| Life on a Leaf explores the possibilities of building a personal house as a total artwork. Andersson is interested in the way stories can influence the shape, the ornaments and the interior of a house. The aesthetics of the house is inspired by the Art Nouveau concept of the house as a shelter for an individual soul, opposed to the modernist concept of the house as machine for living. |
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Leah Oates interviews Finnish artist and architect Jan-Erik Andersson.
Life on a Leaf explores the possibilities of building a personal house as a total artwork. Andersson is interested in the way stories can influence the shape, the ornaments and the interior of a house. The aesthetics of the house is inspired by the Art Nouveau concept of the house as a shelter for an individual soul, opposed to the modernist concept of the house as machine for living.
Leah Oates: When did you know you where an artist and what is your background? How did you imagine an artist’s life would be?
Jan-Erik Andersson: Well, actually I doubt it all the time. My intention was not to be an artist. I was interested in environmental issues when I was young in the early 70s and I first studied organic chemistry, biology and botany to be involved in making new more environmentally sound production systems. I took a bachelor’s degree, and then when I was working for a company in Sweden developing new methods for cleaning wastewater for my Masters degree, I suddenly left to attend a summer course in painting. I was fascinated by the way you through art could create a safe environment for yourself—your mental mind. I realized that I didn’t really feel at home in the scientific environment. This led me to take as long a time from the scientific world as possible, turning into a very expressive almost chaotic art influenced by the German neo-expressionists of the eighties. I was a very inward person and I felt that I needed to throw myself out in the world, and that this development was a good thing. But I regret so totally leaving my scientific background now. I could have led to interesting things mixing them.
Of course, the life in the artists’ circles I was hanging around with during the 80s was very much about keeping up the myth of the artist hero, much partying and alcohol!
LO: You have had a long career in the arts. You have been within the gallery system and have shown extensively. You have been doing public projects for quite a long time as well. Life of a Leaf seems to be a union of the two but is also very personal at the same time. Please elaborate on this.
JA: I have used art as a way to deal with my personal life. This concerns the art I made in the 80s that mixed the art and ideas of the international art stars with my own personal life. When I stopped drinking and cleaned up my life, which I did through my art, by cleaning an empty gallery for three weeks every day from nine to five. I kind of got happier and more relaxed and ready for a more socially oriented path for my art. I started to think over the fact that the surroundings and buildings where people spend most of their lives in general are very unimaginative and un-stimulating. The art element has been taken away from architecture since the beginning of modernism and this had in a way led art into a position of commenting and deconstructing the society, not so much being involved in developing it into new more stimulating environments. This was when I started to make public works, which were incorporated in the building’s structure, like floors, ceilings and walls, trying to create spaces where people would feel they are in some kind of tale. So the art wouldn’t be works to be hung afterward in the space, but organic parts of the building. I also wrote stories myself which influenced how the installations turned out, and of course my personal life history could be seen in these, but not as directly as before.
Then in 1995 I started to make real buildings together with architect Erkki Pitkäranta and I got excited in the concept of collaboration, which I felt was not a way of making compromises, but a way to make works that neither of the participants would recognize as a creation of his own but a new surprising merging. So it was inevitable that it would lead to building a house for me, because in that way we could make something totally uncompromising.
The budget would, of course, have to be very tight, but the building time would not be as tight as it is with public buildings. It means that we can plan, make tryouts, wait for cheap offers, sponsors, etc. The idea with the Life on a Leaf house was that it would be intimate and function as the home of my family, but also have a public part, meaning that the house would function like a healthy virus to spread the idea that a building doesn’t need to be a box to be a functional house.
This is also the reason why efforts have been made to make the Life on a Leaf website as informative as possible. It was important to me that the building not to be a dual vision by me and Erkki but a multiple vision including the invited artists who were making works to be incorporated in the building’s structure, like doorknobs, the kitchen table surface, a video work in the floor, photographs on the stairs, a soundwork that reacts on outdoor temperature changes, a sprout growing lamp, etc. Because these artists’ works differ aesthetically from mine, the resulting house will not be a stylistically homogenous house, but a mixture of styles and artistic approaches. I will test how it will feel to live in his multi-layered space, a space that I have named Iconic Space, an extension of the concept Iconic Building that Charles Jencks coined in the early 21st century. I am interested in the ways ornamentation (which includes, for example, sound) and art incorporated into the building’s structure can create a mental space that is richer than the space’s architects usually talk about, created by the relationship of the building masses and the light entering the building.
My own personal poetic contributions are the stories I write, that influence, for example, the patterns on the floors and other interior details.
EDITED TO 1,040 WORDS.
How has it been to make this project, to find funding, to work with the city
and with the artisans who have been helping you build the house?
My experience from my studies in chemistry has taught me to be patient and farsighted. I started the process in 1999, so it will be a ten year project before it will be ready. I have used many different strategies to get the project through in the city government of Turku, Finland. One important step was that the house was taken into the PhD program in visual arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. It gave the project a research touch, which it needed to be considered as something more than my and my family’s personal house. The road has of course been long and winding but what else could you expect from a project like this?! It has also been interesting to see that the artists invited to the project have responded so positively. I cannot pay them any fee, only the production costs of the work, but all have given their time and energy, perhaps because they feel that I really try to make a statement that art is an organic part of a building. It is perhaps not so common to get such an opportunity.
After the initial problems the officials in the Turku city have been very supportive of the project. They appointed a very intresting and beautiful site for the house. The house was even taken into the Cultural City of Europe in 2011 application
Life on a Leaf questions the role of the architect as a taste maker and the role
of society to set regulations and road blocks on those that want to build a home
that is not the norm. This seems to deal with revealing conventions that
are rampant in most places. Please elaborate on this.
This is a problem common to most countries, perhaps not so much in USA though. There are very strict building regulations in Finland. What strikes me most is that it seems like contractors can build whatever ugly looking apartment houses anywhere in the city but then when somebody wants to realize his/hers personal dreams by building a small house hidden by other houses is almost impossible. There are so many regulations. They fall back on the idea that if you live in a house your right is to see a similar house when you look out! The only way I could build my house was that the city appointed a place for it with not close any neighbours. So in Finland the Life on a Leaf house has a very special critiqal quality.
Usually it is architects who make these rules. In Finland their taste is very minimal, they also like the repeating patterns. Although these architects for example made terrible mistakes in the sixties, allowing the destruction of the town centers in smaller towns made of wooden buildings, we still trust them. I believe that we should have more trust in people and let them build their dreams. Of course it wouldn’t be bad if people choose to collaborate with architects, they do have a special skill in the creation of livable space, but the doors should be open for
hat-, flower- and umbrella-shaped houses!
Please explain how you create your work? How did this project begin and how is the conceptualization of Life on a Leaf different than creating a performance or public work?
I don’t see a big difference except for the time span. Usually the first ideas come very fast and then it is just a question of finding time , finacing and a place to excute the work. Of course gallery artists always state, in accordance to the 18th century philosofer Emmanuel Kant, that real art should be free of other interests. A building cannot be considered pure art, because you view it at least partly according to how you live in it. But one can counter; how free is the gallery art really? Many still have to consider economical realities, making them repeat their styles. I still remember when my gallerists in the eighties were angry that I exhibited only big "un-sellable" installations. Anyway, Kant didn’t have a problem with ornamentation, and the house will be full of different types of ornaments as well as art works incorporated in the structures. So the border between where the art stops and the architecure begins is floating. The house can also be considered a big sculpture or the house itself could be considered being attached with ornamental properties.
Your work deals with ideas about love, magic, generosity and connection. Please elaborate on why and what you want to covey to viewers.
Sounds like old hippie stuff and certainly I belong to a generation who was old enough to take impressions from the 1968 guys. I think the world needs more of these energies. Interestingly though, defending the playful and whimsical, which brings me to oppose the modernist stand in architecture, also comments on aspects of the art and art museum system, which is many ways still is based on the modernist aesthetic. But actually I only want to broaden the field, there are many interesting and beautuful projects out there based on a modernist aestectics.
Other artists have built homes such as Donald Judd in Marfa, Texas. What does it mean for an artist to build a home that houses his/her work and other work as a total work of art? What are your hope for Life on a Leaf?
I already mentioned the idea of the house being a virus . Perhaps one vision would be to develop a center for fantasy and collaborately based architecture. This idea has emerged during the years I have curated the WILD exhibition for the Turku City Art Museum in the summer of 2007. There are great projects out there, which not necessary are being published in architectureal magazines. The WILD book I wrote with Jen Budney is a first step in this direction.
A part of the exhibition was called Jack in the Box, a 1: 25 model of the largest exhibition room, which toured among 7 architects and artists; Vito Acconci, Kathryn Findlay (Ushida Findlay), KIm Adams, Will Alsop, FAT (Fashion Taste Architecture) and Rosegarden (me and architect Erkki Pitkäranta). Although the result was too expensive to be build in the exhibition in full scale, the model is a surprising and beautiful collaborate effort, which shows what you get if artists and architects collaborate and not compete.
How would you describe the Finnish arts scene and the European arts scene?
How does a European artist perceive the New York arts scene?
Finland is different because we have an extended grant system which makes it possible for several artists to work freely for 1-5 years. This is necesssary because of the lack of an art market. It has helped artists like Eija Liisa Ahtila to make an international career. I think we have a great art world in Finland. I curated an exhibition with artists from eastern Finland and the stuff they made was amazingly in touch with things I have seen on the international scene. So Intenet, TV and cheap flights have made, at least the western world, into one big unit. But of course there is one significant different. Not even the most famous artists in Finland gets rich! If you make it in bigger art centers you might find yourself operating with big sums of money, which gives you a certain freedom to do projects we in Finland couldn’t dream of, like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons. Mariko Mori’s projects are on the scale of a rock band. Unthinkable of in Finland. But it is possible that the small scale and local energies become more and more important, when environmental an sustainability issues become more and more imortant.
What advice would you give to emerging artists?
Try not to get cynical when you get older and try to reach for the stars, then you might reach the tree tops!
Who are your favorite artists and architects and why?
At the moment I am very much involved with the 46 artists and architects I and Jen Budney chose for the WILD exhibition. I prefer to mention some architects because the artists come too close. Kathryn Findlay for creating stunningly beautiful organic architecture and Jersey Devil architecture for their will to control both the planning and the building and for their emphasis on teaching architects to build together, not compete, Will Alsop for his courageness to bring city planning to a new level of imaginarity and Vito Acconci for his amazing development from poet to the leader of Acconci Studio, making livable, challenging architectural structures . I could go on here for a while…
What projects are you working on in studio currently and what upcoming shows are
coming up?
I am making the 6th Bird’s Nest project with sound artist Shawn Decker in the Evanston Art Center (Illinois), I have a few public works going on in Finland. When my PhD is done I can move in many directions which will be very nice. I might write the history of the Finnish ornamentation!
