Dadachat

 

Piero Golia Interview 1974

 

 

The following interview was published on the occasion of the Grey Flags exhibition curated by Anthony Huberman and Paul Pfeiffer at the Sculpture Centre, New York. The questions are taken from a 1974 interview with Bruce Nauman, the year of Golia's birth.

 

 

Do you have a strong desire to talk to people about your work?

I’m not sure. I think the question is complex because my work is connected to my life. I can say that I don’t like to talk too much about my work. But I also believe that when I talk about everyday stuff, like a car accident or ants crawling on tomatoes in my garden, I’m indirectly talking about my work. Because what appear to be simple, almost disposable ideas, evolves into what people consider my work. So in this way: yes. I talk about my work.

Do you think many people have a hard time relating to your work? Or that one needs previous information?

I don’t think my work is difficult to relate to, or at least it shouldn’t be. In the end, what you call “work” is just what people see – and that’s it. Any way they relate to my work is the right way for individual viewers, at least from their personal point of view. This elliptical logic of art is what makes it so fascinating. On the other hand, I think the conjunction of the concept of art with information is inappropriate. It is right to speak about information when you are talking about other systems of communication that are more codified: for example, language. Instead what characterizes art is transversality, the idea of being open – a language more entropic and evocative. For these reasons art doesn’t get extinguished through the passing of one particular piece of information. Even so, I don’t read Shakespeare as an instruction manual.

Do you think that your pieces are more successful or less successful depending upon the amount of information you give out in them?

I think the work should include as little information as possible. A big part of my work is characterized by applying different forces and actions to preexisting objects. This will change their meaning and their possible function and space in reality. But I think this works only if the viewer has space to expand what is significant. I think art should be evocative and not descriptive.

A large number of people dismiss your work and similar type pieces as not being “art” since it doesn’t follow or make use of traditional media. Does this concern you at all?

The concept of art as painting-sculpture-video is obsolete; people don’t dismiss untraditional media any more. I don’t think people dismiss my work for its unconventional form, not in my case. My work is so close to reality that its “not being art” is its stronger point. Everything starts from reality and then expands through a sort of displacement the object goes through, which is accomplished by the artist’s manipulation of it.

Are you interested in making people aware of new ways of perceiving and to have them think about this? Or it is just a sort of momentary situation you want to impinge upon them?

I don’t think it is up to the artist to make people change their way of perceiving, neither am I interested in provoking them through a momentary situation. I’m more interested in trying to be consoling. I believe artists don’t have to give people any certainty; I always think of the things I do, quite unambiguously, as truly living vehicles. So it feels right to generate great doubts in the viewer, which gives the work an evocative power. Art should crack the surface of conventionally comfortable ways to relate to reality, generating the kind of vertigo in the viewer that this experience implies. This is what characterizes good art.

How do people think about art then?

You should ask the people, not to me.

Then why do you think that you do art – or consider your work as art?

Again, I’m not the right person to ask this kind of question. Again, I believe it is not up to me to say that what I make “is art.” I’ve never been interested in “art” itself. I’m more interested in creating something similar to a scientific “method” or, better, “a system” – something that can be applied to different levels of reality, something that people can decrypt and reapply to their everyday reality. I truly believe that today artists, scientists and philosophers create systems that rule the world, but maybe this is little bit out of fashion.