PROUD PHOTO BOOTH BY OLIVER RATH ... - Proud magazine
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PROUD PHOTO BOOTH BY OLIVER RATH ... - Proud magazine
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DESPERATE MAN BLUES<br />
Talk about what you are working on at<br />
the moment, please.<br />
Sure. It started with this little scrawl.<br />
(zeigt auf eine Kritzelei an der Wand<br />
hinter ihm: ‘desperate man blues’ ).<br />
These are rudimentary prints- monotypes-<br />
just black marks painted on<br />
plastic and then rubbed onto paper. I<br />
was trying to choose ideas and images<br />
to depict that are both very simple but<br />
also have a potential for a certain type<br />
of poetry, one that I find in many blues<br />
songs. It is thinking about how a blues<br />
song can be written in visual form. I<br />
don’t remember if I heard a song by that<br />
title or if someone said it and I wrote it<br />
down or if I just made it up when drinking<br />
beer. This series is a way of thinking<br />
about a friend who has been very<br />
influential for me in the last months,<br />
in terms of thinking about the working<br />
process, the reasons and motivations<br />
for making art and the thinking about<br />
how to manage oneself. This coupled<br />
with his sense of desperate, destructive<br />
behavior and how ones’ life and work<br />
can play with one another. What I really<br />
wanted was to make images that<br />
could sooth his desperateness, sooth<br />
his soul, you know.<br />
Do you think he will like it?<br />
The funny thing about that is, I had<br />
been making these prints for him, and<br />
then a few days ago I was in his studio<br />
and he showed me some works of his<br />
from last year or so. They were lithographic<br />
prints titled: “Fat Lady Blues”. I<br />
had never seen these prints before. And<br />
it was just funny- I know that it (my<br />
current series) is important for me if<br />
those sorts of synchronicities<br />
happen. I would like to further the conversation<br />
with him about how does one<br />
write a blues song with prints like this.<br />
So, how does one write a blues song<br />
with prints like this?<br />
Well it is one of the more beautiful<br />
forms of song writing. I have often wondered<br />
while listening: how does that<br />
look, without being super illustrative or<br />
descriptive? There, it comes out to this<br />
very interesting void somewhere between<br />
visual language and spoken language,<br />
in addition to the sound. And a<br />
blues song gives you the visual imagery<br />
so clearly with words, and the mood so<br />
clearly with the music.<br />
Can you do the same thing the other<br />
way around? And how does a painted<br />
country song look different from a<br />
blues song? How would Mozart look<br />
like as a painting? Blues songs often<br />
use the double entendre, which uses<br />
the ambiguity of one word with two<br />
meanings, exploiting one meaning<br />
with sexual, ironic or loaded content<br />
by talking about things using the other<br />
definition that is straightforward. This<br />
is done to hide the true meaning of the<br />
song with an innocuous meaning. So<br />
in this series, what you see looks very<br />
straightforward, but actually has content<br />
that is hidden by double meanings.<br />
“The target”, for instance, and the text<br />
piece with “Pera, Trou and Shoot Shoot”<br />
written in reverse are reference to heroin<br />
addiction.<br />
(Anmerkung: bezieht sich auf die Bilder<br />
2 & 3 der Printserie, Seite 53)<br />
I want these prints to function as a<br />
‘song’…<br />
Does he know now that it is for him?<br />
No. I don’t know how important it ismaybe<br />
it is better for me to continue<br />
working if he doesn’t know. Because if<br />
you have too much pressure to work,<br />
then you cant work with freedom. I<br />
want these prints to function - as a<br />
‘song’ to sooth him, to calm him down,<br />
to refocus him - because that is what he<br />
needs. And that is a ridiculous thing to<br />
try to do with drawings or printmaking.<br />
And it’s not doing it yet. I don’t know if<br />
this is even possible- maybe as possible<br />
as painting ‘nothing’.<br />
If you could choose one person in history<br />
to talk with about art, who would<br />
it be?<br />
That’s a funny question. There have<br />
been a lot of people. (lacht). I have been<br />
thinking about Orson Welles a lot recently.<br />
He was on the top level of genius<br />
that you can get. It would be fun<br />
to talk with him- probably very brutal<br />
because he was an honest man. Van<br />
Gogh would also be great to talk with<br />
because he was so fucking passionate<br />
about it and crazy-passionate, from<br />
what I understand through his letters<br />
and the history we know. It would be<br />
exciting to sit down with him and just<br />
ask “why?’, you know.<br />
(Anmerkung: Bilder 2-5 “neverending”,<br />
Collage, stellen den prozess eines<br />
einzelnen Bildes dar, wobei 5 das fertige<br />
Kunstwerk ist. Seite 51)<br />
Many successful artists are said to be<br />
difficult, moody or irrational personalities.<br />
Is that true for you?<br />
Who says that? (lacht verlegen) Yeah,<br />
it’s all true. I think it comes from an extreme<br />
form of selfishness, which is part<br />
of the artist mind. The work tends to be<br />
more than half of your identity.<br />
So you devote this selfish energy towards<br />
it. Unfortunately, this seeps into<br />
the other parts of life pretty quickly.<br />
But this is also a funny selfishness, because<br />
at some point, and I think this is<br />
true for many people in respect to their<br />
work, if you can do what you are trying<br />
to do well enough, then you are actually<br />
giving things out. So it’s half selfishness<br />
and half a gift that you are trying<br />
to prepare. Maybe that is a cop-out. I<br />
wouldn’t date me, if that’s the question.<br />
Text: Katharina Fabian<br />
52 CHAT<br />
CHAT 53