„What truth is inwardly preparing to converge with reality?”

Dialogue at the 14th of July 1994, Heike Maier, Hartmut Skerbisch

H.M. „Spatial Arrangement”, the motif on the catalogue’s endpaper,is a work you made as a student of architecture. Yet it can hardly be connected to mere architecture. Rather, it could be regarded as an early example of Austrian media art. Was this work something like an igniting spark for your subsequent oeuvre?

H.S. This work was made on the occasion of the competition „Architektur und Freiheit” (Architecture and Freedom); the entries were to be exhibited at the „trigon 69″ exhibition in Graz. To me, the competition theme presented a challenge, since it principally addressed our relation to the object world. How do objects influence us or their environment? Can we, in some way, overcome given physical situations and conditions? lt was to be expected that, with this theme, the architects would pull out all the stops, since they always have a solution for everything, even for problems that have no solution. lt was the Timothy Leary-Hippie-LSD time. Hans Hollein offered pills for and against architecture. What bothered me was that veiling or often tricky elimination of unchanging basic facts of architecture by propaganda texts and projects promising veritable miracles, even freedom through architecture. But I was fascinated by the new spatial possibilities the electronic media offered. These spatial possibilities, this new, invisible architecture is what I wanted to make perceptible. The work was not understood in the context of the competition, and so it actually did become an initial spark, a thorn in the flesh that made me carry it further – to express, in some way, the invisible, electronically arrayed architecture and the consequences of its installation. Although „Spatial Arrangement” was never realised, I think it is still topical today. This is why I use it as an optical bracket for catalogue’s content.

H.M. If one compares the various sections of this selection of projects, one notices a marked change in the structure of your work. Was there a particular occasion for turning away from media art?

H.S. The monitor was the key instrument for approaching the conditions of electronic space, and so my original interest in mere spatial concepts increasingly led to reflexions about the monitor, or rather about the underlying electronic image construction, including all the associated devices, with a view to an adequate image content. „Final Signature” was the logical result of this preoccupation. However, this was the end of the road within the medium.

H.M. Why did you begin to use photography almost simultaneously?

H.S. The works in section 1 often were rather short-time situations, and I captured them photographically. I felt it was a deficiency that these works, robbed of their actual effect, only continued to exist as photographic images. There should not be a work and a photograph of it, I thought, but the work itself should be the photograph. During a particular dark room job Michael Schuster had offered me, there were extremely long exposure times, which meant long periods of waiting in the dark, and this was a good opportunity for us to thoroughly discuss ideas each of us wanted to realise. The result was „Scene from the Play of the Same Title” and a general cooperation in many ways. I regard „Scene from the Play of the Same Title” as a good example of a work that achieves, in a high degree, identity of image content and medium.

H.M. The works in section 3, however, again exist as mere photographs, while the image content cannot be derived from the medium of photography.

H.S. This is a contradiction I have to live with. The intention was, partially, to build situations that were to exist only as photographs, but these situations had a momentary quality in themselves and were, so to speak, moments recorded without a camera. One of this situations taught me very clearly that volume alone can be a strong message.

H.M. For the exhibition „ Vom Kriege” (About War) you placed in the exhibition space simple houses, reduced to their basic shape. One association with war is flight, the abandoning of possessions. In this context, a house seems to be an irritation or provocation. Why did you choose houses of all motifs for that particular theme?

H.S. First of all, I wanted to create in the exhibition space a „presence of something”, and, if possible, presence alone, without any formal vocabulary that might render information. This pure presence in a space would be war, because it is just there, without us being able to know it. And the possibility of aesthetic weighing was to be excluded. This led to the house shape and to constructive measures forbidding outward features that might distract a viewer from the mere presence of this thing or trigger secondary thoughts about its presence. Any thoughts that would unavoidably arise would, on various levels, again meet with mere elementary presence.

H.M. In „Two Stages”, could be the theme human presence. The process of seeing is confronted with something that is itself something like seeing. When Joyce speaks of the „inescapable modality of the visible”, is he not also raising questions concerning the limits of perception?

H.S. Joyce’s texts give the impression that he is answering from beyond the general limit of perception and that he knows that borderline from both sides. A passage by Kathy Acker from „Blood and Guts in High School” belongs here: „Once we’ve gotten a glimpse of the vision world (notice here how the conventional language obscures: WE as if somebodies are the centre of activity SEE what is the centre of activity: pure VISION. Actually, the VISION creates US. Is anything true?) Once we have gotten a glimpse of the vision world, we must be careful not to think the vision world is us. We must go farther and become crazier.”

An essential connection of seeing and sculpture lies in the eye sockets of the skull, the sphere of volatile appearances and the two stages that remain thereof, in the final analysis, as their material consolidation. This theme, I think, fitted well into the Vienna Secession, charged by the turn-of-the-century mood as it was.

H.M. In your work and in the things you say you often refer to literary texts – here, in this catalogue to Robert Musil, Marquis de Sade, Franz Kafka or, as already mentioned, James Joyce. In the folder to the „Disc” exhibition at the Künstlerhaus in Graz you quoted, in a central place, Walter Benjamin’s question: „ What truth is inwardly preparing to con-verge with reality? Are literary texts starting points for you? Should your work be seen as a commentary or as an artistic realisation?”

H.S. To me, texts in general are perhaps the most important orientation. Sometimes, a particular text becomes the departure point of a work, I accept the view that my work is a commentary. When I use someone else’s text, my work is to do something for it, since the text has done something for the work. I am fascinated by the fact that strong literature has an intense relation to our body and to spatial perception, just like sculpture. In my view, the intensity of this relation is one of the quality criteria of a text. With certain authors you can be certain that even sentences that seem very difficult to comprehend on first sight can finally be structured in a rhythmical-physical manner and that they will transport an important experience. This structuring has a great deal to do with sculpture, the perception of sculpture – this is why I find the sentence by Walter Benjamin that you mentioned so thrilling. As soon as one can structure it, that is, as soon as it has structured the reading self, it is clear what is happening – at that moment and always.