Field Rotation - Fatalist: The Repetition Of History (2013)

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Christoph Berg's latest Field Rotation full-length, Fatalist: The Repetition of History, is an even more satisfying collection than 2011's Acoustic Tales. Five years on from the project's inception, the new work reveals that Field Rotation has matured into a fully-formed and refined outlet for the electronic music composer's classically oriented compositional and production talents. The fatalistic notion of history endlessly repeating itself is the underlying concept, but no one need be acquainted with the philosophical works of Hegel and Nietzsche (and a related idea such as Eternal Recurrence) in order to reap the recording's rewards. For the six electro-acoustic settings, Berg augmented his violin and piano playing (plus, based on the aural evidence, field recordings and samples) with contributions from vocalist Mari Solaris on one piece and violincellist Aaron Martin on two.

The forty-two-minute recording's dramatic tone is set by the opening strings-heavy drone “The Uncanny,” but Fatalist: The Repetition of History really begins to distinguish itself with the advent of the second piece “Valse Fatale.” Solaris brings her haunting vocal presence to the piece, and her wordless singing deepens the music's mournful tone, especially when it's coupled with Martin's violincello playing and Berg's sparse piano accompaniment. Part of the pleasure involved in listening to Berg's music is that the means of production never intrude upon the pure experience of listening; though an undercurrent of vinyl crackle running through “Fatalist” suggests sampling, the listener's focus is rarely diverted away from the music into pondering how it was assembled and to what degree the elements in play are acoustic or electronic in nature. Outdoors field recordings figure heavily into “The Repetition of History,” though not so dominantly that the gently cascading piano and violincello phrases are drowned out.

At album's end, the dream-like “The History of Repetition” makes good on the album title and concept in using loops to fashion a softly undulating base of dust and mist over which a celestial choir can be heard intoning ever-so-faintly. As should be patently obvious by now, the recording's prevailing mood is, of course, melancholy, with Berg shaping the elements into oft-hypnotic soundscapes of fragile and serene character. That it makes its case in such concise manner also enhances its appeal. - textura.org

The liner notes curb the discussion at fate, but the track titles expand it to fatalism and recurrence. So before the music starts, composer Christoph Berg serves up the paradox that is the classical view of predestination. Most of our lives are out of our control already, without a visit at birth from the oracles and cauldron folk. The cycle of being born, growing old, becoming sick and dying is all but completely out of our hands. The cycles-within-cycles of cold weather and warm, storms and drought, freeze and thaw, planting and harvest bedevil us even now. The sudden job layoffs, erratic energy prices and dizzying macroeconomic cycles – for which we are ostensibly to blame as a whole – even more so.

That was not a terribly uplifting salutation, but Berg’s latest Field Rotation offering, Fatalist: The Repetition of History, is not an uplifting place. The blank patches of canvas – so warm and timbrous throughout Acoustic Tales – are space-cold here, and processed to sound space-distant. The upward glance is not star gazing, but star charting, a search for signs of determinism among the heavenly bodies. When pondering Jupiter’s designs for your fate, why not start by consulting his orbit?

Departures from previous material continue: the virtuosic meandering’s of Berg’s given-name debut Paraphrasesare simply abandoned here. The alloyed fog accumulates in its opening seconds, and the rest is pre-written: a slow, horizontal, ambient myth, starring a nihilistic performer, a siren, and a pantheon of vain gods conjuring stark magic. Yet it is more communal than Acoustic Tales, the title of which implies one man speaking without a microphone, as if to a small group. Here, Berg chairs a town hall meeting. The fact that we all die alone means we’re all in this together.

The brief tracklist begins with “The Uncanny,” no doubt a reference to Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud’s essay by the same name:

This invention of doubling as a preservation against extinction … [has] sprung from the soil of unbounded self-love, from the primary narcissism which dominates the mind of the child and of primitive man. But when this stage has been surmounted, the ‘double’ reverses its aspect. From having been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death.

It takes only this inaugural moment to realize that the same soil has engendered a much different harvest. We are aware of Berg’s violin, but not his bow, and the gorgeous ambient echoes belie a much larger room. WhereAcoustic Tales and Paraphrases transport us to an imagined place, it is still a place. Here there is no country, real or imagined. Or perhaps the country is Shakespeare’s undiscovered one, although that, too, is a misnomer, since the late playwright has indeed discovered it by now.

“Valse Fatale” begins with the siren described earlier, and a minimal, incremental bass. Waltz, indeed. Berg responds with piano and violin: an organic, perhaps birdsong effect that is simply hypnotic. “The Repetition of History” repeats it, what could become a historical riff. (The beauty at times seems to surprise even Berg. IfAcoustic Tales was sublime to the point of preening, Fatalism is strangely modest. The violinist seems to echo our own sentiment: What was that? I rather enjoyed it.) Album closer “The History of Repetition” is droning, choral, looping, and ever-celestial. The January doldrums have just lifted. The new year has announced itself with a new, achingly beautiful release from one of our most important composers.

Fatalist: The Repetition of History will be available for pre-order from Denovali in February, in CD, vinyl and digital formats. - Fred Nolan for Fluid Radio

Last I heard from Christoph Berg he was bidding adieu to the place he grew up and was leaving for good, the port city of Kiel, which he called a cold, oppressive place where the Baltic Sea and sky were always grey. His contribution to the “Rivers Home” set of ten, 3″ CDRs (Flaming Pines) was the most emotionally wrenching of the entire series. He may have left for Berlin, but he certainly has taken a heavy heart with him. “Fatalist: The Repetition of History” is drizzly, subtly textured, etched into a dark, foliated slate of drone.

Violinist, pianist and composer Berg trades under the name Field Rotation, blending acoustic instruments, natural and synthesized sounds into gentle undulations. Fatalism means eternal and inevitable iteration, and while each of these six pieces are cyclical, a slight variation can be heard in each new revolution. Critics seem to lean toward categorizing him as one of the so-called “indie classical” composers, but the album bears more of a family resemblance to The Caretaker´s “Persistent Repetition of Phrases” and his “Sadly, The Future is Not What it Was” released as Leyland Kirby , in spirit if not matching-fingerprint style. The disc is matte black stuck onto a matte black tray and the cover  art is Caspar David Friedrich romantic, an abandoned meadow over which the full moon cannot cast enough light, and the music unapoligetically spooky. But like Kirby´s work, it recreates memories that warm as they chill, which, like the title track, is “The Uncanny” thing about his work.

The worldless soprano of Mari Solaris dances slightly macabre with Aaron Martin´s cello on “Valse Fatale”, while Berg´s violin hearkens closest to Kirby´s haunted ballroom layered in cobwebs of vinyl crackle on the hesistant “Fatalist”. Characteristic for Field Rotation is the small gesture on a wide, otherwise empty stage, the effect all the more powerful for the space around it. “History (Fragment)” is a perfect example of his economy, just a few notes eddying ambiently until joined by piano, a melody that seems so familiar. “The Repetition of History” brings us back to the ashen shores of the Baltic and to Martin´s rasping cello in poised and restrained but dramatic elegy. Finally, “The History of Repetition” stretches twice the length of most of its predecessors, sublime contemplation of the drear landscape before him lifted into the realm of spirituality, underneath a huge sky, both near and very far away. - avantmusicnews.com/

The work that Christoph Berg produces in his Field Rotation guise is darker than the work he produces under his own name.  The timbre is smoky and grey.  The passages seep across the sound field, acting more like tendrils than trunks.  One can imagine being lost in the woods as a deep mist drenches and descends.  If Berg’s work is mid-spring, then Field Rotation is late fall, when the world is growing more mysterious.

Acoustic Tales, released in 2011, was more immediate than Fatalist, so the sprawling nature of the new album may catch some listeners by surprise.  The elements are still present: creeping strings, thoughtful piano chords, occasional operatic ooohs.  This time around, the music seems content to coil without striking, reflecting the nature of the title.  Fatalist honors the theory that all things are cyclical, but does so with the weary resignation of an Ecclesiastes rather than with the joy of Japanese art.  In this mindset, history repeats itself like nature; we are doomed to make the same mistakes all over again.  (Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park quipped that we aren’t making the same mistakes, we’re making new ones.)  It’s not clear whether Berg shares this worldview, but on this album, he effectively expounds upon it.  It’s impossible to be motivated by this music, which seems to whisper, stay in bed, stop trying, it’s no use.

The first half of the album stays away from overt repetition, which makes it more engaging.  Strings and samples do repeat – after all, the subtitle is The Repetition of History - but they do so more gently than the piano in the second half.  Ironically, the most engaging track is the one that is almost not there: the ultra-quiet title piece, in which atmosphere trumps music.  In this piece, static pops resist the soft interruption of strings, rather than the other way around.  By the end of this stark album, the repetition itself has become a burden, which may be the point.  In the same way as Buddhists seek to escape the cycle of death and rebirth, those listening to this album may find that they do not agree with fatalism, at least on a smaller scale, and may discover the impetus to change.  (Richard Allen)

acloserlisten.com/

Available here

Field Rotation was founded 2008 by the electronic music composer and producer Christoph Berg in Kiel, Northern Germany. Experimenting with electronic and classical elements this project combines floating soundscapes with electroacoustic colours to create minimalistic soundtracks renouncing of visualisation but interacting with the listeners emotions and feelings. As a violinist and pianist Christoph combines the synthetic sound engineering with natural sounds to communicate his short acoustic tales and impressions.

After various EPs, remixes, collaborations, and compilation contributions, his main release so far, the album 'Acoustic Tales', was released in 2011. It is certainly an understatement to say that 'Acoustic Tales' received a positive response from both the general audience and the music press:

"like a melancholic Max Richter – but just as beautiful as his music" (Jazzthetik)

"a stylistic flair rarely seen in today's over-populated musical landscape." (The Silent Ballet)

"a work which will doubtlessly cause the last minute re-writing of many 'best of 2010' lists (…) appeal(s) to fans of Rachel's, Max Richter or perhaps Peter Broderick." (Futuresequence)

"unexpected, devastating, and timeless work." (The Muse In Music)

"eleven acoustic tales of stirring beauty" (Morpheus Music)

"... one of the most haunting albums of the year." (Fluid Radio)

With his new album Field Rotation concentrates on the more classically based production, continuing and expanding upon the musical idea of his 'Acoustic Tales' project. 'Fatalist: The Repetition of History' is marked by a noticeable inner fragility, the contrast between bitter harshness and stirring melancholy. In the fatalist view of history, the ancient Greeks thought that just as the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter repeat themselves every year, history would do the same and follow a cyclic course. This may or may not be true, however, Field Rotation has certainly succeeded once again in composing an album which will ease as many minds as it will thoroughly shake.

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910-1983) - As far as science goes we have only looked in the mirror, not at what is concealed behind

Još '50-ih Von Bruenchenhein je vidio ono što miksroskopi i teleskopi vide tek danas. Ali i više - vidio je da je znantvena materija samo osnovnoškolsko štrebersko pojednostavljenje beskrajnih eruptivnih energija.


www.vonbruenchenhein.com/

Von Bruenchenhein was born in Wisconsin in 1910, and worked in a bakery during the 10 years (1954-1963) that the bulk of his work was completed. Very early on, Von Bruenchenhein would paint on the panels of boxes that he would bring home from the bakery. Then, he moved into painting on canvas with brushes. But, in 1954, Von Bruenchenhein’s technique changed and he started to paint on board with his fingers. In 1955, he began to add a white or cream base coat and he would scrape the paint with bakery tools, combs, and quills which would reveal the undercoat, adding an entirely new dimension to his work. Finally, in 1956, Von Bruenchenhein had mastered his own technique, and he would spend the next 5 years painting like a maniac! Von Bruenchenhein produced almost 1,100 paintings in his lifetime. Unfortunately, he was never successful in selling his work or gaining any recognition during his lifetime. It has only been in the last several years that the importance of Von Bruenchenhein’s work has come to be realized. As part of the Centennial Celebration of Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, a huge collection of Von Bruenchenhein’s work is available in 22 separate galleries on www.vonbruenchenhein.com for download as high-resolution files! I recommend downloading a couple of these amazing pieces of art and having them printed and framed before the offer is no longer available! Gallery: A Dream May Be Forever, EVB #598 Gallery: The Search for Paradise, EVB #672 Gallery: Transitory Enigma, EVB #742 EUGENE  VON  BRUENCHENHEIN  1910 – 1983 No 796  The Filament of Ages April 12 – 1959   Oil on Masonite panel 24 x 24 inches OUR NIGHT OF LIFE Paintings, Sculpture, Photography, Poetry, Philosophy     Our Night of Life    In dreams we float To other worlds And other shores, To salvage what we may, To build and beautify Our night of life. Eugene Von Bruenchehein, “Freelance Artist, Poet and Sculptor, Inovator [sic], Arrow maker and Plant man, Bone artifacts constructor, Photographer and Architect, Philosopher”, never really found contentment in the real world, except in his love for his wife Marie.  His was the world of dreams, ideas, of escaping, traveling to far off undiscovered worlds beyond Earth.   I journeyed to the edge of Universe Where stars collide and end in dust The junk yard of the Universe Where inky darkness lasts from millenium to millenium Far – Far – into the unwanted portion of time. . .  Born in the year that Halley’s comet passed by our planet, Von Bruenchenhein spent much of his life exploring the unseen and unexplained relationships inherent in living things – human, cosmic, and everything in between.  He sought and provided answers to the largest of questions.  “Why is there no wall beyond the fringe of Universe?  Because something always lies beyond a wall, And because no Universe can be contained.”  Our Night of Life celebrates this extraordinary vision, through which nature is infinitely fluid, continually revealing new aspects of itself. It is now twenty-four years since Eugene Von Bruenchenhein’s works came into public light, and since that time our examination of his work still has not had the time to fully comprehend the many facets of his artistic vision, within the many mediums in which he worked.  The works themselves are journeys into their meanings, but the artist’s writings – less well know than the paintings, sculptures, and photos – add yet another dimension to his world.  Von Bruenchenhein formulated elaborate “Bruenchenesian” theories, postulating on the complexity of nature and our ability to know it.  In one selection he suggests that only one of nature’s planes is visible through a scientific lens:                         We consider ourselves so smart and yet after the                         great length of time man has lived on Earth he has just                         scratched the surface of knowledge. . . As far as science goes                         we have only looked in the mirror, not [at] what is concealed                         behind. . . Von Bruenchenhein spent hours looking at drops of water through a microscope, and was equally concerned with a macrocosmic order, evident in musings and paintings about the worlds beyond ours.  He made exceptionally convincing paintings of  “Lines of Force Contained” and “Lines of Force Released”, pictorializing what science could only express in numeric formulae.  Now, one only needs to pick up a New York Times daily newspaper in which a recent photograph by the Hubbell Telescope is featured revealing some amazing new cosmic cataclysm or ein had already traveled there.

An Artist Couple’s Domestic Gesamtkunstwerk

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (1910-1983) was a self-taught artist from Wisconsin. He worked in a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography and poetry. Below are images of his wife Marie (Eveline Kalke Von Bruenchenhein - "Marie").

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Photograph of the Artist's Wife Marie, 1940s, 9 1/4 x 7 1/8"

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Montage Photograph of the Artist's Wife Marie, 1940s,9 1/8 x 7 1/8"

"Von Bruenchenhein met his wife Marie in 1939 during a visit to Wisconsin State Fair Park, located just a few blocks from his family's home. After a three-and-one-half-year courtship, they began a forty-year marriage that ended only with the artist's death in 1983. Beginning in the early 1940s, Marie became the subject of literally thousands of black-and white photographs taken by him. He developed the prints himself in their bathroom.

Inspired by the 1940s pinup aesthetic, Von Bruenchenhein's photographs are strangely erotic tableaux. They often feature Marie posed seminude before lush, floral cloth backdrops. She also appears enveloped in yards of bright satin or draped in imitation leopard skin and other patterned fabrics. In many images, she wears multiple pearl necklaces or dons a sparkling make-believe crown fashioned by the artist from a tin can and Christmas tree ornaments. Marie, transformed by her exotic costuming, assumed the fictional roles of seductress, ingenue, glamour queen, pinup girl, and movie star, all before the relentless voyeuristic gaze of Von Bruenchenhein's camera. During the 1950s, Marie enacted even more lavishly costumed charades for a series of over two thousand color slide images. She also helped her husband to hand color many of his earlier photographs of her."

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, 35 mm Color Slide Image of the Artist's Wife Marie, 1950s

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, 35 mm Color Slide Image of the Artist's Wife Marie, 1950s

"Marie! Marie!
I long for you thru the dusky,
Hollow, fading, years.
The memory of blossom lips;
Of starry eyes; of devine being,
Mingle to form a picture,
Where the sole joy of living
Manifests itself in the laughter
And lovliness of youth!
The tremor of a singing heart;
The whisper of a soft voice;
The movement of a summer blossom
In summers breezes;
Virtues that permeate the very
Charm of living!

Oh Marie! These and these alone
I would remember.
For these were you!"
(poem by Eugene Von Bruenchenhein)

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Eugene Thinks of Marie: Montage by Eugene, 1940s,
10 x 5 1/2"

(source for photographs, poem and quote: Eugene Von Bruenchenhein: Obsessive Visionary, published by John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin © 1988)


Looking at the photograph above, Eugene Thinks of Marie: Montage by Eugene, makes me think about sources of inspiration and creativity, and the role of the artist's muse, andCarl Jung's concept of the anima ...

"The anima is a personification of all feminine psychological tendencies in a man's psyche, such as vague feelings and moods, prophetic hunches, receptiveness to the irrational, capacity for personal love, feeling for nature, and-- last but not least-- his relation to the unconscious. It is no mere chance that in olden times priestesses (like the Greek Sibyl) were used to fathom the divine will and to make connection with the gods.

A particularly good example of how the anima is experienced as an inner figure in a man's psyche is found in the medicine man and prophets (shamans) among the Eskimo and other arctic tribes. Some of these even wear women's clothes or have breasts depicted on their garments, in order to manifest their inner feminine side -- the side that enables them to connect with the "ghost land" (i.e., what we call the unconscious).

One reported case tells of a young man who was being initiated by an older shaman and who was buried by him in a snow hole. He fell into a state of dreaminess and exhaustion. In this coma he suddenly saw a woman who emitted light. She instructed him in all he needed to know and later, as his protective spirit, helped him to practice his difficult profession by relating him to the powers of the beyond. Such an experience shows the anima as the personification of a man's unconscious.

...The most frequent manifestations of the anima takes the form of erotic fantasy..."

www.hesitationwaltz.com/

HOW THIS GOT STARTED

I first saw Eugene Von Bruenchenhein’s paintings in 2003. I found them mysterious and evocative, and full of energy. The more I looked at them, the more they expanded beyond the borders of the frame. They seemed to carry with them a complex history, as if they were glimpses of a world distant from our own. Many appeared to depict an event—on land, underwater, or in deep space—drawn from some alien cosmogony. The paintings were relatively inexpensive, so I purchased a few. A couple of years later, I purchased a few more. And a few more. I loved the places they took me and the power they had to stimulate my imagination. Finally, my enthusiasm for the paintings reached the point that I wanted to share them. So, in May, 2009, we launched vonbruenchenhein.com.

Gallery: Hidden and Precious, EVB #502

VON BRUENCHENHEIN, THE PAINTER

EVB—Gene to his wife and friends—was born in Wisconsin, married a local girl, and worked in a bakery during the ten years that he completed his most imaginative pieces, 1954-1963. The two of them lived in a small house that had belonged to EVB’s father, and they barely got by. His first paintings were on panels of boxes that he brought home from the bakery. As his devotion to painting increased, he would purchase paint and boards from a local art supply store. Gene worked without an easel, on the kitchen table. On summer nights, he’d put up a couple of floodlights and paint in the back yard. Most of his paintings were completed in a single frenzied session, one to three hours in length. His neighbors regarded him as a weird character. EVB saw himself as a great artist, but was unsuccessful in selling his work or gaining any recognition. By his own accounting, he completed 1,080 paintings. When he died, his small house was crammed from floor to ceiling with them.

Initially, he painted with brushes on canvas. Then in 1954 his technique changed. He started painting on board with his fingers. In 1955, he began to treat his board surfaces with a white or cream undercoat, and in addition to using his fingers, he began to scrape the paint with combs, quills, and bakery tools, revealing the undercoat beneath. His experiments with this technique proceeded through 1955 with a limited color palette. Then in 1956 his technique took a quantum leap and his colors went wild. He painted like a madman for about five years, producing a staggering number of images. Then his energy flagged, along with his health. The quality of his pieces became sporadic—brilliant things mixed with less brilliant—until 1963, at which time his painting ceased.

Prior to 1954, EVB spent a decade taking photographs, mostly of his wife Marie. After 1963, he devoted himself to sculpture. He returned to painting in the late 70s, just before his death. Everything EVB produced bears evidence of his great energy and imagination. But the paintings completed during 1954-1963 are extraordinary. There are roughly 950 of them, about 70% of which have been documented by museums and the estate that survived the artist. The rest have either vanished or are in private hands. About 80 were given away by EVB during his lifetime, and many of these have never surfaced. Some have undoubtedly been destroyed. Others may be gathering dust in a closet or attic.

VON BRUENCHENHEIN AND MODERN ART

From the standpoint of the art world, EVB is an outsider. He was self-taught and worked in isolation. He was first embraced by the Outsider Art, Art Brut, and Folk Art communities. His sculptures, especially, said “Folk Art” because of the materials he used. But EVB’s paintings are unlike what is generally seen in the Folk Art domain. The painting style isn’t primitive. It shows great skill. EVB was a master of technique. It just happened to be his own.

EVB has more in common with artists like Bosch and Brueghel and Goya. He has a lot in common with William Blake and Max Ernst. He also has a lot in common with a novelist and story writer like Arthur Machen, and a recording artist like Jim Morrison. My own struggle to understand what gripped me and why, led to a theory of kinship and a simple definition. So here it is, for whoever might be interested.

Gallery: Hidden and Precious, EVB #670

STRANGERS AMONG US

Most people are content to live in this world. But a few of us would prefer to be somewhere else. There are lots of reasons for a disengagement from reality, but without getting into causes, people who want to disengage, and have a lively imagination and some creative ability, may choose art as a means of creating and living in a different world. For these people, their “vision” of a world apart becomes the chief reality. That’s a different kind of life, and it produces a different kind of art. The individuals I’m thinking of have two simple identifying traits:

A DIFFERENT WORLD AND A MORE PROFOUND ONE

First, they have a desire or compulsion to set the everyday world aside in preference to another world. Second, they believe that the world they have envisioned is more profound and more real than the everyday world. Plato compared day-to-day existence with life in a cave. Above the cave, he said, there was a different world with better lighting, and that world was the more important one. That’s the Visionary perspective. The envisioned world may be blissful or full of torment. Sometimes it has elements of both heaven and hell. But it is a world apart from the one we live in, and, to them, it is more important.

www.vonbruenchenhein.com/introduction/

Horst Haack - Chronographie Terrestre

Tekstualno-kolažni dnevnici. Prijepis unutrašnjeg sadržaja informacijske bombe. Manijakalni, srednjovjekovni obračun sa svijetom.


www.horsthaack.com/

Terrestrial Terroaring: A Dialogue with Horst Haack

by jivinladybug

In the glossy &colorful March/April 2011 issue of Art Actuel, there is much for the eye to feast upon. However, amidst the retinal smorgasbord & “innovative” brouhaha, there are four full page spreads, featuring 22×17 cm. square upon 22×17 cm. square of human bodies morphing full-on mutant against a dense multilingual curtain of text.

The vying violence lances at you amidst a fragmented landscrape of phrases detritused from English, German & French as bio-illogical forms are freeze-framed into an eternal scream, as if the Emergency Broadcasting System screep blossomed into cyclone-clots of color.

These panels are the latest additions to Chronographie Terrestre (Work in Progress), the 30-year long opus of German artist Horst Haack. Diminutively dubbed a “visual diary,” Haack counters our GO! GO! GO! capitilesst attention spans & carefully & obsessively chronicles how we’re collectively swallowed by the avalanching discourse that surrounds us.

What’s striking about Haack’s work is the infinite variation that he finds in repetition: while each 22 X 17 cm. frame in Chronographie (& oftentimes his other works) has the same basic layout, the images always present a new angle upon the work’s larger themes.

A witty and sometimes whimsical commentator, Haack generously agreed to an email exchange. (For more pictures and information on Haack, visit his website: http://www.horsthaack.com/index.html)

Jared: Your art makes extensive use of written texts from multiple languages. For me, your use of these texts seems to have two thrusts: 1.) they are words to be read and 2.) material objects to be manipulated. How do you see the written word operating in your art? What do you see as the relationship between word and image here?

Horst: Yes the words/phrases, text-collages in my art are meant to be read. They function in a field, where colors, forms and images stimulate the text. They paint and tint the meanings/semantics and vice versa. Or boy meets girl, word and image alternate and produce another third body of meaning.

Jared: I’m interested in this 3rd body of meaning! Do you see this body of meaning as another form of visual communication or does it use the combination of word/image to create meanings beyond the visual realm? In other words, does the juxtaposition of images and words produce meanings that are not physically present within the work?

Horst: Think of a photograph showing a beautiful boy or girl. Now you have written information with it: “this person has tested HIV positive today.” Same picture but the legend: “this youth jumped off the bridge into the river without knowing how to swim and saved a child from drowning.” Would you not experience with the same picture two different “3rd bodies of meaning”? Now imagine the same two legends with the photograph of a dog.

Jared: Cool scenarios to illustrate your point! Now that we’ve discussed the word/image relationship, I was wondering if we could talk about each of them separately. Let’s start with the images. Whether it’s Chronographie Terrestre, your other installations, or your books, you produce these remarkable representations of the human body undergoing often violent transformations. What attracts to you to creating this kind of imagery?

Horst: In the old days, people used to go, on market days, to see the side show. They paid and looked at unbelievable things, like a woman with three legs or a calf with two heads. People love to experience the unusual; they still do nowadays in film and TV. Still, the artist wants to tell/draw what he feels, what he saw. He does not want to tell, that he saw nothing/felt nothing or very little. I do not see that I am exaggerating. What I do seems natural to me. I cannot see that I am overstating. I am probably born with this twisted view.

Jared: You’ve visually collaborated with a wide range of written texts: T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste-Land,” The Revelation of Saint John, a letter from Ulrike Meinhof, etc. What kinds of texts do you find particularly useful for your artwork?

Horst: The wide range of authors you talk about is rather narrow, four or five authors. Most of my books show my own texts. The Revelation is probably the most moving and mighty and original text-collage ever mounted. Beside this fact is The Revelation to me a very personal affair, an intimate affair with Albrecht Dürer. Exactly 5oo years after A.D. I simply tried to top his version. I chose Eliot because “The Waste-Land: is stuffed with powerful illuminated metaphors, also a collage. Eliot has to my knowledge never been done. When I read the Ulrike Meinhof letter first, it gave me the creeps, goose pimples… an account on her own “white torture”.  I had to get up, walk around while reading it. I decided to make the words visible. I am sure it is a German affair. And still like so many I am against torture.

Jared: Your last response opened up another avenue of interest: How much of your text-collages comes from other sources and how much is your own writing (from journals or what not)? Why is collage such a useful tool for your art? Is it meant to give your work more of a political edge by rooting it in society’s crazy intersection of voices and discourses?

Horst: Our thinking, awareness, our desires and souvenirs are collage. Our life is collage, our dreams. Isn’t it? Sources: about a third is written in German ( my journal, notes) also the meandering passages, the linguistic links to French and English (news, headlines, reports from nature, politics and arts, sports, curiosities, etc.) are given in German. I want my art to be rooted in the present.

Jared: What comes first in your work, the images or the texts? Or is it different with each work? Also, your imagery focuses extensively on biological life-forms and even at their most abstract, your pictures have a recognizably cellular quality. Is there a political/ecological advocacy in such a focus, an attempt to capture how the present day is affecting/transforming organic life?

Horst: In my Chronographie every sheet of every panel begins with the image. The text follows. No, there is no ecological quest. I am hardly aware of what you call “biological life-forms”. Even blindfolded (and I have tried) my drawings and scribblings turn into cellular structures. It’s like leaving your fingerprints while playing chess or piano without gloves.

Jared: Your work seems to be primarily displayed in galleries/museums, but you experiment in media associated with mass-distribution such as books. Have you thought of publishing your art in book form rather than displaying it in the gallery setting?Chronographie Terrestre would also seem to operate quite nicely as a book or an interactive digital archive. What do you feel the relationship between art and the emerging digital technologies should be?

Horst: Tapestry, mosaic, fresco, vase-painting, only to name a few, have already vanished. As serious art forms they don’t exist anymore. Lithography, etching, woodcut have become rare techniques. Painting, photography will probably follow. I am not familiar with digital art. I have done for some years lecture-performances with my panels via a video camera. I stopped that after having seen a film of one of the sessions. Not good enough, to my taste. Anyway, most video art I have seen looked like dilettante film to me. I am probably too old for these techniques.

Jared: Since I’ve been asking question primarily about your methods, I was thinking that maybe we could change gears & talk about your views on art overall. What do you see as art’s primary goal? Or does it (should it) even have one?

Horst: No Jared, I cannot tell what art is about. You are almost asking for the meaning of life. We don’t know it. Some need art to alter their existence, some need art to decorate their walls, others try to make money. There is no answer to what art is, to my knowledge. Nobody knows what art is, some will tell you what art is not. But that of course seems much easier. I think we should come back to simpler questions.

Jared: You seem to be a very international artist. Where do you find the best reception for your work?

Horst: My work has been shown in different countries, but that does not make me an international artist. Reception I have known little. Naturally, countries in which the languages English, French and German are spoken or understood are an advantage for the reception. Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and so forth. Small countries like Luxemburg are very good at languages and art friends there will probably have an easy access to my world.

Jared: How has your artwork changed over the years and what has prompted those changes?

Horst: One day when I had finished installing the cabinet/ cage consisting of 76 panels, I said to the friend who had helped me, “Amazing, how the images, how the whole work has changed through the years.” He looked at it. “Yes ,” he said, “naturally, it is because you’ve stayed the same.” He was right. The world had changed. It does so every day, every hour.

Jared: Despite the changes in your art, you consistently use very lush, violent, and brilliant colors. What kinds of colors do you find the most productive? What do you think color adds to an artwork?

Horst: Take a vermillion red, paint some cherries and you may get haiku. Take ink blue, do the cherries and you get none. That is what color adds. On one hand, you have color without form, on the other form without color. Both together will increase /heighten /enhance each other considerably. I don’t like colors that remind me of vomitus.

Jared: Do you seek to elicit certain kinds of responses from viewers of your art? Or do you do prefer to leave the interpretation open to them?

Horst: No. I don’t have anything to teach. I hope my images are precise and attracting enough to raise the right questions. It’s up to the viewer to find the right answers.

Jared: So then do your artworks try to start a dialogue with their viewers? During your exhibitions, have you gotten a chance to observe viewers’ reactions to those artworks? If so, what kinds of responses were generated? One question that has been in my mind for a while is how both writers & visual artists can still engage audiences in a contemporary culture bombarded with texts & images. How does one stop their work from being passively absorbed as part of the information-flooded landscape?

Horst: You are right: our presence is bombarded with information like never before, with images and words. Nobody can assure that an artwork containing these elements will not be consumed as a poster or an advertising. How does an active onlooker behave? I have no idea. Most the time, visitors to my exhibitions complain about the complicated interaction between image and word. Children and youth have no problem with diving into the wall of panels and discover. Having grown up with comics instead with Proust or Twain, young art-lovers have much less difficulties. A possible dialogue with the audience would be that I ask the questions and the viewer tries the answer.

Jared: How was the response to this most recent show?

Horst: It is complicated. If an artist asks you what you think of his work, he secretly or openly wants to be praised. And of course, he wants you to say the truth. So I never ask.

Jared: What has attracted you to creating long-term projects like Chronographie Terrestre? Do such projects allow you to address topics or attempt experiments in a way that one-shot projects cannot? What’s keeps you motivated to adding to such projects?

Horst: I have artist friends whose studio, livingroom, bedroom, cave and garage are filled up with paintings that nobody wants. When I came to live in Paris in 1979, nobody wanted my stuff and I decided to shrink. Since I was poor, I choose a small format and poor materials, any piece of paper with the size 22×17 cm. It still is the same. 3o pieces made one month to begin with. As I said, nobody wanted what I was doing, so I was free to do anything of real concern without any consideration. The motivation was and probably still is to witness, to give testimony, to express: Horst has lived.

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