Joseph Backstein

Interview by William Furlong

from Audio Arts Magazine Volume 18 Numbers 3 & 4, 1999

Transcript

Joseph Backstein: I’m Joseph Backstein I’m the curator for the Russian Pavilion, one of the two curators. I am responsible for the project Collaboration with Animals, and on the Pavilion is the inscription ‘Animal Kingdom 1999’. The idea was for the collaboration of animals and two artists; they collaborated with different animals; mostly monkeys and elephants. Monkeys were metaphors of us, they could push the buttons of their kennels and the elephants, they are the painters; they could take a brush with their trunk and just do a painting. The idea was made first in the United States in the State of Ohio and after that in Taiwan. They organised elephant art academies in Thailand for unemployed elephants. The idea was to try to sell the paintings. They could sell for $50,000 during the first auction and with that money these elephants could survive during several months. That’s the humanitarian aspect of the project.

William Furlong: But the elephants really look as though they are seriously painting with their trunks. How do you train elephants to paint?

JB: There is a certain procedure and it’s very easy because elephants are very smart animals.

WF: So what is the role of the two artists?

JB: It is a real collaboration; they are a team.

WF: Do you think it’s appropriate, as a strategy, to make this exhibition?

JB: I think so, I think that kind of ironic view on the art complex, on the artistic abilities and artists’ role in society is updated, because if the artists were too serious the art becomes very boring and not meaningful and significant. We need that kind of irony to keep that distance between art and the art world around us. That was my intention.