Valie Export

Interview by Gudrun Bielz

from Audio Arts Magazine Volume 16 Numbers 3 & 4, 1997

Transcript

This interview was recorded at the Museum of the 20th Century, Vienna at the beginning of the Valie Export’s retrospective there titled ‘Split:Reality’. Export has been a pioneer in the use of video in art since the 1960’s, and here speaks about her particular interest in the art form, and how new media, including computers and laser technology, features in her art practice. ‘Split:Reality’ is also the title of a video installation in the exhibition and related to a 28 metre long-passage which runs from the inside to the outside of the museum, constructed in glass on one side and lead on the other. In discussing the passage the artist adds: ‘When I received an invitation to make this exhibition, I wanted to tear apart the whole museum so as to make two parts ... something can go out from the institution of the museum and something can come in ... I mean fresh air .. so it is a kind of rebellion against the petrified institutional meaning of the museum’.

Gudrun Bielz: I’m in the museum of the 20th Century in Vienna, speaking to Valie Export. Could you start by talking about the title, ‘Split: Reality’ and whether there are any general underlying concerns throughout the period that this exhibition covers?

Valie Export: By the title ‘Split: Reality’, I always was very concerned to explain or visualise or use images which can explain about split reality, about different realities and this is also related to perception. Split perception, how can we see one thing comparing, or in the context, of another thing. So I mean for me, it’s very important to visualise, split images, split perceptions because I think there is never one reality or one perception, there is never one image. Every image has so many other images included, and the roots are always very different. One cannot really say there is one thing, I will not go now into philosophy yah, but to use different medias in a complex installation and bring the meaning of these different medias together then becomes a new meaning, because if painting is related to video or video is related to computer or computer is related to painting, then every media is in a different context and becomes a different media and becomes its own different media reality.

GB: I can see one installation with the title ‘Split:Reality’ which gave the name to the exhibition.

VE: It’s true; it’s a video installation but also uses a record and a record player. When you come into the exhibition room you see a video monitor, a record player with a record and a recorder and a video player. When the record is put on you see me and I sing after Frank Sinatra, ‘Strangers in the Night. So this means you have different levels yeah, the level of the media, my singing, Frank Sinatra’s singing is not heard, everybody can hear me when I sing his song and you can put on the video through the record player, so there are different levels to it. It’s actually really fun because I had the concept in 1967 but I never had video equipment at that time but I had an invitation in ’69 to London, it was a really very alternative or avant- garde space and I did it first as a performance. So the first time I ever did this thing was in London, because at that time, in the late ‘60’s the 70’s, I quite often had invitations to go to London. So this ‘Strangers in the Night’ leads to the main theme of this exhibition; it’s not really a retrospective, because it also shows new work. I made the decision that I will mostly show media work, media with this video, this laser, this computer work and so on. This is a part of my work, I did not show my performance work when I used the body as a configuration in the city or in the nature, from performance work I only have (Hoseon?) and ‘Erosion’ in this exhibition and this is really very funny. I was in London when I did it first yeah, and there’s also a photograph of when I did it so this is a connection to London now.

GB: Could you say why video is so important to you?

VE: It started in the mid 60’s when we found out that video is a new medium and one can use it for artistic expression. My main concern is also the question ‘What is an image?’ This means it’s very different if you have a painted image or an electronic image and so on and so on, but with video you can also think about the artistic aesthetic of an image, or of an installation and performance work. This was very important in the 60’s and the other thing that was very important is that it’s an instant medium. This means you can instantly have the image; you are here and you make this gesture and the gesture is on the screen, or you delay it a little bit and what we all did very often, in the beginning of the 70’s, we delayed and made the gesture and the gesture came after in 10 or 15 seconds.

GB: I understand you want to refer to your installation ‘Time: Gaps: Space: Fissures’, first installed in 1973.

VE: This is a type of re-make now and when you pass by the installation ‘Split:Reality’ you see two monitors standing vis à vis, this means there’s one monitor on your left side and one monitor on your right side when you go into the exhibition. This means that the monitors standing face to face so you have to go through these monitors yeah, and the installation is two cameras outside on the street and they are installed back to back, one camera shows the coming movement of the car and the other camera shows the car going and for this you have a kind of time gap. On the monitors you see this car coming to the visitor and then going away from the visitor and when you stand in between these two monitors, it goes through your body. This is space vision, you have the time gap, outside on the street and the space vision you have inside in the gallery room. We’ve rebuilt it now but with the old monitors so the image is not very well done. But it has something to do with the invitation to do an exhibition here in this museum. I really wanted to tear apart the whole museum, to make two parts out of the museum so that you can go out from the museum or something can come into a museum; I mean fresh air. It’s a kind of rebelling against the petrified institution of museums, of the meaning of museum. I couldn’t do this but I’ve made a passage and the passage leads from the inside of the museum to the outside and it’s about 28 metres long, so it’s quite long and the passage depends on two walls; one wall is a glass wall so it’s transparent, you can see through and the other wall is in lead, so it’s not transparent. These walls are standing face to face so that you have a passage and on the lead wall you have very small gaps, three small gaps and there’s a sound in it and you have to go very near to the sound gap and then you hear some poems, written by me. But you really have to go very near; this means you have to put your ear on the lead wall, a very good conductor, so this means you also have physical contact with this passage. The passage starts in the museum space, about 2 metres wide, and goes down like a triangle and at the end of this passage it’s only one metre. So when you go through you have a feeling; it’s very wide at the beginning but as you come to the other opening of the passage you feel it getting narrow so you get the physical feeling when you go through this passage, and so that when you come into the museum you have these time gaps and space fissures, as a kind of divided situation in a museum, and when you go through the museum you can go out there and you also have this divided situation by this passage, so it’s a kind of imaginary line through the museum, so it means it’s also a kind of a splitting the exhibition area.

GB: We are now in front of an installation with the title ‘(Autos?) Have Noses’ which was first installed in 1973. I

VE: This is a really interactive video; it was done in ’73. It was really interactive, but it’s a kind of active video. It’s very simply done because at that time I didn’t have a computer, so it’s only done by something touching the feet and then it presents the signal to the monitor. Video has its own very interesting technological or aesthetic language; it’s really a new language and at that time it was really a new language and only in the late’70’s video was it used also for filmic work yeah, but until the mid ‘70’s mostly video was only used for installation or interactive or active installation.

GB: We are now in front of an installation called ‘The Dream’ from 1995, which shows your glottis, which is a part of the larynx, on a video screen, then an oscilloscope on ten monitors and a laser beam.

VE: Yes this is a new work but it’s related also in some of my contents; what I did with language for example, or with texts. Three parts are coming together in different cases or for different reasons to build up this one installation, so you see a kind of mirroring, a kind of splitting or split text. So the split is coming also in this installation.

GB: We are now in front of a video sculpture with the title ‘Touching’. This I understand is your first video installation made in 1969.

VE: You see four monitors yeah, lying on the floor means that the video image is like lying on the floor but the monitor’s lying on the floor and what you see is feet touching the video screen, the monitor screen yeah. This means that the monitor screen is kind of imagined because the feet are always touching. For example in my ‘touch’ cinema here I used my own naked body as a screen. I projected something on a screen, for example, I projected a house on a house, what does it mean? Which house is now real? The real house or the a media house, a technological house,. I thought a lot about what does it mean if you have different screens; a computer screen, a video screen, a filmic screen, a nature screen, a human or a body screen and so on. Once I did a TV action and it was done during the announcement of some news. This TV action was in ’71 and suddenly the image changed and you saw a family sitting and staring out of the monitor to you, sitting in your own room and also staring into the monitor; it was a kind of mirror but it was not a real mirror. This also has something to do with what I thought about what is the use of a screen; this ‘Touching’ is also a work which deals with this thinking.

GB: Valie, your exhibits cover a wide range of media, we talked about installations and sculpture but I see photos, for example. Would you like to talk about this work?

VE: I used the computer in extending my photo work that I did in the 70’s and also in the 80’s, using my own body, together with nature or other objects, in an urban situation. I call this work a configuration with architecture or a configuration in the nature and in these digitalised photos I use my own body or another photographed body and I use the computer to bring objects to this body, to change this body and so I really go in the body, but one cannot do this in reality, so I used the computer for that and also to make different layers. By this I mean to bring different images together from one person in that year, older and younger and so on, also different body parts. I used the computer for that work what you cannot do in reality. So this is also research in my bodywork.

GB: Valie Export thank you very much for this interview.

VE: Thank you very much.