having to smooth it out.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

WB: And the differentiation of modernism is happening in the context

of the collage, as a kind of placeholder for modernism? That again would

be the common denominator between the early and current images.

TB: Exactly.

WB: Yes, but why the collage?

TB: Because I think that the effect of collage hasnt been managed welland that

was a mistake. In fact, collages have been painted, sculpted, spoken...

WB: So its not just about collaging of taped, found...

TB: Noeverything that is intended to be a collage. There also is collage painting.

WB: For example?

TB: It started with Picabia, and then there was a high level of abstraction, and

therefore...

WB: ...early collages?

TB: Early collages, exactly. But from time to time you have to consider the fact

that Surrealist collage has been expatiated upon for one hundred years now. Not

In statistics, the bias (or bias func-

tion) of an estimator is the dif-

ference between this estimators

expected value and the true value

of the parameter being estimated.

An estimator or decision rule with

zero bias is called unbiased. Oth-

erwise the estimator is said to be

biased.

In ordinary English, the term bias

is pejorative. In statistics, there are

problems for which it may be good

to use an estimator with a small,

but nonzero, bias. In some cases,

an estimator with a small bias may

have lesser mean squared error or

be median-unbiased (rather than

mean-unbiased, the standard unbi-

asedness property). The propertyof median-unbiasedness is invari-

ant under monotone transforma-

tions, while the property of mean-

unbiasedness may be lost under

nonlinear transformations.


page 60


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so much has happened concerning the additive knowledge of how to produce an

image.

WB: Whereas the origins of collage were a giant step, in con-

trast to what had happened twenty years before?

TB: Yes, but the only giant step was to call this thing art. Already in the early 19th

Century, citizens have been making collages as a pastime. I think it was a hobby

for producing images of athletes. Hence the citizen scientist, whom Google has

declared, existed already two hundred years ago. And then people said, from now

on this is art, lets take it up and generate an agreement system around it. But

then it would have been off the table relatively fast. In my opinion, not much has

been addednot concerning the image itself, but concerning image production.

WB: And you would consider surrealism the beginning of collaged painting?

TB: Right. Or Meret Oppenheims fur cupa collage sculpture.

WB: Meaning the combination of incompatibilities?

TB: Exactly. The implausible combination of incompatibilities.

WB: Why implausible? What is implausible about the fur cup?

TB: You would have to take a look at its bottom to see if everything is sewn

beautifully. This is actually a bad example for a lack of plausibility. In fact, any col-

lageeven if you look at the early Max Ernst, you dont see a universal source of

light or a universal shadow, but always a rupture. And the fact that we have been

looking at collages for a hundred years now should not be underestimated. I think

that if today we would be confronted with a collage for the first time, the first

reaction would be: What the hell is that supposed to be?

WB: You think so?

TB: Yes, I think so. If I were to ask, for example, my 94-year-old grandmother

what is more plausible for her, the Snickers ad where a monster fist consisting of

10,000 Snickers bars sweeps across a stadium, or a collage by Picabiait would

be the Snickers-fist. But that is certainly not a criterion for art...

WB: ...I just wanted to say that.

TB: But it is still about plausibility.

WB: But we are also talking about an exhibition.

TB: Right.

WB: Well, it sounds as if plausibility should be the basis for good art...

TB: ...Im not saying that it is the motivation; Im just saying that it is a condition.

The fact that the query can be the plausibility of the whole thing. If I just forget

about what I call the world of agreement. One could even take the trouble to

stand naked in front of a picture, just for practicings sake and for asking oneself

how plausible the whole thing seems to beas an artifact, as a surface, as a

composition.

WB: And in your opinion that has been completely ignored so far?

TB: Not completely ignored, but neglected. It is still a ruling system of interpreta-

tion, not of seeing.

The uncanny valley is a hypothesis

in the field of robotics[1] and 3D

computer animation, which holds

that when human replicas look

and act almost, but not perfectly,

like actual human beings, it causes

a response of revulsion among

human observers. The valley in

question is a dip in a proposed

graph of the positivity of human

reaction as a function of a robots

human likeness.

The term was coined by the ro-

botics professor Masahiro Mori

as Buk imi no Tani Gensh ( )

in 1970. The hypothesis has been

linked to Ernst Jentschs concept

of the uncanny identified in a

1906 essay, On the Psychology ofthe Uncanny. Jentschs conception

was elaborated by Sigmund Freud

in a 1919 essay entitled The Un-

canny (Das Unheimliche).

Moris original hypothesis states

that as the appearance of a robot

is made more human, a human

observers emotional response to

the robot will become increas-

ingly positive and empathic, until a

point is reached beyond which the

response quickly becomes that of

strong revulsion. However, as the

robots appearance continues to

become less distinguishable from

that of a human being, the emo-tional response becomes posi-

tive once more and approaches

human-to-human empathy levels.

This area of repulsive response

aroused by a robot with ap-

pearance and motion between a

barely human and fully human

entity is called the uncanny valley.

The name captures the idea that

an almost human-looking robot

will seem overly strange to a hu-

man being, will produce a feeling

of uncanniness, and will thus fail

to evoke the empathic response

required for productive human-

robot interaction.



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WB: Why is nobody taking care of this phenomenon?

TB: Because it is leaving the comfort zone.

WB: Is that so?

TB: Yeah, I think so! At least for now. The viewers always feel more comfortable

if they have something to say as well and if they have everything under control.

We already had to suffer from this bias in the 70s and 80s, when they taught us at

school that you could actually grasp and explain the whole thing.

WB: You mean that the traceability of the process,

such as collage, is also a reassuring moment?

TB: Traceability, yes; and if you also know the text, the meaning. Lets just think

about an example that is a really terrible case. I would imagine that it could be

Kai Althoffs work, wherever it comes to memory and the 70sa painted pony,

warm shades of orange, brown ... indeed, this is not about the plausibility oforange and brown, but about the 70s and about education.

WB: And thats bad?

TB: Not bad, but incredibly boring, because it has been ruminated hundreds of

times until everyone had something to say about it. An incredible boredom.

WB: That means there is no need for producing art that deals with the 70s?

TB: No, definitely not!

WB: I see.

TB: Definitely not.

WB: Well, it has been done to a greater extent than both

the producers and the recipients want to believe.

TB: Right. What happens here is one fucking recycling after the other. You have

the texts, you have the viewing habitsnow you just have to change it a little bit,

and its art again! And thats just wrong.

WB: And why does it work?

TB: Because everyone feels comfy and has learned the texts. And no one feels like

just throwing it all overboard.

WB: To come back to plausibilityis it virtually an anchor at

ones disposal, in order to drop it at a different location?

TB: Precisely.

WB: The ultimate onethat is, in combina-

tion with the technical possibilities?

TB: I do not know if it is the key anchor. It is what is available to mewhere for

me the indication is the strongest that it is about seeing and not about interpre-

tation.

WB: Would it theoretically be possible to produce contempo-

A cognitive bias is a pattern of

deviation in judgment that occurs

in particular situations, leading to

perceptual distortion, inaccurate

judgment, illogical interpretation,

or what is broadly called irration-

ality. Implicit in the concept of a

pattern of deviation is a standard

of comparison with what is nor-

matively expected; this may be the

judgment of people outside those

particular situations, or may be a

set of independently verifiable

facts. A long and ever-growing list

of cognitive biases has been iden-

tified over the last six decades of

research on human judgment and

decision-making in cognitive sci-

ence, social psychology, and behav-ioral economics.

Cognitive biases are instances of

evolved mental behavior. Some

are presumably adaptive, for ex-

ample, because they lead to more

effective actions in given contexts

or enable faster decisions when

faster decisions are of greater

value (heuristics). Others presum-

ably result from a lack of appropri-

ate mental mechanisms (bounded

rationality), or simply from mental

noise and distortions.


page 62


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rary art that is not plausible? Or is that really set aside?

TB: Non-plausible art is being produced the whole day!

WB: Good art?

TB: Oh, good art... I would imagine that its over. Indications in the world of televi-

sion, the series for example... That was it, thats off the table. The only problem

that could happen, is the producers starting to think about a production method

for plausibility, instead of a new condition for looking at images.

WB: Are you talking about a painterly method?

TB: I do not know, because Ive never seen anything successfulunless we go

back all the way to Dali. But even there it gets boring at some point, because

he has developed a methodology. If you have seen his hundredth painting about

similaritythat an egg is similar to an eyethen it will eventually get boring, too.

The essence of new modernism or of what we are stuck in right now, would be

a compression of one hundred of Dalis paintings into tenand then you realize

that its been enough and that you need to change the strategy or the mission.

WB: So the proposition that we are now dealing with claims that

a form of contemporary (post-postmodern, neo-modern, you

name it) art could be established based on a momentary plausibil-

ityand that this art could leave behind modernism and post-

modernism, which are mainly defined by non-plausible images.

TB: Exactly right.

WB: Is it possible to inflate the concept of plausibility to such an

extent that you can really make it collapse and start again? And

if the concept of plausibility is being promoted so stronglyas

the indicator of difference between ancient art and modern art,or old world and new worldwould it not be obvious to pro-

mote the concept of unbiasedness in the same way? And not only

as a purely technological, but as an art-theoretical concept?

TB: Absolutely. The terminology can be promoted so strongly, because regarding

the idea of image production, there is a paradigm shift happening right now. By

making use of these new technologies, I can successfully reflect on the difference

between expectations and resultswithout having to consider things appear-

ing in the end that I did not intend to be there in the first place. When I look at

modernism, at the last one hundred years, this very difference has been used for

making art and art history. Errors, dirt, patina, or lens flareeverything that is not

unbiasedhave been tackled with great enthusiasm and incorporated into the

value chain. Now I can work in an unbiased manner, and that is, I believe, larger

than I even suspected.

WB: In modernism and postmodernism, the bug it-

self was practically an important...

TB: ...a genre on its own. And thatthe slip of the brush, the splash of painthas

so successfully been established in the world of images that it has been incorpo-

rated in an additive way. Only that now its mere folklore. If I want to let it splat-

ter and drip, then I can let it splatter and drip unbiasedas it is the case with

some of the pictures in the exhibition, because there we have the effects of fast

painting. But they result from thinking about a physically realistic momentum. In

these areas, the same effects as in fast painting occur. But Ive been thinking about

it in an unbiased way instead of approving the error as an inherent part of image

production.


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WB: That means, to keep on splattering is like playing in a Dixie band.

TB: Exactly.

WB: You can do it, but it is over.

TB: Yeah, right.

WB: And its a shame because its just so comfortable.

TB: Exactly. And because its fun, too.

WB: What is it like to walk around an art fair at the mo-

ment then? A brunch with countless Dixie bands?

TB: With polonaise and the whole shebang, yes.

WB: But because this thing seems to work somehow, it

could even be sustained for a few decades, right?

TB: Yeah, but sooner or later everyone must be so bored that it will no longer be

maintainable.

WB: But dont you think that at least our generation will continue this way?

TB: This is the valley of the clueless. They allow themselves to be outpaced by

anything, by the world of moving images as well as by what has happened in terms

of narration. But the world is already in a completely different place. Completely

different!

WB: I wanted to come back to the notion of proximity. If I un-

derstand correctly, both the plausibility of what one sees, as well

as the unbiasedness within these pictures are defined by proxim-

ity. It is no less important to come back to these peasquantity,

meaning the immediate vicinity of many very precise details.

TB: Yes, that is mutually dependent. Proximity and quantity are part of the experi-

mental setup.

WB: Mutually dependent?

TB: Thats what I would I say. The most plausible proximity I can produce is by

the means of a pictures quantity and size. They are lush prints with an extremely

large number of elementsup to two million visible beads.

TB: In one picture?

TB:Because the most plausible way of examining the condition of proximity and

mappability is by means of such an experimental setupI cannot think of a better

term. If I arrange only four elements in a space of 2.20 meters by 1.80 meters, it

gets incredibly difficult to decide whether this is really plausible. But in case of

two million elements, every painter, illustrator or photographer has to contend

with the obstacles, which the viewers will eventually have to smooth out by their

level of projection.

WB: The viewers projection was already important in the 2010 exhibition

Future Anti-Gypsy folklore (What?)also referring to Ernst Gombrichs

studies. He claims that certain objects can be linked to a narrative folklor-

istic whole by a specific cultural knowledge and that, on the other hand, re-

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ally abstract details become representations. In Gombrichs example those

are many, very little cherubs heads that are actually only spots of paint.

TB: Exactly.

WB: And both, if I understand correctly, are defined by a sense ofexclusion, which results from specific knowledge and attributions.

The idea of authenticity plays an important role and loses its foot-

ing on both countsby the deconstruction of gypsiness as an

ultimate placeholder for folklore and by the abandonment of paint-

ing. The belief in the authenticity seems to drive you up the wall.

TB: Very much so. And also the belief in passing on the baton, in just leaving the

ruling system of images behind. I think it is an incredible fallacy that this would be

a good thing for art in the long run. I am interested in the ruling system of images.

Opening the floodgates to it in order to talk about itwhat is in fact happening

by projectionjust means that great damage was done. We now find ourselves

in a world that is highly complex and elusive. And then people are still holding on

to a ruling system of language... Considering the fact that the boom of paintinghappened in the 00s years, right when the digital revolution hit the worldthis

is the clearest indication that it is all about comfort zones, about maintaining old

ruling systems.

WB: But this projection is also happening with re-

gard to the construction of objectivityconcerning Gom-

brich, by the identification of paint splashes as cherubs.

TB: But he says that, with van Eyck, there was a rupture. This rupture was aimed

at peoples viewing habits, because van Eyck came to the point where this tiny

element is still a splash of paint onto which the viewers would project a button.

I believe that since 1996 and regarding MLT techniques, we are now at a point

where we can break it down again. Then the smallest recognizable unit is the

pictorial illusion of a buttonor just photo paper, if you are able to perceive that.

WB: And you do not believe that there simply is a need for

experiencing this exact moment of translation when look-

ing at an imagebeyond comfort and escapism?

TB: Yes, but there is stil l plenty of projection, I think. Well, considering the images

produced with these new possibilities.

WB: Still?

TB: Sure. You have something hanging on the wall and you translate it into an im-

age. You translate the highest abstraction into an image.

WB: Thats another form of projection.

TB: But the one that I consider the most important. That you have an artifact in

front of you and then translate it into an image. Although this is only a small step,

it is perfectly fine. Right now its all about reorientation, as we have stated in the

title SOS. SOS does not actually mean save our souls, but is just the most easy

Morse code to type. Three long, three short, three long. The fact that it turned

into save our souls is indeed a mnemonic. The abstract Morse code was first,

and the attribution of meaning came later.

WB: But of course it is no longer reversible. The question is

also whether it is the same when it comes to pictures?


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TB: Yes, but thats where we are right now. We have now been doing this for

a hundred yearsit is irreversible. But we are now able to deliver a range of

abstraction by plausibility, proximity, and so on. The attribution of meaning will

happen later, but now we can organize ourselves in a new way. And it must be re-

organizedotherwise incredible boredom will persist.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

WB: The title of the exhibition consists of three elements, camou-

flage and deception, SOS and tl;dr, a common internet abbrevia-

tion for too long; did not read. The acronym SOS, which practically

implies the highest degree of attention, for it is a matter of life and

death, gets confronted with the abbreviation tl;dr, which formu-

lates the highest level of disinterest: I do not even read.

TB: Right.

WB: Why this clash?

TB: Its just very good taste.

WB: What now?

TB: My own. The combination.

WB: I see. But the SOS-caller, the one seeking for help, also

gets confronted with the tl;dr-person, the one who re-

fuses to helpbecause he or she has no time.

TB: Right. Uninteresting. This tl;dr is actually a phrase that is often used in image

boards, where the main task is posting pictures. If someone has the idea to add a

caption of just a few sentences, this is the answer.

WB: What is this phenomenon of image boards, anyway?

TB: There is an incredible demand for interesting images. We are probably talking

about 16- to 23-year-olds who have developed a methodology to produce what

the fuck images. And there is simply a need, because they are not taken seriously

by the professional world of images. Images are being offered to them that

could have been produced in 1930. They need to make images themselvesand

then do it with swarm intelligence.

WB: One could say that SOS represents the 20th cen-

tury in the same way as the collageand that too

long; did not read represents the 21st century.

TB: Right.

WB: I would like to briefly come back to the concept of the val-

ley of the clueless, which already came up before. The ques-

tion of accessibility plays a role here, namely the lack of

proximity to the present, to present opportunities.

TB: I like to temporally locate it close to the SOS. Well, to the fact that the term

had something to do with the issue of sender/receiver in the 70s and 80s.

WB: But is it only a media-specific metaphorthe fact that cer-

tain things are out of reach or that there is no access to cer-

tain technologies? Or is this a metaphor for the state of the

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art world? That is to say that the residents themselves now

have virtually dug out their own valley of the clueless?

TB: Absolutely. Thats what it isthe valley

TB: Thats the valley

TB: The art business is not in the GDR, but the valley itself.

WB: So at the moment every art fair is a walk through the valley?

TB: Absolutely. No signals from the outside, hermetically sealed. Contemporaneity

does not matter, does not exist.

WB: And shouldnt even knock at the door?

TB: It arrives in a sense of collage. It is called upon to give testimony. This is al-

ready happening. Just that art has been overtaken by its own termseach blog by

a 16-year-old is better informed about secret knowledge than the artists.

WB: In comparison to film and television one could think that no one

is currently missing the signals as much as the world offine art.

TB: Precisely, because you get used to the leftovers of modernism.

WB: Eduard Beaucamp has introduced this term in the FAZ news-

paper two years ago when he spoke of the aesthetic energies of the

twentieth century as being used up. In political science we speak

of the short twentieth century, which began in 1917 and ended in

1989precisely the period in which an alternative to capitalist so-

ciety existed. Applied to art, one can actually say that 1910 began

with the isms. Actually, around 2010, its about time to stop.

TB: You bet. I find that this endpoint already existed in the 80s, when the world

of agreement was abandoned and turned into a little joke. This was not a starting

point after all.

WB: And contextual art and institutional critique then followed in the

90s. This is all about institutional architecture, history or financial condi-

tions. That is, we have two self-reflective decades, based on image content,

even in the broadest sense, on one side and based on the conditions, the

display of art, on the other. And then the 00s, which do not really work?

TB: Right.

WB: And in your opinion the 00s do not work, because by us-ing conventional methods and media, nothing can occur that is

not already checked off? Referring to the processing of the 70s

again, is it time to give up that specific form of meaningfulness?

TB: Well, for now. Its about a certain orientation. We do not even know where

we are, what is whateven in art. Time to look inward.

WB: Time for formalist work?

TB: Exactly. What currently stands out in the new American TV series and

advanced Hollywood movies is the fact that form is a much bigger deal than

content.

Tal der Ahnungslosen (Valley of

the Clueless) was a satirical des-

ignation for two regions in the

southeast and northeast parts of

former East Germany.

The inhabitants of these areas

were not able to receive televi-

sion stations form West Germany.

West-German television stations

were considered more reliable

than their east-German counter-

parts and therefore the people

who could not receive those sta-

tions were thought to be less well

informed about the (political) situ-

ation in their country and in the

world..


old ARD Logo

cf. Beaucamp, Eduard, Wir

brauchen den Bruch. Die Reste-

verwertung der Moderne muss

aufhren, in:

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,

08.01.2010,

Nr.6, S.34


11/12

WB: Since when?

TB: Since the last five or six years. In this case, I consider the TV-series Lost the

Big Bang.

WB: Whereas Lost comes with a highly branched sys-tem of reference, let alone the philosophical...

TB: ...but uninteresting, so never mind. A plus is the fact that it is simultaneous.

And looking at images produced in the 00s years, there is little simultaneity. It is

all narrowed down, meticulously crafted, small and sanded off at one cornerbut

not a broad range at all.

WB: So the worst-case scenario would be that things would be-

come hermetic again, including further maintaining a subsidized,

self-contained system. That is called Fine Arts and will go on for

decades, while something else establishes, which takes place at

the fringes but in different areas. Its a noble approach to say, hey,

we have to do something else. But maybe nobody wants that.

TB: Im not sure. I believe...

WB: ...within the system.

TB: But when I take a look at Damien Hirsts self-definition for example, who

says he is 51% entertainer and 49% artist... this is a highly successful model, also

in terms of distribution. The ones who come next cannot do anymore what Hirst

did, but will have to adjust to what happens out there. If we want to keep up or

catch up, then art has to accomplish a lot right now.

WB: And what would the Art Cologne 2020 look like?

TB: Well, I cannot imagine that this can be sustained forever. There is too muchhappening with the computer at the moment. Exhibitions like The Real Fake in

Chicago are trying to incorporate thatand by trying I mean, of course, that

the vocabulary for the evaluation of such images is missing. If we are unlucky,

everyone will grab a computer now and make little 80s picturesold thinking for

new situations. Its also a way of old thinking when you take Photoshop and then

pretend to use brush and scissors. If now MLT is used in terms of collage, then

once again we have skulls, owls and vases. And thats the only danger I see. The

game will go on, because then we will also have new images, where everyone has

a say and then it gets easy...

WB: ...even worse.

TB: Yes. Right. Thats the danger.

WB: That sounds very plausible. But if that should hap-

pen, then it can also remain inside the system.

TB: Inside the system, yes, exactly.

WB: And the system would not realize that ulti-

mately it is working on its self-dissolution.

TB: That I do not know.

WB: No one will say it.

Primetime Emmy Award for Out-

standing Drama Series

2011: Game of Thrones/HBO

2010: True Blood/HBO

Breaking Bad/AMC

2008: Lost/ABC


Eric gets his roots donefrom HBOs True blood

page 68


12/12

TB: There is just no fluent thinking in artno letting go and admitting that what

was said in the 00s is no longer true. I mean, it would be a crazy step to say that

one was wrong, also regarding the evolution of prices. Then we could all take a

deep breath. At the moment, the world is indeed forced to proceed like that all

the time. And at some point we will hopefully let go of art as well. And if that was

done and said by many, then it can be great again.

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