Interview – Willem Elias
Willem Elias is Professor at the Free University of Brussels and chairman of the department of Social and Cultural Agogics. Besides that he is also an art critic and president of the HISK, Kwasimodo and Kunstwerk(t).
I would like to start with an open question. What is the role of a museum in our contemporary high-technological and multimedial society? What could be the function of ‘a museum’?
This is a rather simple question, but this doesn’t mean that there is a simple answer. But it also is an interesting question. The multimedia lack one thing according to me. They are so close to fiction, to the virtuality, that they are far away from reality. Now, what is reality? Reality is materiality. I’m an extreme materialist, for me there is only matter. For example the body is the sum of the senses. And all the rest that this brings a long – for example the brains – this all is body. And this body needs experiences.
Considering this, a museum is a wonderful place to get these experiences. A sort of laboratory or maybe even better, a space of concentration. It’s a space to experience like there are other spaces where you can experience: a bed, a church, a temple, the mountains… Within the cultural landscape the museum is a very important place that has one important difference with other cultural spaces like the theatre or the concert hall. Of primordial importance is the absence of seats that are in fact a sort of prison. In contrary to the Opera of Peking where you can run around during a performance and laugh and drink a beer, we normally enter a theatre to sit still. When you are to late the door is closed and you can’t go in or out anymore. In the spirit of Foucault this turns into a panopticon, a specific way of looking. It’s “not done†to look next to you, because this could mean that you have an unhealthy fascination for your neighbour.
The museum on the contrary allows this. The museum actually allows a constant possibility to come and go when you like. Unfortunately only during office hours. People still don’t see it enough as a space of experience, but rather as a ‘museum’ where you come to look at objects. But you can organise your own time as you like to. You pass by one peace of art, but at the next you wait for a while. You can move around in the space, you can go every direction. Come closer, take a step back, decide your own rhythm, get back on your steps, from back to front… All these different possibilities make the museum a very special world of experience. What does a museum keep? Off course a museum keeps knowledge. But maybe for me that’s the least interesting.
Are we talking here about the museum in general or one certain museum?
I’m especially thinking about the museum as a space for collecting and (re)presenting art. The traditional arts museum.
The museum is a place where the knowledge of art itself is to be found. You need knowledge about art to experience art. Although you can experience art without having knowledge about it, and this is one of the most important things of the museum according to me. In contrary to the performing arts where you are stuck to your seat for at least two hours, you can go to the museum to have a taste according to your own rhythm. You can get familiar with this and that.
Often this knowledge of art also gives knowledge about the world. But this window on the world like the museology calls this so beautifully is in fact not that interesting. The difference between window and world is too small in a museum. The interesting fact is that it isn’t a window on the world, but that itself is a window. It is the ‘world making’ by the artist himself who creates a world by making a piece of art. This again is this nice post-modern idea that comes floating above. I’m a postmodernist, but not in the –ism sense of the word, with the trendy connotation. For me postmodernism is the application of modernism on itself. It was the consequence of a modernism that needed freedom and extremities and suddenly came to the conclusion that it became ‘tradition’ itself. That the mechanism and the dynamics of renewal were in a downward spiral. They had become the old, and the only thing they could do was to give some sort of renewed self-criticism.
That’s why it is difficult to make a distinction between modernism and postmodernism. Why should the extremities of Dadaism and the extremities of the new Dadaism – pop art – be different? They maybe look similar, but they are certainly not the same. The avant-garde still is a reaction against tradition. While Postmodernism is more a ‘playing with’ and ‘questioning of’ tradition, also the tradition that modernism had become. In fact Postmodernism is the acceptance of the tradition that modernism became and it wants to make a game out of it. The rules of the game where made during modernism and the postmodernists in their turn are playing with them. There is no need to say: you can’t paint a figure here. No, I make an abstract painting, and tomorrow another one and I put a funny figure on it. In the fifties this would have meant that you where excommunicated out of the group of abstract painters. Which in fact was not logical since modern art was founded because they where excluded. So, in fact they can’t exclude. But the funny figure would have been forbidden at a certain moment in time.
The “everything is possible, nothing can be forbidden†as a modernist principle had arrived in a situation where not everything was possible anymore. For postmodernists this idea is of the upper most importance. There is an appreciation for objects, and for perception too, for interpretation. One of the most important post-modern ideas is that the work of art may be created in first instance by the artist but that the spectator is as much important in the interpretation of the work of art.
I would like to react on that. It is interesting that you are talking about this world of experience. A lot of the multimedia-discourse that one encounters has the same critique as you have on looking to a work of art within a closed framework. The discourse of Interactive Art will almost say the same things about figurative art in museums today in the way that you are talking about the performing arts. How does the presence of interactive art in a museum relates to this?
Another question. Besides that you have talked about this playing with tradition, in which the museum is a rather traditional context and the visitor has a rather traditional role vis-a-vis the work of art. From the perspective of new media this role has changed profoundly. The postmodernist idea that the spectator creates the signification of a work of art his or herself is really relevant when we are talking about interactive art.
I agree completely. I only would like to say that whatever is being used of new media, it never can be a replacement of ‘materiality’, of the sensitivity of the work of art. But New Media off course are making this aspect of interpretation much more important. And also the communication about it. An important post-modern idea is that the meaning of a work of art is the sum of the many interpretations that are accorded to it, just like Roland Barthes said. It is the sum of all the things that are said about a work of art, even internal monologues. These internal monologues – and this is the beauty of this interactivity – now can be exteriorised. Not only by writing or saying it, but by inserting it into a circuit and placing it into a network. As a locus where an infinity of communication can come to live this is the best you can get, but as a tool. It can’t be viewed as a replacement of the direct senses. Otherwise you don’t need a girlfriend neither, than you can go to a chatroom.
A while a go I was at DEAF04 and there Arjen Mulder gave a lecture that is closely related to our talk. He looks at the work of art as a system, especially in the creation of it. He referred to Cézanne who said that his work evolved with every paintbrush. But at a certain moment this work, this system, inevitably is being closed down. The traditional figurative work of art eventually becomes a sort of closed system. And the theory that Arjen Mulder is working on claims that interactive art is more about open systems of which the significance keeps changing and in which by the interaction with the spectator a network of systems comes to live.
I don’t completely agree with this because it means that he takes an or/or stance while I believe it is an and/and discussion. And then the openness of Cézanne… Off course Cézanne isn’t open, he is the predecessor of Phenomenology in the arts and a perfect example of an artist who was ahead of his time. Cézanne is pure Phenomenology, he kept painting this apple for so long until you really started to see this apple in its essence. Not an apple but thé apple, not a mountain, but thé mountain.
Maybe a different vision of the museum is possible, as a world of experience. What do you think of an example like Roseware by Constant and Chris Marker. There is very little archived about it and there is not much left of it, but the aim was rather to create a workplace. The process was more important then the creation of a product, do you think that this is a legitimate function of a museum? The idea and the context where more important than the product that came out of it.
Here I would first like to make a distinction. In fact I don’t believe in museums for conceptual art. I think they shouldn’t exist. For this kind of art you need a space that doesn’t carry the word museum. You need a different terminology which confirms ‘the contemporary’ and which makes sure that the actuality isn’t compromised by the word ‘museum’ which in fact refers to conservation. The work of art in it’s creation, in it’s coming to live must have the right not to be kept in existence. This is a right that every work of art should have. But on the other hand people must be able to keep things.
So what I’ve just been talking about concerns the exhibiting of the contemporary on the one hand an the conservation of things that are relevant of being kept on the other hand. This is an important distinction but I think it is a wrong use of the word museum because it is firmly connected to the place in which you keep things and of which you think that they are worth for being kept.
This should be separated from its other function, namely the things that you today think are worth of being kept. But not everything that is being kept is worth it of being kept, this off course is an unsolvable problem. You have to keep in the first place to be kept afterwards. This isn’t that simple. What certainly is wrong, is that by using this word museum some sort of power comes to live. The consequence is that everything that happens is museal and this in fact is a value statement.
There are also art critics who make a plea to conserve the relations that are being made between the work of art and the public.
For me this is possible but you have to be aware that you don’t make a caricature of which in fact is meant to disappear. You can prefer the process of course, but why destroy the process by making a product out of it. A museum – and this was the critique of the avant-garde at a certain time – a museum is not a museum but a mausoleum. The museum kills our art and maybe this is true. Maybe you have to be careful that you don’t do this. Maybe you just have to let things go its way and let the people that work in a museum decide wetter you have to keep something or not.
I would not try to record every artistic process in such a manner that it becomes a product, because then you have a pseudo idea of this process. This is important, so I’m not an advocate of this. This brings along the big problem of ‘disposable art’. Let the right to the artist that which should rot also rots. Make a picture of it but don’t conserve it to conserve the work of art. Describe these things and conserve this.
In fact everybody at home should have a pot of mussels. That man (Broodhaerts, KR) had an idea, give him some copyright, but make your own pot of mussels. The same with the urinary of Duchamp. There should have been a system by which Duchamp could make a living of his ready made idea. You could have payed a sort of authors rights to Duchamp and then put your own urinary in your living room. Pure replica’s shouldn’t be in a museum, you can better put them in a book about art history. I think it is non-sense that when a process is so important, you have to make a product out of it.
To come back to this first question on Interactivity. One of the aims why I started this weblog is because in the past you could read a lot about the museum that had to adapt to the Digital Era. Especially because this digitization made a lot of the themes of postmodernism all of the sudden possible. Different perspectives that can be compared and the spectator that becomes more important. It seems to me that at a certain moment this discourse has stopped for a while and people have left the museum alone.
I think they better should do this. Art education is my speciality and what I regret is that often they don’t get much further in a museum than offering a text to read. You should be able to study and appreciate the art together with different people. Like for instance when you see the website of a restaurant. There you see different people leaving their opinion behind. It would be great to have this kind of communication about a museum but this doesn’t’ change the art work itself. In the future the process of creation will become the product and this is wrong according to me.
And to close of, when we are talking about museology, do you think the museum can go much further in the way they are presenting collections?
In its mode of exhibiting the museum is rather weak. Certainly when you look at permanent collections. I have the feeling that collections barely are put together with any interpretative relationship. One should be aware that looking at one work can influence looking at another work. Collections often are sorted by time, by sort, by genre. And the postmodern museum on the contrary wants to go a bit to far the other way, it becomes too associative. The should be a balance But I like the dynamics that comes forth of seeing collections as big interpretative wholes.
I want to plea for a museum that doesn’t show too much in one time. One visit to a museum cannot be enough. It should be something where you often go to. Like for instance a church. Just like a church a museum should be a place for reflection. For me it is a space to experience atheism. For me figurative art is atheism.
Brussels, 20th November 2004