Download PDF Version Revolt Magazine, Volume 1 Issue No.4

On Being Post-Sequin
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the city. Because it was part of a public art festival
they kind of backed me with verbal support and
positive vibes. I did get permission from the three
people that owned the house that I was working
with. For me that was really important as it was
private property and it was someone’s home. I
was very respectful of that but I didn’t even think
about applying to the city. I don’t know if it would be
possible now but at that time it was. As a contrast
for my recent project in Russia I was invited by a
public art fund under a newly established art
museum in Perm. The Museum functioned also as
a producer so I didn’t even come near any of the
regulation and permission problems but I think it’s
a completely unimaginable bureaucracy. So I’m not
actually sure where the United States falls in that
spectrum, but I imagine it’s somewhere in between.
for granted? Why do we take this system for
granted? There could be a million other variations.
TH: Yes, I think that was also embedded in your
question. I am interested in creating these kind of
in-between zones where energy stands still between
values associated with something being beautiful.
Something that I thought a lot about in connection
with the Russian commission were these Hal Foster
and Miwon Kwon aspects. All these ideas of the
itinerant artist and the artist who comes to a site
KC: What is your process when you work on some of
these large-scale site-specific outdoor projects? How
much time do you spend at the site and how much in
the studio? Do you consider your work post-studio?
TH: My process is very much informed by coming
out of architecture. It’s very much research based
and conceptually based in the sense that there’s a
research phase where the conceptual boundaries
of the project are laid out. This goes for all the
projects that I’m involved in whether video, sound,
photography or urban installation. There’s a
development phase and then there’s a production
phase. Usually most of the project is in place before
it comes to production. I would say to the poststudio
question – yes - at this point because I’m
traveling in between places my practice is in a way
tied to my laptop. At least the development phases
of the project before they become physical, if they
even do. For example the video project I’m working
on now is actually not site-specific in that sense. It’s
a project that I started while I was at the Whitney
Program doing research and making some initial
studies relating to it. I recently returned from a trip
to the Czech Republic where I was shooting for ten
days at two different locations. That’s sort of typical,
mapping out gathered material and then editing.
KC: I’ve noticed in your work you often set up a
situation in which one might begin to interpret and
even challenge relationships between “structure”
and “institution,” opening up a space where we
can begin to imagine the boundaries between
these entities as porous and fluid. Can you talk
about these notions in relationship to your work?
TH: It is definitely a theme that’s reoccurring in my
work also in the sound installation that I did at Art
in General. That was in a way operating on a similar
level only in audio instead of video. My project Double
Vision in Russia also operates similarly but on the
level of urban space. That project is about questioning
the signifiers of that type of space. It’s taking
architecture and making it a sign and simultaneously
addressing what our vision is being directed at
through corporate promises and advertising.
KC: It’s almost like you’re making this figment
that’s related to the structure but it’s almost
an imaginary space, as if a parallel universe
where we question, why do we take this structure
Parallel Memories (2013), video still. Photo courtesy of the artist.
two poles and there’s a gap in which we can see the
surroundings critically or from a new perspective.
It’s then we explore exactly what is being taken for
granted. By flipping the relationship upside down
we see what goes usually unnoticed. For the project
in Russia I was working with this really everyday
space, this ordinary piece of facade that suddenly
by reframing and reconfiguring that in relationship
to the site, an opening was created. It allowed for
a critical reading of that site in its cultural context.
KC: Is there anything else you want to say
about the piece in Russia in particular?
TH: I can talk briefly about the background
because it’s typical for the way I work. I was given
an old department store as a site to work with. It
was built around the mid 70s during the Soviet
Union era and is a known typology. They were
all over the Soviet Union. It is a white rendered
modernist structure, and there were these bright
yellow McDonalds M’s. It’s an angled building so
they were on all sides visible from every corner. A
McDonalds had just opened on the ground floor. On
the roof were Cyrillic neon letters that spelled the
store name from back when the building was built.
That transition became the starting point of the
project. It became about these two types of signs:
the neon signs and the golden M’s. I read the
building as a type of semiotic structure; if the neon
signs point back to the 70s when the building was
made as a manifestation of Soviet Era ideals, then
the golden M’s point toward an abstract promise
of a global corporate future. There’s kind of two
directions and I wanted to insert myself within that
conversation and make a third type of sign which
just points directly to that which is near and present
both in space and in time. I wanted to direct the gaze
simply to that which is close as a potential space
or quality, beyond what we think of as the surface
and is supposed to do something site specific and
clever. Coming to the city by the Ural Mountains,
it’s such a complex context. It’s a really dynamic
city with a heavy history. The public art program
is amazing and they’re doing really amazing and
important projects. Meanwhile the whole idea is
based on an artist being invited into a situation in
which they’re validating an urban renewal project
on a larger scale. Initially I was really hesitant to do
anything visual because visually, any urban square
or open space is super charged with the memories
either of the 2nd world war or the Soviet Era. There’s
a real danger of making something superficial, and
how can you possibly know? I wanted to steer away
from that so I initially proposed to make an audio
installation. They liked it and said they hoped we
could make that too at some point (perhaps just a
polite rejection) but meanwhile said to me, “We just
think that our city looks not so good, we just want
something with sequins.” I’m thinking - oh my god -
really, okay, I can really understand that utterance.
In a way it makes total sense. That became part of
the framework, their wish for something beautiful,
for something pretty. It’s also about cultural
context in relationship to a material. Making huge
installations out of sequins in Iceland where you
can meet the President in a grocery store, it’s kind
of a cliché but it’s not far from truth… Iceland is set
within a Scandinavian social democratic landscape.
The sequin material is all about glitz and lure, it’s
used for signs and the sequins are morphologically
an interpretation of coins. Displacing that material
from Scandinavia into a contemporary Russian
context totally changes the meaning, there anything
glitzy and glamorous can’t help but allude to
nouveau riche culture. All these aspects were what
in the end manifested itself in the actual project.
KC: I’m personally excited about the Eileen Gray
retrospective at Centre Pompidou in Paris. I find it
interesting that many feminists have named her
as a sort of early Sapphic “non-heroic” modernist
figure, calling her buildings and furniture sites