đź’ Gelitin for ODDA Magazine
This article first appeared in the ODDA Magazine 20th Issue “There is a Time”.
WOLFGANG GANTNER, FLORIAN REITHER, ALI JANKA, AND TOBIAS URBAN
In a freewheeling conversation that featured both nudity and urination, the collective known as Gelitin, which consists of four Austrian artists named Wolfgang Gantner, Florian Reither, Ali Janka, and Tobias Urban, took time out from their latest project to discuss their illustrious and outrageous career. It’s a history that is rooted in the idea of collaboration, not only between the four men, who first met at a summer camp in 1978, but also between the art they create and the audience that is encouraged to interact with it. And in doing so, transform the pieces in ways even the artists couldn’t have imagined.
JESSICA MICHAULT. I’m going to start with a very generic, classic question. The famous origin story is that the four of you met in a summer camp in the late 1970s. I get the feeling, having looked at all your art, that you’ve never really left summer camp, the four of you. This kind of play and exploration is in all the work that you do. Would you say you’ve been existing in summer camp all of these years?
FLORIAN REITHER. Now, it’s more winter camp.
ALI JANKA. Or indoor camp.
F.R. Yeah, you could also say it’s just camp, without summer or winter.
A.J. Or cluster camp.
F.R. Yeah, now it’s cluster camp.
J.M. I don’t know if I’m going to even ask you to elaborate on that cluster reference. I wanted to know how have you been able to maintain that youthful exploration, that sense of play, into your adulthood.
TOBIAS URBAN. It’s a very difficult job, you have to do it every day and most people just stop doing it because they’re so lazy. But you should try it a little bit, it’s not so difficult.
F.R. I often play with myself too, because it’s often so joyful.
A.J. There’s nothing else to do, I’m not good at anything else.
J.M. This is going to be a fun conversation, I can tell already. The whole theme of this issue is “YOU” and I wanted to talk about what each of you brings to your collective collaboration.
A.J. I have the credit card.
T.U. I’m the one in the bush [hiding behind a plant].
F.R. I’m the one who likes to play with himself.
WOLFGANG GANTNER. I’m the guy who-- (gets cut off) I never talk.
J.M. You’re killing me! I’m loving this. Okay. You’re going to love this next question I can feel it already. Here we go. There is this premise in quantum theory, which has long fascinated philosophers and physicists alike, that says that by the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality. That concept came to my mind when I was researching your work. So much of the work that you do brings the audience participation into what you do, thus changing the art you create. Why is including the audience so important to you creatively?
W.G. We don’t do it for ourselves. I think without an audience it’s not possible. Like they’re a part of it.
T.U. The audience participation for me, I think it’s a little bit like a technique. It's like paint or something. It’s like material. We don’t do it to entertain the audience but, you know, when they participate it gives you moments of surprise.
A.J. For me, art is a conversation. If you don’t have a conversation with somebody then what’s the point of it. And it’s nice to have a conversation with other people than just by yourself.
F.R. A friend of ours, once introduced this idea to us, talking about this participative moment in our art as the threshold. Like creating spaces where you cross a threshold and then maybe we are not hierarchical, we don’t tell anybody what to do. But we like to open possibilities so people can behave differently.
J.M. Some of the pieces that you have done like “Arc de Triomphe,” one of my personal favorites, and “Human Elevator,” you did early in your career and then redid it later in your career. What was that like to revisit pieces from the past, and rethink them and present them in a new way?
W.G. On the last “Arc de Triomphe” presentation, there was a boy in the audience and he said to his mother “Tonight I’m going to do that at home.” That was surprising, that was a little surprising moment. And the mother tried to tell the boy that it’s not a good idea to do it. But a friend of ours who was standing nearby whispered to the boy “Just do it, don’t tell your mom. Just do it. Do it on your own. It’s a good idea.” It’s very small, but that was a surprising move.
On the last “Human Elevator” presentation, we had a minister riding it as a passenger. And when he went through, all the boys in the scaffoldings said “Good evening Mister Minister.” That was probably more surprising to him.
“We really like to do things when you start thinking about it and talking about it with some people and their first reaction is and people say “You can’t do that! That’s impossible! You can’t do that!” That develops a thrill and we think “Why not? Let’s try it. Let’s do it.””
J.M. You have used your rectums, your anuses, in a number of your art pieces and presentations. You have painted things with bushes held by your butts and then hung them on the walls of museums. You have also done pieces that are lifelike sculptures of poop and the urine bed, I thought the urine icicle you create in Moscow was quite cool. What is it about the nether region, let’s put that in that way, that you guys like to put in front of peoples’ faces?
A.J. It’s a good anchor to anchor some stuff. Unlike paintbrushes and stuff. You always have it with you, you don’t have to buy anything.
W.G. The idea with the Moscow piece was with the [urine] icicle, the big icicle was the idea to make audience participation possible on a very wide range. So, you can come there, all you need to do is be able to pee. That’s enough to participate. You don’t have to recite a poem, sing a song, go onstage. You just pee and it contributes to the beauty of the sculpture.
F.R. You contribute by emptying yourself and by that you create something together.
J.M. So everybody’s an artist?
W.G. Everybody contributes…
A.J. Be part of something bigger.
W.G. Yeah, be part of something bigger.
J.M. I want to know what it was like to sleep on the urine bed. Did any of you guys try that out? What was that like?
F.R. It was, I mean there was so much urine in there that it was heavy, big, and heated to body temperature. Like a water bed but warmer, like 30 degrees something [Celcius] and when you enter the room you realize there is a living thing in there. We thought like "Wow, why does this feel like…” it felt like a cow or elephant standing in the room because of the radiation of the heat of that much water.
W.G. The water basically had the mass of two cows, so you basically came into a small room and there was a huge something that has body temperature and it was possible to feel its presence...
F.R. From a distance.
W.G. Like an alien that is with you in the room that radiates not 50 degrees [Celcius] but really body temperature and lying on it was cool. Like you would like to lay on something that is alive because it has exactly the same temperature as yourself.
J.M. So we’ve talked about urine, we’ve talked about feces, we’ve talked about the participation of the audience coming into it. There’s another aspect that I’ve picked up on from your work is that…
A.J. ... It relates to every person and shape that everybody can relate to. It’s not gender, it doesn’t have anything to do with race, it brings everybody together. I think “shit” is a great thing to bring everybody together. A great form for a sculpture to bring everybody together.
J.M. So you’re talking about basically what's left, the shit and the urine, what's left after we have used up as much as we can? So there is that idea in some of your work, that message of decay, of the leftover. I’m thinking, of course, about your “Rabbit” art piece. The last pictures I saw were from 2011, I don't even know if there’s anything left to the rabbit that has been slowly decaying since you put it out there. Or “The Fall” exhibition you put on, where you had the pieces that would break apart and become something different through being destroyed. What is it about transformation over time that appeals to you?
T.U. For us, the interest is not so much in the biological process like the decaying. We are artists so we think about form or sculpture. We are not biologists. We’re not really interested in that. But when you think about sculpture... Do they always have to last forever? How would it change?
F.R. There’s something slightly uncanny that happened with the “Rabbit.” After we saw it, after the first year, things started growing on it and it was oozing this brown liquid and you could see this pink toilet paper. Because first, you make it a thing that looks like roadkill with the intestines spilling out. And then you come one year later and all of a sudden it really is roadkill. It’s really dead and transforming into somebody else’s loss. It sort of became real through the rotting.
J.M. Alright, guys so tell me about the nudity. What is that all about? Even in this interview nudity has played a huge role [all four artists were naked from the waist down]. Why is that such an important element in your creative process?
A.J. It makes us more ridiculous and more approachable I think.
J.M. We can’t do this interview without talking about your “The B-Thing” art happening that you created at the World Trade Center, where you opened a window and created a balcony on the 91st floor. You did this just months before 9/11. How do you all feel about that project? In relation to how it will forever be connected to that event which was, of course, never part of your intention.
A.J. That event kind of made it impossible to show this work for 15 years because of being connected to that. I mean it’s bad. Not bad in the sense that “It is a bad artwork” but connected to that. The others might disagree.
W.G. We didn’t show it for some time. But that wasn’t our decision; it was like institutions did not want to deal with the thing in some way but it's difficult for us because we don’t want to interpret it, our own work, that’s the job of other people, I think. I mean we did what we did and it had a very high-class, visionary moment.
T.U. The way we did it, we weren’t really looking for publicity. Very simple.
A.J. And it was the first thing that came to our minds when we stepped into that room.
F.R. This building needs to be opened, perhaps you can take the window off. So, of course, it was the thing we needed to do.
J.M. Let in some fresh air.
T.U. It was not really possible to look outside. We were high above, you couldn’t see the landscape, you couldn’t see above the windows because it was so narrow.
J.M. What was it like for all four of you to step out there? Did all four of you step out?
W.G. Yes.
F.R. All of us together.
J.M. I don’t think I could’ve done that.
W.G. Very, very sexy. It’s a very good feeling.
J.M. I bet it stirred some things up.
W.G. Yeah, it's not comparable to anything else. It feels very special, really good. We really like to do things when you start thinking about it and talking about it with some people and their first reaction is and people say “You can't do that! That's impossible! You can't do that!” That develops a thrill and we think “Why not? Let's try it. Let's do it.”
In conversation with JESSICA MICHAULT
Edited by EMMELEIA DALIWAN
Images courtesy of GELITIN
