Teks: Ibrahim Soetomo

Berlin-based artist Julian Rosefeldt is fascinated by reality-making behind a film. His background in architecture shaped his interest in engaging audiences with visually opulent and massive scale installation works. His 13-channel film installation Manifesto (2015) which features Cate Blanchett in all of them, pays homage to the literary beauty of art manifestos. After circulating across Europe and the United States, it has finally greeted Indonesian audiences through its newest exhibition with Museum MACAN, marking its first show in Southeast Asia. During the premiere of Manifesto, we had the opportunity to dig deeper into the ideas behind his works, the process behind making the film, and his perception towards contemporary art in our current global situation.

You studied architecture in Munich and Barcelona, but now you work mostly with film and video, how did you come up with this decision?

It just evolved naturally. I studied architecture not necessarily to become an architect. I just thought it was a great thing to study and I do profit a lot from what I learned there, especially working strategies. In architecture, you work in teams a lot of the time and I still do now making films. I still have a very strong interest in architecture as a subject but also as a general approach to my work. Construction and deconstruction play an important role, but also the way I set up my installation is very architectural, where you become part of the work. It’s all there.  

Your works are known for their splendid visuals and theatricality, often exhibited in a massive scale video installation, how did you develop this approach ever since you began your artistic career?

It has to do probably with my background in architecture. I was never afraid of different scales. From the very first work, it was still photographic installations and works of found footage, I was interested in the audiences becoming part of the work, and really embracing them the way architecture does. I think it originates from there. 

During my studies in architecture, I had a lot of jobs. Some of them had to do with the making of images. For a time, I worked in theater, physically setting up stages, silly work (laughs), set design. I am always fascinated by the backstage side of work, TV, and so on. All jobs. I also worked as a photographer. I did a lot of different works that led me to develop an interest in the construction of realities.     

It helps to love humans by seeing the absurdity of human existence

You often talk about human existence, like The Trilogy of Failure (2004 – 2005) where the actors are plunged in repetitive and meaningless actions, from all aspects of human beings, why absurdities interested you the most?

I guess it is very much me (laughs), very much my perspective on humanity. It helps to love humans by seeing the absurdity of human existence, and the humor in it in a way as well. Humor is a great tool to manage life, I guess.

I wouldn’t say it’s the main focus but it’s certainly something that I observed a lot in our daily rituals. I find them highly absurd. We don’t question them so much anymore but once you start investigating, you find a lot of funny things in our way of dealing with each other. 

The Trilogy of Failure also talks about the film industry, how so?

I guess this constructive side of the image-making machine of cinema interested me. It was probably referring to my background in architecture and my fascination also for the making of all sides of this machinery. Watching movies, I was always fascinated by the way they are actually done. How myths and identities are highly constructed. My work is – in a way – a very naive kind of personal approach to try to understand how, for instance, the western genre functions, or how science fiction functions, or a Bollywood movie. 

I am trying to analyze film genres that are partly responsible for the constructions of our realities. We always think what we see in our eyes are real, because we exist in reality. Yes, it is real, of course, but it always echoes everything we have consumed beforehand, read and digested and turn it into our own thinking. As Jim Jarmusch said in this wonderful manifesto, “Nothing is original” and that’s so true. I really love that manifesto and also the way Cate Blanchett responded to a lesson on children.

Let’s talk about Manifesto (2015). When was your first encounter with art manifestos? 

That was probably in school when I chose art as my main discipline. In Germany, at the end of high school, you choose a few study materials and art is one of them. I had a great art teacher. She taught us the basics of the art history of the 20th century. I think she was the one that taught us the Futurist manifesto if I am not mistaken. It’s interesting because that manifesto is the first artist manifesto in art history. I think it was there. Again, studying architecture, we have a lot of art history lessons, but I think I only read a few milestones of artist manifestos, and only then, through this project, I delved deeper into it.

How did they resonate with you when you started reading them?

It is a big love declaration to these amazing thoughts and poetically expressed the creative ideas of the artists. We often forget that those artists are brilliant thinkers and writers. For instance, I don’t agree with what most of the Futurists were fancying, like, they were fascinated by war and technology in a dangerous way and later, sympathizing with fascism. Of course I can’t agree with that! nevertheless, their writings are amazing. At the beginning of the Futurist manifesto, they said: “We had stayed up all night, my friends and I, under hanging mosque lamps.” It is so amazing. It is just very beautiful poetry. And very often, I think artists are trained or trained themselves to condense their ideas in works of art, probably in writing as well.

I wonder what poets think about these texts. I’ve never spoken to a poet about it actually, I would be interested to hear their opinions, whether they think the texts are proper poetries or not (laughs). But these writings are certainly mind-blowing.

I believe there are hundreds of art manifestos, how did you end up with 13 manifesto collages for this work? 

Very intuitively. By narrowing it down. Always keeping in mind that I had this basic idea that these texts will be performed so they had to be speakable. The texts have to be understandable, which eliminated a few very complex manifestos that were very difficult to interpret. But on the other hand, if a text was appealing to me, I always found a few sentences at least that were essential in those texts and used them in the collage instead. 

As you know, it is a collage of manifestos, so I had to respectively allow myself to, first of all, ignore the visual works of those artists that became famous, ignore the name, and not to quote the names. I do that in the catalog, and in most of the venues we also had the texts available with references to the artists, so of course it’s not hidden, you can find out about it. But I don’t want them in the work for a good reason, because very often their visual works stand in the way between us and the ideas that originate those works.  

As I stated many times, a lot of these manifestos were written on the very early stage of the artist’s life and therefore full of this kind of fragility and freshness and naive approach to life and that is exactly what makes them so beautiful. If you look back from the work of art that was created based on those manifestos, you kind of lose something. By then, you are already impressed by the work, you are already impressed by the fame of the artists because normally they end up in amazing museums around the world, and it manipulates the fresh look at those texts which I wanted to achieve.  

A Conceptual Art manifesto is brought by a news anchor, and a Dadaist manifesto is stated in a funeral speech as if the mourner is stating the death of art, why did you come up with an idea of clashing art manifesto with an unusual setting?

It is a clash but there is also a moment of truth or a moment of parallelity between the text and the actual character. The mourner, for instance, the funeral speaker, derived from a text by  Francis Picabia which had that element in it. I just wanted it to become that scene all of a sudden and then it made so much sense, also because it is so much like a juxtaposition to the humor and craziness of the Dada poetry and all of a sudden, it has this extreme sincerity which then becomes very funny. There is this strong contrast between the funeral speaker’s way of speaking and the context, “From now on we want to shit in different colors” with this almost teary, suffocated voice. It’s beautiful.

Very often, the text and the images go almost in analogy. Like the Futurist scene, I would say that’s a clear translation of the future and the danger of speed into our time. Like Wall Street trading, high-speed trading, it’s a danger. Technology is running out of control, manipulating and influencing all of our lives. So that’s maybe an analogy, ex negativo. Like with the Pop Art manifesto which seemed to depict the world against which Pop Art addressed its ideas. So it’s rather the opposite of what you see. That’s the clash. Sometimes very intuitively. Just melting an idea with scenery that spoke to me and doesn’t need an explanation. As long as it releases freedom in the mind of the viewer, it’s successful.

You picked the Dadaist, the Futurist to Surrealist manifesto; most of them are written by male artists, and manifesto itself has a very masculine tone to it. What was behind your decision to feature a female impersonator which was Cate Blanchett herself? 
The 20th-century art history is very male-driven
Feminism is such a huge issue that I wouldn’t want to limit it to an ism of art history because it is more than that.It is an instrument to deconstruct that testosterone-driven male attitude in most of the manifestos. There are four or five manifestos written by women in Manifesto, but sadly the 20th-century art history is very male-driven. There are other manifestos that didn’t find their place in this project because I already incorporated them in a project that led to Manifesto, which is Deep Gold (2013/2014), especially feminists theory. And feminism is such a huge issue that I wouldn’t want to limit it to an ism of art history because it is more than that. And I felt that this is not the project to reduce feminist theories into one ism of many isms, cause it is all-embracing and bigger than that. And so I renounced using, for instance, the Cyborg Manifesto or manifestos by women that may be too big or too important. It sounds strange because these manifestos are all important, but what they addressed is something bigger than just an art movement or the attitude of artists in society. So they fell out. But in a way feminism came back to the project through a woman embodying or giving a voice and acting as a vessel for all these ideas.

How did you feel after watching her performance?

I think we were both very happy and everybody involved in the project was very surprised that it actually worked out pretty well. It’s quite a risk also, that’s an aspect of the work that some people might see critically, that the fame of her as an actress could overshadow the ideas. But I don’t feel that very much myself because I think she’s so good at it. You can also perfectly forget about her acting and just literally dive into the texts, and that is what actually an actress’ job is. It stands behind the actress’ fame, behind the character, and behind the text. But she’s so good at what she does you can also, for a second loop, just watch her acting and her acting skills, or do it parallelly. So I don’t think it stands in the way. For me it’s fine, and it’s a very strong decision to allow one person to embody all these different ideas. Of course, they are different characters there, but for me it makes them more universal in a moment, knowing that you watch one person performing all of these very different ideas.

How did you collaborate with her in terms of brainstorming or improvising?

That’s a very, very lovely process. Of course, she couldn’t invest as much time as I could for this project (laughs). So I prepared the text collage but then she also contributed a few ideas. We were just collecting ideas for characters and then we met to read through all the scenes, and there is enough space to just say like, “I think that character works better with this text idea.” And then, of course, she added up a lot of details while shooting the sequences out of her amazing experiences and acting skills, but also her intuitive intelligence and attitude towards her profession. It was fascinating to see her work, and she has a great soul, you know? Very sweet person, very intelligent and very funny person also.

In the film version, the 13 performances are stitched together. How is it any different to you?         

It is different. First of all, it exists because of the support I received from the film industry for my installation idea. They just asked me in exchange to deliver something with a narrative or a single screen so they can justify their support within their system and that led to this very different situation. All of a sudden Bobby Good, the editor and I, had to invent a structure to stitch those 13 scenes together, which we thought would be easy because we knew all the material very well. We started editing it because we had done the installation already, but it was very difficult because it seems very boring to just stitch the scene one after another. So we understood that we have to replace the nonexisting story or narration with visual narration. Like a visual trip. And that’s the art of editing. And there was music added.   

I would say that the main difference is probably the focus on one single voice in the film version because you don’t have to hear the cacophony, but the chorus moment is missing. It is something that is very different. People that have seen the film first probably don’t miss it so much but the people who have seen the installation first often said: “Ah, I missed the chorus.”

We have to engage with society and not think that one single voice is not important, but all the opposite, really see it as an important instrument against populism and stupidity.

By reading manifestos from Indonesian artists, I learned about how art links to nationalism and political situations. From your perspective, what can we learn from reading modern art manifestos in a contemporary context? Do you think it is still relevant today?

I generally think that we learn by being overwhelmed by the beauty of these thoughts, by being inspired by it and encouraged by it. We learn that art and culture play a very, very important corrective role in contemporary society and should never be silenced. It’s a very big danger.

Building up in this new kind of populist-run countries or at least partly populist-run countries, but unfortunately often they are almost kind of a 50-50 situation and the populist just wins a little bit with a little advantage. We also see that in Europe, not only in countries like America or Brazil. We see them in Hungary for instance, where slowly, through manipulation, the censorship of journalists, artists, creatives, theater makers, shift into a very dangerous direction. 

And I guess what we learned from these texts is that we have to engage with society and not think that one single voice is not important, but all the opposite, really see it as an important instrument against populism and stupidity. All that dictatorship of consumerism, which is also another threat and which I think is the preparation, or the ground of populism that grew up so successfully and happily, because consumerism engaged us all in kind of a brainwashing way, keeping us busy and always at the edge of our possibilities, and therefore created a simple recipe, which is “We want more and more.” 

Of course, an ironic thanks to companies like Facebook, because they don’t understand the danger of spreading fake news. They always proclaim “We are against censorship” and “We want total freedom on the internet,” but what they want is to sell their product. So it’s pure commercial interests. 

On the fifth method of the Manifesto of the Indonesian New Arts Movement (1979), the artists said: “We aim for art that is more alive, that its existence is readily accepted and that it exists naturally, usefully and widely among the people.” I see that this notion on the role of art is still relevant. We are living in interesting times right now that we share globally, like populism or equality and diversity, how do you think contemporary art responds to the current situation?

Well, that’s a very general question. We find these issues all over the place now in contemporary art, right? One good side of social media and globalization in the media is that art spreads around fast. My website, for instance, is generally a 24/7 exhibition worldwide, you can access it from anywhere without having to pay an entrance to MOMA in New York. [My work is] not at the MOMA. Well, it is in the collection, but not in the exhibition (laughs), but it is an example that you normally have to be privileged to education. So the Internet allows us to reach a wider audience, but also open up to things that we just talked about, that it is also a dangerous tool to spread fake news, et cetera. 

I guess artists, nowadays, are luckily taking a position and immediately reacting. In some countries, the art scene or social media is not the only form of intellectual exchange. Like, for example, in Brazil, the media are basically controlled by one big company. They even own the so-called ‘critical paper’. So the only way to actually get information, substantial information, is through the Internet. 

Let’s imagine a present artist or art group publishes a manifesto, what would the manifesto be talking about that reflects contemporary issues?

I hope there will be many with very different ideas! (laughs)

We are in the new “Roaring 20s.” Everything that happened in the 1920s, from art to political movements, will turn 100 years old this decade. In your opinion, are we repeating, or are we progressing?

Both at the same time! It’s a very controversial tendency. We are suddenly regressing if we see a long achieved values of civilization, which all of a sudden was put into question again. I can’t believe it. In Italy, its immigration policy, for instance, is amazing. I lived in Rome for years and made a project about it. The Italian constitution is fantastic. So beautiful. It really guarantees the rights of minorities, the freedom of speech, freedom to express your religion, their obligation of the state to protect the rights of minorities, equal payment for men and women, and so on. And all of a sudden, politicians only pretend and everything was put into question again. Hungary is another example. We have this tendency that is slowly infiltrating our democratic systems. That’s the negative tendency where we are definitely winding back.

But on the other hand, I see a wider amount of people, especially kids and younger people, the Greta Thunberg generation, being involved and understanding that they need to do something. They need to engage. So I have hope for that generation. And also the good sides and the possibilities of modern technologies offer us to engage on a wider scale.

Manifesto (2015) has been traveling around the globe, and we are glad that it finally greeted Indonesian audiences. How do you think it will speak to us as an audience with a culturally different background? 

I don’t know. I try not to even ask myself that question. Because the work traveled so much to different cultural contexts and so far it was always very interesting to engage with a different audience to see their reactions. What I observed is that Cate and the films kind of have that hypnotic quality. They are really engaged with these films. They sit in the exhibition for two hours. So I think that they take a lot from the film, but what they took you have to ask them (laughs). I don’t have any expectations. 

If I have, not an expectation but a positive vision about this specific show here [in MACAN] is that after a show in Budapest, the third show there, we had that manifesto timeline and short texts about the isms or the art history of the 20th century, plus biographies of the individual artists, I think that is a great tool to teach younger kids, art students, school kids or pupils, about the art history of the 20th century. In that sense, it is a pedagogical tool, hopefully, a light one, to engage in art history through watching a movie. Let’s call it a movie. That’s probably what the kids would feel because they watch many movies. That is probably what I think is nicely done here.

Your latest work is In the Land of Drought (2017), when can we see your next project?

Soon! In mid-June, I am directing an opera for which I develop a film-kind-of set design in Antwerp. And in October I’m gonna show the work in Munich. And next year, in June, I’m going to show a new big project which will travel to a few venues. No venue yet in Asia but let’s see (laughs). 

“Julian Rosefeldt: Manifesto” exhibition is available at Museum MACAN from 28 February – 31 May 2020. Tickets can be purchased here.