Redefining an Active Reader
Molly Kleiman
courtesy of the artist
Molly Kleiman: In each issue of Artic, numerous artists respond to a given theme with original, innovative, reproducible works. As one of the co-creators of this publication, what would you note as the genesis of this project?
Lotus T. Brinkmann: The concept of Artic has been the same since its foundation in 1993, combining contributions from various disciplines–scientific essays, prose, poems and pieces of art. Since the second edition, all contributions have had to deal with a certain topic, which then was "Ausschweifung" (dissipation, excess). In later editions we dealt with "Bastard" or "Orange." In the present edition, Artic is dealing with "Stimme" (voice, vote). Important is the ambiguity of the topic: That it contains positive as well as negative aspects, and that its meaning within society is not clearly defined.
MK: And then you collate these various art projects in print–why use this reproducible, archaic form? Also, is Artic handmade?
LB: Artic appears in an edition of 1,000 copies, and one can say they are handmade. Therefore we don’t regard Artic to be "only" a magazine, but it’s also a multiple. In each edition there is at least one piece of art that the artist directly worked into the magazine. In "Stimme" it’s the contribution of Patrick Borchers. He developed the concept for the interactive work with the answering machine [curious readers are encouraged to call the provided number and leave a message; messages can be read on the Artic website] and glued the strips of audiotape in the magazine. I can’t express to you how precisely he was working as the tape had to brought in the magazine the same way each time, exhausting.
MK: The audiotape in mine unglued. But that’s part of the interactive fun of it all. Why is interactivity an important aspect of art? How do you give "voice" and dialogue to a written text?
LB: In the present edition it’s the first time we have this interactive aspect so strongly represented. The topic, "Stimme," contains interactivity. As the political aspect, making a vote (in German: eine Stimme abgeben) was very important to us. Therefore we made our readers raise their voices–e.g. starting with the cover, which is constructed as an instrument that sounds if the reader is using it as described. Funny thing, nobody has ever tried it when we were present–maybe people prefer to utter when they are not observed.
Interactivity is important as a construction of a self-aware being and responsible member in society. But we don’t want to achieve this with a pointing forefinger. Therefore we don’t take art and ourselves too seriously.
MK: Throughout this issue, slips of paper are lightly glued to the pages of text. Through my stubbornly American eyes, they seem reminiscent of fortune cookie messages. What are they, and how do we use them?
LB: The slips show fragments out of the texts printed in the edition. They are glued on the pages where the fragment is taken from. Some of the fragments we regard as kind of an essence of the texts they are taken from. Most of them lack meaning completely when taken out of their contexts. They become absurd. Our idea was that people take them out of the magazine and place them somewhere else, this way again uttering kind of an opinion even if this wouldn’t make sense for anybody else. But making people who see them wonder what does this mean, sparking a philosophical discourse to which no answer can be found…
MK: Would you mind giving a few, translated examples?
LB: The slip in the Pessoa translates: "sogar die Hebräer," or "even the Hebrews." The text is dealing with religion or, as regarded from the side of Christian churches, a kind of anti-religion celebrating a multi-"voiced" atheism. The slip in the interview with the autistic Erich Körmann reads "mich kenne ich" or "it’s myself whom I know." This excerpt relates to Erich Körmann’s difficulties communicating and understanding others.
MK: One of my favorite works was the essay laced together with pink strings as though they were connecting a kid’s tin-can-telephone.
LB: The layout of the essay with the tin cans was not the responsibility of the author Thomas Böhm. The content of the essay doesn’t have anything to do with the tin cans. The essay is about the artist and author Dieter Roth who when reading his poems tried to "read like shit," rather than pronounce and enunciate as writers usually try to do when reading their texts. The tins are / were used in childhood games to communicate with each other standing quite far apart as the thread between the tins carries the voice. Do you know this game? I think it’s quite out of fashion nowadays. We didn’t ask Thomas Böhm if he would allow to do this kind of lay-out as–as you remarked correctly–most people would understand it as part of Böhm’s contribution. In this way, our layout is also often a kind of interpretation, though we don’t want to interfere with the intended meaning of a contribution. In the case of Thomas Böhm, we were especially curious what he would think about the layout and we were really glad that he liked it very much. He even said that with the way we designed it, it is the most beautiful contribution in Artic.
MK: We do have that game–but I recognize it more from cartoons than real life. Böhm’s piece evokes playful, childhood games. What about other contributions?
LB: Stäbler’s second contribution Amtracks is a piece of music, a composition especially written for Artic. It combines parts of the emancipation proclamation (1862) of Abraham Lincoln and the US patriot act. Stäbler belongs to the scene of "new music" (as e.g. John Cage) composing music not only with instruments and voice but also using all kinds of sounds and objects like drops of water, dry ice, sheet-metal, a hair dryer. Stabler makes a statement against the limitation of uttering one opinion.
