Guest appearance #2: Cem Kozcuer
Dear Eva,
since days now i am thinking about what to write you or which form our conversation could take. as you see, i decided to write to you in english, like you suggested. i know my english is not the best, since i just learned in school and by living next to english speaking artists from northern england for a while. but that shall not be an obstacle or handicap to start a dialogue about art or making art. i wonder how the exchange of thoughts will change by using the english language. (and also by the fact that others now already see, what we are writing? is this already going to be made public? putting something in public always makes me wanting to control things. and here i don´t feel like i have much control about it, which i intellectually enjoy.)
*
for a while i had the feeling, it is nearly impossible for me to talk about my work as an artist in german (somehow i don´t like calling myself an artist; but i haven’t found an other expression yet). it was very unsatisfying. so i started to write and talk in english (or more preparing words and expressions about my work). it felt much more easy. sometimes i have the feeling that there is more space between the lines in english than in german. but after a year or something, i got discontent using english for my work. why shouldn’t i use german? the language i know best. it felt more precise (what a cliché). so now iam writing in english. at the moment it again feels more comfortable.
i wonder which language you prefer for you texts, especially for texts like you´re writing for 60pages. can you imagine to make all this daily posts in german? there is a kind of lightness in your posts which are really great – a mixture of everyday feelings and thoughts with intellectual ones in a thin, nearly see-through shell.
**
why am i talking about all this? we wanted to talk about art making. for me nearly everything makes me think about what art can be, and what concepts would be interesting to use and present to others by exhibiting. and art is so much involved in the ways it gets communicated by language and media. i guess at this point i am telling nothing new to you, since writing seems to be THE medium to you.
i must admit, i have an ambivalent relation to linguistic access on art. the problem is, that language is often used intentionally to represent interests in specific contexts or to a specific receiver. i think we are highly used to linguistically categorize things. we somehow need to for a lot of things we are doing or need to do in our life. for me this categorization (i like to call it a tool) stands in conflict with the idea of art i have. i am kind of afraid to reproduce linguistic categories in art, so i try to avoid these tools and rather use other ones.
***
at the same time, of course i love reading stuff, its one of the most important inspiration sources i have. i guess lot of writer and texts prefer also not categorizing. i would love to know more about your relation to language (and writing / text-making), since you have capabilities to write in such hard-to-catch way like you do on 60pages and also as a trained scientific writer.
****
i slowly get the feeling that i already wrote too much (without even finally determining what we want to do). so i will try to come to an end of this mail with a little jump to the matter of making art / making text.
i like very much your idea to have a look on potential art / work and potential texts. in the early beginnings of my interest in art, i was very fascinated by the work of John Cage. a very radical artist to me. and still i often think of his ideas. much later i found out about Lawrence Wiener, which i think is very close to Cages ideas (or Cages ideas to Wieners). i wonder if they stood ever in contact with each other….
here is an interview with lawrence wiener and the art historian and critic John Slyce in 2008, initialized by the Tate Modern, called Talking Art.
in your first message you asked me if i am currently working on something and if there will be an exhibition soon. i am working on something which has to do with labour and art. i like the word work more than labour; it is somehow compatible both with art and labour (i also like the german word Arbeit). i guess in my last pieces one thing was to find connections between everyday stuff and art. why are conditions/states in art different than in normal things? i am especially interested in actions or the act in art and not-art (or labour). it got a big complex for me, because everything around the actions seems also important like all the contexts and of course the products. and then there is the question what make things worth doing or worth looking at.
but more about it the next time. i feel like i have spend already enough time on this. i wonder how long it takes for you to write your posts on 60pages… i always have the feeling i have not enough time… this mail took me about 2h, with changing, correcting etc…
*****
at last to answer your question about if there is an exhibition planned: no it isn´t. yet i didn´t found the right space to exhibit the next part of the complex i am currently working at. or maybe the space didn´t find me. i don´t feel like exhibiting the next step in a gallery or musuem, with vernissages and stuff. i am looking more for a specific space i can modify and use.
but i want to list you a few possible titles for possible exhibitions i could imagine to make. i collect titles for exhibitions that come in my mind. they really inspire me.
the list is chronological ordered from 2013-2010:
Don´t Play the Rules
Work Hard, Play Hard
Super Zero
Necessities
Sculpture
Gegen Grau
Last Body
It Should Be True
Kitsch Dinosaurs Making Love to Elizabeth Taylor
Bad Looser
President Kennedy Calling Me Up
Here Comes another One, Faster than the One Before
Stop Crying Like a Child
Good Boy, Bad Boy, Good News, Bad News
If I Die as a Young Artist
Hier Tanzt Keiner
(Any) Faster to Heaven
End of Silence
Forgetting to Pray for the Angels
Gifts from Mistakes
Pickled Lies
i guess english titles work better to me than german ones.
ok, so far… looking forward to hear from you!
best!
cem
ps: hope there aren´t too many false friends in the text…
******
Dear Cem,
thank you for your letter. There are some things I wanted to reply to:
* do you aim at having total control in and with regard to your own work or do you try to introduce an element of anarchy?
** lately I have been writing mostly in English and I think the posts would be very different in German, but I am not sure in what way. In fact, I think I have somewhat verlernt to write in German. English is my first language, but German is my mother tongue. De Saussure (I think) described the way a sound can be heard as a colour (Farbhören). His explanation of the vowel “a” reminds me of what you said about language:
“An off-white, approaching yellow; in its consistency, it is something solid, but thin, that cracks easily if struck, for example a sheet of paper (yellowed with age) drawn tight in a frame, a flimsy door (in unvarnished wood left white) that you feel would shatter at the slightest blow, an already broken eggshell that you can keep cracking by pressing on it with your fingers. Better still: the shell of a raw egg is a (whether in colour or in the consistency of the object), because of the feeling you have that the object is compact and resistant. A yellowed pane of glass is a; a pane of ordinary colour, offering bluish reflections, is the very opposite of a, because of its colour, and despite its consistency being just right.”
*** which tools do you use?
**** re-reading my own texts on 60pages makes me realise that vagueness seems to be a distinct issue. How do you read your own work?
***** What are your thoughts on time and duration? Your work (for example “Choose, Look, Obey“) plays with apparent stillness and its effect, a kind of coercive meditation on what we see, what we observe (in the double sense of the word: “examine” and “abide by”), before it suddenly tilts into action. What is your relation to your predecessors in art history, to all of the time frozen in the natures mortes of the past?
****** There is a productive surplus in linguistic false friends. Have you ever come across a real-life shibboleth?
All the best,
Eva
Dear Eva
* Control is a very good point to think of in art or art making. I mean you can access control on different levels. It can be about contextual placement of your work by using specific communication media etc. or about formal-physical aspects in combination with the contents you deal with… or everything in between those. For me a piece is complete with its presentation. The more people are involved in a project, the more different interests there are, the less you control a piece. Others can start to make true what their idea of your piece is and you start to loose control, so it gets partly possessed by others. This is kind of natural for exhibiting or going into public. It can be a very productive moment… or sometimes too messy. But that´s all about communicating or presenting work.
In my work control is probably an issue. But at the same time it is very important to me to leave things open, space that you don´t fill yourself. I guess I like a hard mix of controlling and not-controlling.
Dear guest #3: How important is it to you to let others into your work or not?
** I have to think more about English and German… sometimes it feels like English doesn´t “weigh” so much… in German I have to think more about every word I use. Maybe it´s just because my English isn´t such sensitive…
Once someone said to me: German is a very sculptural language; what do you think…?
*** I am not sure… the problems with tools is, often it seems that it is already clear what you can do with them or not… the potential of all tools somehow get clear after understanding them….
I am very much interested in things I don´t understand, don´t you?
**** I am not sure if I am able to read my work. Reading for me implicates that something is put together semantically to express something or so… My work just feels like combining interests I have to a stimulating condition (and hoping that other are also interested in that condition). For me vagueness is a very important thing in art. Too many things out there want to be clear and direct…. I don´t feel like supporting such concepts much…
#3: What do you think of vagueness as a concept or structure…?
**** In this point I am very much interested in physical aspects of perception. The body with its senses is a huge reference to my work. Choose, Look, Obey for me is about the act of looking at things, but also about the act of presenting. I am interested in mechanics of controlling and not-controlling with images and space, in what you can expect from images and the possibility of getting disappointed. The freedom of choice in a piece is also an interesting point to work at. I am aiming a situation where it is part of the piece that you can turn your back to it.
Exhibiting has a political nature – you always want to show something to others. I find it very gestural. #3: What do you like about exhibiting?
***** There is a video piece (compliments, 2012) of Merve Turfan and Johanna Adabäck, I recently saw and liked very much. It was exhibited in The Unanswered Question. Iskele 2 in Tanas Berlin until a few weeks ago. I have to think of it in this context…
(Stills from Choose, Look, Obey, HD video, 53min, 2012)
Cem Kozcuer (*1982) is an artist who lives and works in Berlin