“If you can just do it yourself, you can do whatever you want.”
Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset found each other in 1994 in a night club in Copenhagen, and soon after that, started doing art together. One of their first works was shown in Helsinki in 1997. Two decades later the works of this artist duo can be seen everywhere – from Rockefeller Center in New York to the Texan desert and the 2017 Istanbul Biennial that they will curate.
Invited by the Academy of Fine Arts of the Arts Helsinki, you gave an open Saastamoinen Keynote Lecture to art lovers from students to professionals – at the Academy of Fine Arts’ Exhibition Laboratory venue. What are your first impressions of Helsinki?
Ingar Dragset (b. 1969, in Trondheim): We have visited Helsinki several times. The first time was in 1994 before we started doing art. In 1997 we did a performance here wearing knitted skirts and then unravelled them off each other in the show. It is so funny that it was 20 years ago, but we are still doing performance.
Michael Elmgreen (b. 1961 in Copenhagen): It was one of our first works. I don’t remember what the event was, but we were happy because we had just had started working together. Our last visit to Helsinki was in 2008, when we came here to find artists for the Nordic Pavilion of the 2009 Venice Biennale. We were curating the Danish and the Nordic Pavilions in the biennale and did studio visits here. Helsinki seems to have changed quite a lot: there’s a different energy in the city and it also looks a bit different.
ID: More open. We always really love to come here. There’s something very special here and in architecture as well.
You have been working as an artist duo since 1995. How did it all begin?
ME: We met each other in a night club, After Dark, in Copenhagen in 1994 and were partners in private life for almost ten years. I came from theatre performance and had started doing installations, but originally I was writing poems. The art scene in Scandinavia at that time was not very professional. There were no galleries with young artists and institutions were not inviting them, so you could show only in the artist-owned spaces. This has fortunately changed since then. On the other hand, doing things yourself also created freedom: if you can just do it yourself, you can do whatever you want.
Your works have attracted interest around the world – the permanently installed sculpture Prada Marfa, designed to resemble a Prada store and located in the middle of the Texan desert in 2006, and the bronze boy on rocking horse sculpture in London’s Trafalgar Square in 2012, for example. How do your projects usually start?
ME: They are different. Prada Marfa was a self-initiated project, it was not commissioned by Prada, we were just using their logo and visual codes. We wanted to see how such a luxury boutique would look if you would set it out of its normal urban setting, in the middle of nowhere. It happened to be very close to Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation, which was quite fun because Prada was using the same kind of minimalism commercially.
ID: The 4m high bronze boy on rocking horse sculpture, Powerless Structures Fig.101, on the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square was a part of an ongoing series of sculptures, where the sculptures are changed every second year. Boy on rocking horse is not about victory and defeat, but expectation and change. It questions the idea of Trafalgar Square celebrating war heroes, generals and so on.
In addition to the original version in Trafalgar Square, there are three miniature versions, of which one is in Finland, or is it?
ID: Saastamoinen Foundation has a 1,5m high gold-plated miniature of it.
What is the story behind the Van Gogh’s Ear sculpture, which was unveiled in New York next to Rockefeller Center in April 2016?
ID: They have one art project a year over summertime and we were asked to do a work there. We went through many ideas and then in the end we decided to do an upright pool, which is a kind the ultimate middle-class dream in America or anywhere.
ME: It was a special situation because more than 300,000 people pass by Rockefeller Center every day. A lot of people see it and meet it, and it’s a powerful and difficult urban setting in a way that it’s very noisy and loud visually there. So we needed to do something that is relatively bold. We were thinking about what America also is when you go outside New York: more suburban, relaxed lifestyle, where you will have a pool in your garden like in California. We saw the pools on sale and they looked quite impressive and amazing themselves: almost like giant abstract sculptures.
Your works are exploring the relationship between art, architecture and design. Where do you find ideas for your art?
ID: Our ideas come through the dialogue between us. We talk about the things we have seen in newspaper, books or films, and this makes us aware of the issues in society. We always try to stick to thematics that we are sensing ourselves.
ME: They can also come from the place where we do the show. When we did the pavilions in the 2009 Venice Biennale, we looked at the pavilions and said they look like private houses. And then we decided to turn them into private houses. When we did a show last year at UCCA – Ullens Center for Contemporary art in Beijing, we had such a vast industrial space there that you could have hosted the whole art fair in it. Then we decided to do a fictional art fair and we put 88 of our own works there. So often we try to solve a problem or to give a suggestion at least for ourselves of how things could look if you would just rethink them.
You will curate the 2017 Istanbul Biennial with the theme Homes and neighbourhood. What makes a good neighbourhood?
ME: This will be found out after the Biennial. We only ask a lot of questions. Instead of a press statement, we posed forty questions about what a good neighbour is. At the press conference and launch of the Biennale we had forty performances on stage with questions, such as: “Is a good neighbour someone who reads the same newspaper?”, “Is a good neighbour a stranger you don’t fear?” etc. There were people from all parts of our society.
Have you already decided the artists of the Biennale?
ID: We are still working on it.
In the world of arts and arts education, private funding and support – like the work Saastamoinen Foundation is doing in Finland – is becoming more and more common. Do you think this is an opportunity or a threat?
ID: It can be a source of diversity and open the field of arts, but it’s important that it doesn’t replace public engagement. There are also many examples of good collaboration between public and private initiatives.
ME: The donors have far too much power in the public institutions in the US. In MoMA for example the names the of donators are bigger that the artists’ names. That is a little bit strange. It’s about balance. It is very important that the private foundations show their will to support both science, education and arts, because sometimes politicians are very conservative and square-thinking. We need engagement and innovative thinking from the private side.
What is it like to work with the exceedingly visible, high-profile art projects around the world and to live like the superstars of today’s art scene?
(Laughing)
ME: To be honest, our life is not very glamorous. It’s super-hyper normal. Some problems are easier to solve when you can work with bigger budgets, but the problems don’t go away.
How would you describe yourself as an artist duo?
ID: We always like to challenge ourselves, which often leads to new challenges. The job of curating Istanbul Biennial is one example of this, it is slightly overwhelming. We like to keep putting ourselves into the new situations.
How has your work developed since you started?
ID: There have been many different phases. Performances we did at the beginning made us very aware of the limits of the white cube and the conventions of the art world. When you are there physically, sometimes half-naked facing the audience you can fully experience what the limitations are. This taught us a lot about the audience and the importance of the communication with the audience. This also lead us to deal with conventions of the architecture generally, and the use of the white cube as a kind of strict settled institutional frame that alters our lives, whether it is schools, hospitals, prisons, municipal offices and so on.
Artists are very powerful influencers. Do you think that art can change the world?
ID: We don’t think that art could change the world, but it can be an instrument in keeping the flame going. There are some very important ideals and ideas that get lost in other parts of the society due to many different factors – new media, overall information, speed. Art is still an area where slowness is allowed and appreciated. The popularity of art museums and fairs shows that there is certainly a need for the experiences shared in physical spaces.
ME: Art can also help diminish fear. It can help us be a little more fearless during times when we worry a lot.
What is the role of digitality in your works?
ID: (Laughing) It hardly exists in our works.
Your works can be seen everywhere around the world. Where can we buy them?
ME: We work with numerous gallerists around the world and there are some crazy people who buy our works. We also have a studio in Berlin where about ten people help us to realise the artworks.
You live and work in Berlin. What kind of city it is for artists?
ID: It is a good city for artists as the rents are affordable and there is a lot of space. And there is freedom to do things in the spaces without having permission. It’s quite easy to start a bookstore or a gallery in Berlin. Commercial pressure is not as big as in London or in New York.
About inspiration. What has inspired you lately?
ME: We visited the silent Kamppi Chapel here in Helsinki this morning, and that was very inspiring. It’s like between architecture and a sculpture: a big beautiful abstract sculpture in the city scape. I would like to make a big sculpture you can sit in and shout up.
Invited by the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Elmgreen & Dragset gave an open Saastamoinen Keynote Lecture on the 11th of January at the Academy of Fine Arts’ Exhibition Laboratory venue in Helsinki. Each year, the lecture series brings an internationally known curator, artist or researcher to Helsinki to open a discussion about interesting, trending themes in the world of contemporary art. The Saastamoinen Foundation Keynote lecture series is an important element in the Academy of Fine Arts’ internationalisation programme
Key Note: Elmgreen & Dragset
University of Arts, Exhibition Laboratory: Jaana Kähkönen, Christine Langinauer, Suvi Lehtinen, Lasse Juuti, Ingar Dragset, Michael Elmgreen, Mirza Cizmic
Photo: Petri Summanen, ©Uniarts Helsinki