English Translations 43
FORT
points of departure, her interest lies in how we navigate
art and for whom it’s as unimportant as it is for me to
The studio of FORT, a collective
through prescribed parameters and codes to arrive at
accumulate money or prestige with their collection.
of the three artists Anna Jandt,
sense and affirm nonsense.
Earlier, in the '70s, collecting art was also very popular
Jenny Kropp and Alberta Nie-
For Mitteschön, Bonnie presents a photograph from
with the middle-class. Is that still common today?
mann is in Kreuzberg’s Wran-
the series In The Flat Field. Situated someplace between
At least the figures suggest it is. The only question is,
gelkiez
The
the language of formal abstraction and an elementary
what’s the motivation to collect art these days. Many
group presented their instal-
exercise in visual composition, cropped color fields
people today consider art as a kind of investment
lation The Balled Eye Walls at this year's LISTE in Basel
reminiscent of the test strips used in the traditional
similar to real estate. Consequently, well-known ar-
and will probably get a lot of attention in the future. The
darkroom are layered and begin to produce a type of ca-
tists or artists people think will become well-known
young women consider finding the studio as a stroke of
mouflage pattern that extends towards the edges of the
are in especially high demand. One must not forget
luck. It’s affordable, meets their aesthetic demands and
picture plane, pointing towards its essential flatness.
that nowadays we produce very differently than in
is within proximity of their apartments. As many of
Bonnie was born in California, studied art and literature
the 70’s when there was a lot of installation art that
their ideas come from their immediate surroundings,
in Los Angeles, and received her MFA from UC Berkeley
was not for sale and if it was, it was only purchased
the last point was particularly important to them in the
in 2010. This summer she was a resident artist at the
by institutions. On the other hand, there used to be
search for a studio. FORT works mainly with everyday
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.
a lot of prints that were affordable even for normal
objects, which they sometimes alienate or have spe-
Her work has been presented at such venues as the San
art enthusiasts. Today there are more unique pieces
cially made. Many of their installations are settings that
Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Berkeley Art Museum,
for which you pay accordingly. The motivation to be
look like real spaces, but upon closer inspection turn
San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Exile Berlin, and
interested in art hasn’t just changed for art collectors.
out not to be real. These site-specific works demand a
Vox Populi, Philadelphia. In November she will be ex-
Many artists have a completely different attitude to
lot of space - even storage space to store works like the
hibiting a piece at Tape Modern as part of Navigating
their approach...
five-story loft bed from Hotel Marienbad or 30 factory
Darkness curated by Mira O’Brien and Helen Homan
...and think too much about the economic aspect of
tables from the installation Fort Hatchery Works. Light
Wu.
their art?
neighborhood.
Art is not a holy grail that must be protected against
is not particularly important for their work process, but still, they like the fact that their studio faces sou-
Interview
any economic access. But if the economic aspect is
th. “The most important thing is that the studio has a
Matthias Held
too much in focus, then art is arbitrary and boring.
certain charm and we like to be in it, because our works
(p. 26)
are created initially in the head and in an exchange of
Matthias
call
Koons who’s the king of it, but in my opinion even the
ideas.” says the artists group. Their artistic work is al-
himself a gallery owner because
arbitrary treatment of art has already pretty much
ways connected to the space in which it takes place, in
he doesn’t stand for a fixed pro-
maxed out.
other words, the exhibition location. “This space is often
gram of artists. So what is he
How can art be freed of this arbitrariness?
the driving force behind the creative process. The studio
then? A curator who makes his home available as an
In that it refuses the permanent contextualization and
plays a rather subordinate role in this context. We mostly
exhibition space for artists and combines their works
reflects more on itself, that it rediscovers its very own
work for our exhibitions on site, for example, last winter
with parts of his collection? Not just. Because if he
way and is divorced from any classification attempt in
we spent three months installing our work in the thermal
were a typical curator his exhibitions would be in a
itself. That's what I do in my showroom.
power station in Neukölln. Our studio was deserted at
much narrower context. Held asks, why the constant
The contextualization of art does not just mean that
this time, but it was nice to be able to return afterwards
categorizing – aren’t labels ultimately death for the
explaining art brings it out of an elite corner, but that
to a fixed location.” However, they think that different
thing they describe? So what is it that distinguishes
you can exert some control on the art and its further
studios can lead to different results. “Just a change of
today's art for him? We asked this curator and private
course.I don’t want to put anyone in the pillory. It's just
view can stimulate.”
collector.
a question of how to proceed interestingly in art.
How does one come to collecting art?
In the end everyone seems to be interested in autono-
Illustrator of the
I actually started to collect art while I was studying at
my and identity, at least everyone talks about it. Both
month (p.23):
the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. My classmates
ideals are certainly desirable – at worst, naive – but
Bonnie Begusch
and I quite simply exchanged our work at the time. I
definitely essential as a pledge for the middle-class col-
Drawing from the histories of
really began to collect art in the classic sense only ten
lector’s economically oriented perspective. The artist’s
abstraction, concrete poetry, and
years ago when I acquired a work by Raymond Petti-
creation process must be immediately recognizable
structuralist film, Berlin-based ar-
bon who drew the cover of Sonic Youth album Goo.
in the work and attributable to the artist. That's why
tist Bonnie Begusch works within
What criteria do you use when buying artwork: perso-
I’m skeptical when these are the first terms used as
a range of media to reflect on the intertwined relation-
nal preference or investment?
qualitative criteria for art. Autonomy not only refers
ship between signs, tools, and perception. Her video
It’s never about an investment for me. Always about
to the assumption that only economic conditions cre-
projections, photographs, and installations foreground
the work itself. I am interested in the interface in
ate free space because, and this is well known, money
the act of looking and reading, underscoring moments
which art seems to tell a story that ultimately dis-
goes along with a captivating, if glamorous, structure
of perceptual ambiguity within familiar frameworks.
solves because it eludes the grasp of complete expla-
of independence. I'm very confident. New content will
Adopting such materials as punctuation marks, stan-
nation. Fortunately, there are still quite a number of
always keep coming. This is reflected in society’s desire
dardized paper formats, and digital place-holders as
unknown collectors who collect solely for the sake of
for less arbitrariness and the need for genuine authen-
Unless you push the arbitrariness to the limit, like Jeff Held
doesn’t