Walled Windows Artist Interview: In Conversation with Sven Spieker

W A L L E D W IN D O W S KEYW AN

TA FTEH

a n e x h ib itio n a t C O M M U N IT Y C O N T E M P O R A R Y

ARTIST INTERVIEW : IN CONVERSATION W ITH SVEN SPIEKER SS: Your show W alled W indow s w as inspired by your recent artist residency in France. Can you tell m e m ore about this connection? How did your trip im pact the shape your exhibition took?

KT: The residency itself, w here I had a w orking studio, took place at an old castle in rural Orquevaux, in Eastern France about 150 km outside of Paris. Though none of the im ages in the show actually com e from the residency site. The bulk of the photos w ere taken in transit, in the streets of Paris and Berlin, w here I spent tim e leading up to the residence. Once there, I had the shots printed and w as able to m ake sense of the im ages together. Yet it w as in m y studio at Orquevaux w here I rst played w ith m ore form al ideas such as com position and fram ing. M y trip w as pretty fast paced, so perhaps that is w hy it's hard for m e to pinpoint exact locations for the photos, unless they are specially noted, as is the case w ith Napoleon’s Tom b and the Holocaust m em orials. I think ultim ately m y tim e in Europe w as a m otivation for m y LA show, not just the tim e spent in m y studio at Orquevaux.

Studio w all

SS: Your exhibition consists m ostly of photographs— polaroids, am ong others— although im portantly these appear in a variety of different transform ative states. Can you tell m e about som e of these transform ations? M ore generally, w hat’s your attitude tow ards photography? It looks like m uch or your recent activity as an artist has been focused on painting. Can you elaborate on your transition from one to the other?

KT: For m e, photography is one m ode of im age-m aking am ong others. The m edium lends itself to docum entary w ork, and that’s im portant to m e. I w as interested in creating a record, but also in exploring the process of how such records com e into being. I am particularly interested in the w ay photography lends itself to m anipulation and to contextualization. W henever I integrate photography into m y painting (be it through reference, print transfers, collage), I w ant it to be seam less. For m e, one of the tr m arvels in art is questioning how a creation cam e into being.

Traditional photography lends itself to technical processing, and an im age is deem ed successful depending on how w ell it is exposed, com posed, cropped, etc. If the photograph is w ell integrated into a painting, these form al elem ents becom e arbitrary. Instead it becom es about how the photograph carries a visceral, expressive quality. M uch of m y practice deals w ith blending these lines of quali genre, as each m ode of m aking inform s the other.

SS: In this show, you acted as your ow n curator, disregarding the usual division of labor betw een the artist w ho produces, and the curator w ho exhibits. Can you tell m e m ore about this experience? Apart from practical considerations, do you feel like this w ay of doing things could becom e a w orking m odel for you?

KT: As an em erging artist, I’ve adopted a DIY m entality tow ards practically everything and enjoy having total autonom y w hen it com es to curating. I’ve been approached by com m ercial gallerists in the past. They recruit artists based on their agenda. The m om ent you don’t line up w ith that agenda, expect to be dropped from the picture. That w as m y experience at least.

W ith W alled W indow s, the challenge becam e how to com bine the photographs in a cohesive w ay, despite the im ages being shot across several different places. Jum ping off the m otif of a w indow fram e, view ers look into and past these w indow s to see glim pses of a city (be it Paris or Berlin, it is som etim es unclear) and feel lost for a m om ent as they try to becom e grounded in a setting. Only through visual cues are they th able to m ake sense of the relations betw een w orks.

SS: Fram es and fram ing are a central concern in your show. W hat’s (in) a fram e for you? Som e of your fram es are elaborate and conspicuous--including tw o w indow pieces that include sm aller fram es w ithin them selves--w hile others rem ain elusive and can be hard to spot.

Overall, the (som etim es handm ade) fram es give your w ork in this show a playful, alm ost m annered feel. W as that your idea?

KT: For m e, a “fram e” is a device used to draw attention to w hat should be looked at. It also elevates the im age to som ething im portant enough to be protected. I did not take the pictures w ith the intention of focusing on w indow s, doorw ays, and other “fram es”. The im ages all seem ed to have this com m onality w hen I selected them for the show. In m y painting practice, I am very concerned w ith the lim itations of fram ing, how it m ay x a single view ing plane the picture exists on, and I often nd w ays to break apart this standard inherent in the exhibition of im ages. I believe photographs are even m ore lim ited in this w ay.

As I w as preparing the photographs for the show, I aim ed to

nd w ays to

extend them beyond the photo paper, and I becam e hyper-aw are of the m aterial. It w as im portant for m e to get the view er to notice how the im ages oat in physical space, how they are not just pressing against the glass. The action of looking through a w indow reveals a setting, it’s like peering out into a landscape that exists beyond the view er’s standpoint.

I further com plicated this by often including focal points in the photographs that alm ost act as w indow s w ithin the im age, w hich then pho push the view er deeper and deeper into it.

SS: There’s a com m em orative im pulse behind som e of your w orks: not just because several of them show “m em ory sites” such as the Holocaust m em orials in Paris and Berlin, but also through your extensive use of collage, a technique that’s based on collecting, but that also rem inds us of the diffi culties w e face as w e try to relate to the past, especially w here it concerns events such as the Holocaust. Can you elaborate? How has w orking w ith collage helped you grapple w ith the idea of m em ory and com m em oration?

KT: The m em orial sites w ere diffi cult for m e to include in the show. They’re heavy. I am by no m eans an authority on the troubled history of the Holocaust, but as an artist I m ake w ork based on m y observations. I photographed three different Holocaust m em orials: tw o in Paris and one in Berlin. M y feeling w as that the French m onum ents w ere pretty under-the-rug w hen describing France’s involvem ent in the Holocaust of French Jew s, especially at M ém orial des M artyrs de la Déportation (M em orial to the M artyrs a of Deportation, opened 1962). After all, Vichy France voluntarily handed over 200,000 Jew s to Nazis. W ith TRUTH and OR GHETTO, I try to point this out. TRUTH com es from the M em orial to the M urdered Jew s of Europe in Berlin, w here stone slabs rise and fall into a labyrinth, or graveyard. There, no w ords are present. The text present in the im age com es from graffi ti on the m onum ent. It w as the only instance of text I cam e across at the Berlin m onum ent, existing as an exclam ation. OR GHETTO on the other hand w as photographed at the Shoah M em orial in Paris, w here a list of the ghettos stand before the entrance to the m em orial. Putting these im ages side by side in the show creates a connection betw een the tw o countries.

I chose the m edium of collage because it allow s fragm ents from different contexts to com bine, be it through subject m atter or as form al elem ents.

W ith M em orial Gates, each fragm ent is intentionally sourced from the sam e context, from the sam e roll of lm , and from the sam e location of the M ém orial des M artyrs de la Déportation in Paris. The claustrophobic enclosure of this Holocaust m em orial (often described as a crypt) haunts you as you w alk through it. Flipping the orientations of the pictures to form a new com position creates a feeling of not know ing w hat is up or fo dow n. At the site itself, outside in the courtyard, w alls go over the horizon. Though you can see the sky, there is no sense of w hat lies beyond the cem ented w alls. Those sharp gates suddenly seem m ore threatening.

SS: Finally, you have m entioned cities as an im portant source of visual and intellectual inspiration. How has creating the w orks in this show helped you process your experience of the cityscape, be it LA, Paris, or Berlin?

KT: M y show aim s to act as a deconstruction of the cityscape. For exam ple, W indow II (Scaffolding) holds fragm ents of both Berlin and Paris: the bottom -left quadrant show s a scaffolding just outside the w indow of m y hostel in Berlin. I had to see the city through this sym bol of developm ent. I then com pare this to the facade of the Centre Pom pidou. Cities are offi ciated through cultural sites, often m useum s w ith large collections. But in reality, they are sites of pow er and w ealth. Above the photograph of the Pom pidou is an interior shot of a m useum , w here a docent stum bles through the hall.

M useum s and m onum ents, too, are pow erful instrum ents for w riting history. W ith m y photographs, I w ant to pose this question: w hat gives these m onum ents historical authority/agency? They can surely be pow erful resources for the researcher, but they can just as easily act as the gatekeepers of a dom inant, hegem onial culture.

I w as thinking about these questions as I w as m oving through Paris and Berlin, and also w hen eventually I cam e back hom e. For each “cultural capital” seem s to follow a checklist of necessary landm arks.

Keyw an Tafteh in his Los Angeles studio

Sven Spieker in his Berlin hom e

Sven Spieker teaches in the Departm ent of Germ anic and Slavic Studies and the Com parative Literature Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He specializes in m odern and contem porary art, aesthetic and critical theory, and global and transnational art and art history. Spieker is a co-founder of the W orking Group Cultures of W orld Socialism , and the founding editor of ARTM argins.