Bernard A. Sch\u00fctze:\u2002<\/strong>Your show Desperate <\/em>in Montreal consists of works that focus on the philosophical. To my knowledge, this is the \ufb01rst time your work has been presented exclusively along these lines. Given this context, what role does philosophy play in your work and how does it take shape in your artistic practice? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Erwin Wurm:\u2002<\/strong>I\u2019m generally very interested in philosophy, but I treat philosophical themes as a dilettante, as someone who views it as nourishment to help him master life. In this sense I don\u2019t see philosophical thought and thinking as something lofty, that places me above others, but rather as something that helps me \ufb01nd my way in reality, or something that helps me construct my reality. I do not work with philosophy on a constant basis but there are always certain thinkers who motivate me to question reality in new ways. Initially these consisted of Sigmund Freud, an important thinker even if he is not a philosopher, and Wittgenstein. Both are from Vienna, both are Austrians, both are Jews, and both emerged in this problematic society based on 800 years of monarchy and 2,000 years of catholic tradition. There are of course other famous thinkers such as Descartes, who has never ceased to interest me because he claimed that reality is a tricky matter: I can see reality in my way and you in yours, but both of us can never be certain of each other\u2019s existence or of the existence of that which we see. This is an underlying theme of my Tell<\/em> (2007-08) video that was in the Montreal show. <\/p>\n\n\n\n BAS:<\/strong> In the sculpture Wittgenstein\u2019s Space Warp <\/em>(2005) you represent the philosopher engaged in a cobra yoga position with a rather stern expression on his face. This work made me think of a comment Wittgenstein once made: \u201cI don\u2019t know why we are here but I\u2019m pretty sure that it is not in order to amuse ourselves.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Free translation from a unpublished German text.<\/span> Given your penchant for humor and irony, how do you respond to your compatriot\u2019s words?<\/p>\n\n\n\n EW:\u2002<\/strong>This is such a Viennese statement. It shows the whole problematic and drama of Vienna. People are constantly complaining and bringing out the negative, and this always leads one back to an infatuation with death. It\u2019s interesting that a thinker as logically inclined as Wittgenstein continues to fall, or walk into this trap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BAS:<\/strong><\/strong>\u2002With the sculptureAdorno as Olivier Hardy in the Bohemian Girl (1936) and the Burden of Desperation<\/em> (2006), you bring us a bloated depiction of Adorno that uses the burlesque to comment on the thinker\u2019s heavy-handed seriousness. What led you to sculpt Adorno\u2019s \ufb01gure in this way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n EW:<\/strong><\/strong>\u2002Adorno is the main representative of a generation who stated that art is something serious, something sacred, and something lofty. It is he who said that poetry is not possible after the Holocaust. I think that this is quite wrong. The horror of the Holocaust should only make us more sensitive to p\u0153try and literature. He denied this. There is no place for cynicism with him. It\u2019s all about serious truths and these are always deep and can only be expressed unsmilingly. That means you can only talk about dif\ufb01cult issues with a serious face. I believe that one can talk about them with both cynicism and a certain measure of humor, which also makes them easier to bear. The language of these ladies and gentlemen is pathos, and pathos is something that I refuse as an artistic direction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n BAS:<\/strong><\/strong>\u2002Sould one consider the third sculpture, Deleuze Kneeling Down <\/em>(2006), in this philosopher \u201ctriptych,\u201d as an antidote to this pathos, since Deleuze represents a philosophy of immanence that celebrates the joyous, as well as the nonsensical and paradoxical?<\/p>\n\n\n\n EW:<\/strong><\/strong>\u2002Yes, this is true. But the sculpture is also quite ridiculous, simply because Deleuze is kneeling in the wrong direction. The ridiculous is something I work with a lot; it\u2019s part of all of us, everybody has this part and nobody wants to accept it. Deleuze holding his hands by the pockets is not so much an allusion to prayer as it is to the \ufb01gure of the little soldier, who also has his hands in this position. I would say a soldier of philosophy, because he was very strict in his ideas, and if people are willing to accept his ideas, they have to follow his rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BAS:<\/strong>\u2002<\/strong>Your sculptures often engage the viewer\u2019s body in relation to a \ufb01eld of thought. For instance in the piece Hold Your Breath and Think of Spinoza<\/em> (1998) you ask people to lie on a carpet and perform the instruction in the title. How do you view this crossover between bodily posture and philosophical thought? <\/p>\n\n\n\n EW:<\/strong><\/strong>\u2002Quite some time ago, I asked myself the question if it\u2019s at all possible to represent embarrassment, ridicule, desire, thinking or freedom as sculptures\u2009\u2014\u2009Can one make sculptures out of concepts like this? I\u2019ve tried various possibilities. This is how I came up with the one-minute sculptures, which bring together the notion of the everyday on the one hand (ordinary objects\/situations), and lofty philosophical or literary concepts on the other. In this way I tried to bring these two things together through the viewer\u2019s participation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n BAS:<\/strong><\/strong>\u2002The combination of instructions (drawings and sentences) and of engaging the viewer in often absurd or unusual postures is a common thread in many of your one-minute sculptures. There is something odd about following instructions such as in \u201cStand on your head, lean your legs against the wall and think about Freud\u2019s ass,\u201d for the one-minute sculpture Freud\u2019s Ass<\/em> (2004), and yet viewers readily play the game and ful\ufb01ll \u201cyour\u201d wishes. To what extent are you trying to make one aware of the absurdity of following instructions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n EW:<\/strong><\/strong>\u2002This is an important point. You see the instructions and drawings and you\u2019re invited to participate and realize the piece, and by doing this, you\u2019re letting yourself be manipulated by someone else\u2019s wishes. This means that you can abandon your conscious part and let yourself be stupid. But it isn\u2019t really you, because I am the one who said you should do this, and you would certainly not take up such a stupid position all by yourself. In fact, you are just following my orders, and this is exactly the problematic regarding students, soldiers or shoppers, etc.\u2009\u2014\u2009people just ful\ufb01lling what somebody else asked them to do and relinquishing their conscious choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BAS:<\/strong><\/strong>\u2002There is part in your video Tell <\/em>(2007-08)that reminds me of a scene in the movie Pulp Fiction<\/em>, the one where John Travolta talks about what they call a Whopper in France. Is this a reference?<\/p>\n\n\n\n EW:<\/strong><\/strong>\u2002Yes, yes, [laughing] it\u2019s a direct \u201ccitation.\u201d In the same video there is also a camera movement that I used from that \ufb01lm. I very much enjoy comic books, pop culture and science \ufb01ction and this reference draws on that. It\u2019s like a game within a game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BAS:<\/strong><\/strong>\u2002In your videos you make objects do things that are not possible in the physical 3D world. With this in mind, do you see the use of video as a means of expanding sculptural language?<\/p>\n\n\n\n EW:<\/strong><\/strong>\u2002That\u2019s exactly how I came to the performative part in my work. Time is such an important factor. When you look at classical culture you need time to grasp it, you need time to walk around and take it in. For instance, the trigger for the car going up the building facade in the Tell <\/em>piece was a 3D sculpture I did several years ago of a truck with its backside leaning up a wall (Truck, <\/em>2005). The result was somewhat unsatisfying, and this led me to explore the idea by carrying it out as an action in time through video. Also, for a long time I have been interested in the relation between movement and sculpture\/stillness; in other words if it\u2019s possible to prolong movement so long that it slows down and turns into sculpture. It\u2019s this question that recently led me to do another video called Stand<\/em> (2008), for which I had a man hypnotized to stand still in a \ufb01eld for fourteen hours. It\u2019s wild to see the changes he went through, both in body and in mind. Again this is very much a sculptural thing that requires a time-based medium like video to take shape. I\u2019m going to continue with video, though this does not mean that I\u2019m only doing video now, not at all. I\u2019m still doing sculpture, drawing and so on… this is just another way, another door that I try to open.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/68_AC04_Schutze_Wurm_Freuds-ass-scaled.jpg\")
Freud\u2019s Ass<\/em>, 2004 \u00a9 Erwin Wurm \/ SODRAC 2009.
Photo: David Jacques, courtesy of Galerie de l\u2019UQAM, Montr\u00e9al<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/68_AC04_Schutze_Wurm_Hold-your-breath-and-think-of-Spinoza-scaled.jpg\")
Hold Your Breath and Think of Spinoza<\/em>, 1998 \u00a9 Erwin Wurm \/ SODRAC 2009.
Photo: Louis-Philippe C\u00f4t\u00e9, courtesy of Galerie de l’UQAM, Montr\u00e9al<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/68_AC04_Schutze_Wurm_Ethics-Spinoza-scaled.jpg\")
Exhibition view, D\u00e9sesp\u00e9r\u00e9 \/ Desperate<\/em>, Galerie de l’UQAM, 2008 \u00a9 Erwin Wurm \/ SODRAC 2009.
Photo: Louis-Philippe C\u00f4t\u00e9, courtesy of Galerie de l’UQAM, Montr\u00e9al<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n