An horizon to expand
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| BRIGITTE WALDACH BY STEVEN KOHLSTOCK |
German artist Brigitte Waldach, born and based in
Berlin, has achieved the international recognition. Her often red-figured
drawings and installations that address controversial social and political
issues, such as religion and terrorism, combining historical with contemporary
elements, create a new perspective that makes you wonder about social
conventions.
These days she presents her recent Chance series at the Galerie Mathias Güntner in Hamburg until next 29th
October. Her new works focus on the composer and artist John Cage, in a deep and
very personal approach to Cage’s experience with space and silence, structure,
and chance in music and performance.
You are presenting the exhibition “Chance.” What kind
of chance are you referring to?
In
my current exhibition in Hamburg I explore chance as a method, one that helped
John Cage to make artistic decisions. The exhibition itself can be seen as the visualization
of chance by means of a creative process.
You mention the composer and artist John Cage as the
starting point for your new series of works. What is it about him that inspires
you?
What
I find most interesting is how John Cage managed to overcome the individual,
meaning the limits imposed by individual taste and preferences.
This
led him to venture beyond his own ego and embrace a wider sense of (social)
responsibility. And although this overcoming of the self might be an
experiment, the attempt itself is already an expansion of one’s own horizons.
“Silence and Chance” is one of the works featured in
the new exhibition. How is your relation with silence and, in your opinion, why
does our society reject it?
Silence
as such does not exist: every instance of silence is accompanied by the sounds
of the world. Even in sound-proof rooms, we can hear the circulation of our
blood and our nervous system at work.
Silence
is often equated with standstill or stagnation in our society, when it is
actually quite the opposite. It is the moment of quiet before a thought, a
prerequisite of ideas, creative achievements, and progress.
“Horizon” is a triptych on paper that represents John
Cage in different periods of his life and the way he confronted artistic creation.
Do you see yourself reflected in this evolution? Can you identify with him and
his experiences?
John
Cage’s most radical composition is “4:33” – a piece of “silence” that came
about in the middle of his lifetime. The only thing that happens in this
composition is that the pianist sits for 4 minutes and 33 seconds at the piano,
and during this time listens to the sounds of the world – just like the
audience. It was through this radicalism that Cage overcame musical tradition,
as well as his own success. In the middle of my triptych, Cage has almost left
behind his artist’s ego, and the traditional notion of what it means to be a
genius. It marks an inner liberation that I am also striving to achieve for
myself.
What do you see on your horizon?
I
hope that my horizon will continue to expand, so that all which I can
consciously see is a precursor to what will come next. My view of the present
is becoming more and more open, since what lies beyond its apparent boundaries
is the future, which can already be imagined.
“On Nothing and Something” brings together different
texts by John Cage – “Lecture on Something” and “Lecture on Nothing” – with
statements about his life and work. “Lecture on Nothing” ends with the
sentence: “When I am not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I
am working, it is quite clear that I know nothing.” What have you learned
during the process of creating the “Chance” series?
How
provisional our thoughts are. Everything that we think we know is but a brief
moment. Everything is flowing, mutable, and many things are possible.
“There is not enough nothing in it,” says Cage. What
is nothing for you? Do you seek it out?
Nothingness
is not nothing; it is a meditative state of emptiness, clarification, and
detachment from our ego and hence from our individual problems.
Do you have a spiritual concept of existence?
It’s
hard to say, but there are moments – especially during creative phases, where
ideas simply pop into my head. These thoughts appear from nowhere, from the “silence,”
so to speak – and those instances contribute to my spiritual experiences.
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| BRIGITTE WALDACH BY STEVEN KOHLSTOCK |
Your works are included in public collections of some
very important museums. What role do museums play in the way people approach
art in the 21st century?
Museums
are still responsible for presenting a cultural selection of artworks that can
be exemplary and socially relevant. Having an artwork acquired by a museum used
to be the guarantee for us artists that our work would become and remain part
of society’s cultural memory. But today this guarantee no longer exists – even
museums buy and sell “culture” in quick succession.
Could you tell us about a memorable dream you’ve experienced
while asleep?
Ever
since I was child, I’ve had a regularly recurring dream that I call my “ascension
dream.” In it, I find myself in a moving elevator, which is already in motion,
and it goes on and on. Just as I start to think the trip will last forever, the
elevator leaves its shaft and shoots out above the highest floor of the
building. For a moment I’m frozen in shock, but then I start to float about,
without the restraints of gravity, and I feel liberated from my own
restrictions.
What
begins as a place of fear becomes an abstract fantasy of redemption.
Brigitte Waldach | Chance
Selection of works here
Brigitte Waldach | Perception games
Interview released in October 2012. Read here
Brigitte Waldach | Logical Landscapes
Selection of works here
An interview by Juan Carlos Romero
Brigitte Waldach
Photos by Steven Kohlstock
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