A chat conversation with Fareed Armaly, artist, artistic director at haus.0 Künstlerhaus, Stuttgart, January 2001
urbanus: intention of this interview is to explain TRANSACTION from your point of view, because of several overlapping reasons including your input as artistic director of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart and in relation with your project which is haus.0
itsme: ok, how should we do this?
urbanus: tell why did you invited us to haus.0, explain your interest in TRANSACTION starting from the point when we met in Rotterdam or before? The following should address as to how would you describe the transaction in terms of an art project, artistic practice and the links with the plugins at haus.0 (media, script, archive, etc)
itsme: I was interested in the ‘transaction’ concept, after having spoken with you in Rotterdam. My feeling was that this was a great example of the kind of project that the program haus.0, and particularly and artist’s space could and should further.
itsme: „transaction” perfectly suited the way haus.0 wished to develop projects linking culture, identity, media and history but importantly in relation to artistic praxis. So of course, your previous projects in terms of an artist’s space, and the development…
itsme: What I felt was a drawback to the presentation in Rotterdam, was the insistence on dealing with the rooms, instead of a linked development to the idea of a narrative, that develops a space. So I saw a role for haus.0 in that respect, in furthering your project transaction…
transaction’ appealed to me as a project after having a discussion with you during its first version at Witte de With. That point seems fitting to this project woven out of different interviews, statements, discussions, scripts. As opposed to the issue of working with rooms in the Rotterdam situation, I felt working within the haus.0 framework could allow the project focus to really be more equally shared between the methodology which was shaping it, and the results obtained, and not get concerned about rooms, but addressing the communication of a political, gendered, social space.
itsme: The haus.0 program allows artists the possibility to develop or just fix some anchor points to such ideas within a specific economy of means, that already brings with it a philosophy of media archives (the program plug-ins) and resources, media production, art practice and is not so much being placed into a room, but two systems set in exchange – the invited artist’s and the program. Therefore we ask that the project fits into some aspect of exchange with the institution around for example video or audio media, like the Lithuanian videos we added to our collection. After a few years, there is an artist’s space program, with a collection of resources and overviews from projects, where one sees your transaction’ providing some of the scripting of the program, and leaving a trace.
itsme: (I moved the camera to eat a bit off camera)
urbanus: when you finish next question: could you be more explicit on the link with the historical, cultural and media memory (if we live through the history of film:).
itsme: In our first discussions, you were clearly perceiving „transaction” as ongoing project which linked to nation and identity, history and future as routed through gendered spatial narratives. What I think is felt, or palpable, is not the three points that mark off the transaction process’, but how these points assist in triangulating around a type of ‘void’ – one situated in regards to identifying the contemporary society concerning post 1989 Lithuania. So it joins notions of history and future to your own positions regarding the role of the artist within that society, and importantly, a uniquely Lithuanian set of issues that offers a new refraction on an old vantage point – an East perspective, yes, but now introducing itself in between a cultural West and East, i.e. America/Europe and Soviet Russia.
itsme: In that way, while there was this missing communication that is articulated through de/referring to national cinema and memory, it was not going towards nostalgia. The cinema resulted in a rich interface to the present, due to the way the one section of the population, women interviewees, are recalling films through the women’s roles, and within a specific national – Lithuanian – cinema, one that was already under the Soviet censor, and as you discovered, often only available in Moscow archives. It was easy to see how it could be well suited to the haus.0 philosophy, with its initiated projects such as Norman Klein’s Scripted Spaces, or Ruby Sircar’s a.m.p.
urbanus: transaction in a context of art practice, why do you see the potential to develop a collaborative framework or a model, considering the aspect of participation.
itsme: I think that’s more than this webprogram can handle, as I see my text gets cut off on the last sentences. But let me try…
itsme: Briefly, for the sake of this webwriting here, I won’t comment on what is art or artistic practice, but what I see important in sustaining a notion of artistic practice.
tsme: I was always attracted to the fact that the definition of ‘art’ is always open, and defining means decisions as to how is the field defined, which measures to go by, whether a combination of market, of historical examples, of comparison to other fields.
itsme: The idea in the education of other fields is to learn a discipline, whether architecture, engineering, or for the most part cinema and music, there is a sense of theory but also discipline to learn and finally achieve – to be judged and accepted into the field. But with art, it is almost the opposite – not to learn a discipline, but to understand the open definition, almost a paradox in terms of education – and then to bring that as a way to join perspectives.
urbanus: we experience this working with you.
itsme: So art practice for me takes this issue of an open definition, of always having to join perspectives to develop a field, however transitional, which is really perfect for the contemporary discourse of identity politics, of building spatial narratives and as most of my work has linked to, I have a certain orientation that reflects my interest in the „first-generation” notion of cultural identity, naturally as I myself belong in that set. It interests me in terms of how does media play a role in the society…
itsme: Thus my notion of art practice or methodology can be seen in the haus.0, as avoiding an architectural project, or a set of rooms, but setting up an institution based on supplying the issues I am interested and engaged in as an artist, through providing more and more parallel running scripts…
urbanus: transaction in relation with an art space?
itsme: The art space has many roles, at least for me. They don’t really require this idea of a fixed limit’ to test or push against (and access what?) but rather, to be constantly shaped by the issues a program or institution must bring with it. The art space exists in terms of unique operating relations, like any one of commercial, artist initiative, corporate, educational, non-profit, etc.. domains which have also had examples that may challenge their assumptions and audiences, whether in television, cinema, music, internet, university, etc… Take in this respect „transaction”, so specifically based on your lives within Vilnius society, could easily develop further on, and find itself developing an identity, a set of operating principles, relations around that, a community of interests, and with its various sections and discourses, realizing it is shaping a kind of art space – one that is drawn from the requirements of a project.