(1) How long have you been making installations?
As a child I made my toys myself and now I consider them as my first installations. I was initially interested in roads and crossroads and the materials used : clay/earth and wooden lath.
(2) Why did you choose to make installations and not something else?
During my art studies I got more and more convinced that where I had to search for art was outside art. In this sense, I think installing is a working method, and/or the operation means of the art strategy, therefore I cannot start working without having worded my aim, at least in the form of questions. The installation resulting from the act of installing will be the demonstration of the aim and the strategy as well as the means to word the concept and a worldview-construction.
(3) What do you think of your own works?
In my work I don't aim at completion, so these works are continuable, they can be connected to each other or even to other people's works. Each piece is an answer to a question that had been asked and they only gain importance if they find, “in a poetical sense, their geometrical place” (i.e. they are installed) in a correlation that is larger than they themselves are. My works can be found in many fields of art, and I don't think any of them is more important than the other. I may as well put it this way: what I mainly do is installing, this is my work, and I may not have “works” at all.
(4) What do you think the difference is between your own work and other installations?
Before the existence of the notion of “art”, and even after that for a long time, until “installation” became a notion, the aim and function of any kind of art-activities had been installation. The ancient civilizations' cavepaintings as well as the way more modern societies used art objects with political, religious or civil decorating purposes are all installations; so man has always installed. If we consider that the “language” of the times before the existence of language and writing was installation we also have to ask what is the important reason for such a wide-spread use of the same idea today? The first art installations of the 20th century were events, exhibitions and publications conceived by the Dada and directed against traditionally accepted art. Dada was the first to tumble the idea that the exclusive agent of the artist's concept is the artwork. The montage-collage principle destroyed the sight-oriented thinking, and later the accelerated technological development and the medium-research spread the problems all over different fields. Intermedia and the working of multimedia replaced or swallowed up the traditional genres and, as a consequence, art now can be interpreted in all fields of life as installation. The principle of installation (everything is open and constantly changing) allows everything that has happened so far or is yet to happen to be clearly arranged and understandable. Within the relations of installation the most important ones are those essential questions which are interpreted through the adequate connections. Art installations provide opportunity for all medial possibilities, thus they are able to join, as hypermedia, the unified structure of data. In this context the individual (the artist) is not an “author” but a permuter. This experience of mine comes from the network and I tend to resolutely apply it in my work.
(5) What do you think of the relationship between traditional artwork and installation?
I mean by “traditional artwork” the artwork which has become a commercial product manipulated or dispossessed by the financial world, or by religious, ideological, or political powers, and thus has become the object of “anti-art” manipulations. The owner of a traditional artwork uses it for installing his/her own interests of power: uses it for “non-artistic” purposes. Being aware of his/her own power he/she proclaims that art is what he/she considers to be art. Artists say that installation does not want to be art but the means of thinking, imagination, the freedom of the mind, progress, survival, and communication; and as such - information. „The terminology allied with installation does not contain the word “critics”; “future” and “possibility” become synonyms here; “time” means the same as “probable”, and “the present” will be the realization of the possibilities in the form of images.” (Vilém Flusser)
(6) What determines the size and the material of an installation?
Concept, intention and interest. If the artist only wants to be able to see his/her concept it may as well be realized in virtual space, in digital images without size and material. If the customer wants to own it, in that case, intention and interest are the determinant factors.
(7) Could you name the smallest and the largest installation possible?
Metaphorically saying, the smallest can be a guess and the biggest can be an open mind.
(8) Is there any object or idea that cannot be installed?
Anything in the world is suitable for being installed. E.g.: “Science, art and politics, if once congregated into a unified reading, can gather unsuspected things out of the the world and out of us.” (Vilém Flusser)
(9) How does the environment affect the act of installating?
In installing the p r o p e r linking points come into existence by the l i m i t a t i o n of the environment, which makes environment essential.
(10) Do you know about any facts that would restrict the possibilities of installation?
Theoretically, in an installation each element restricts the others through its own potentials and through being an “environment” to the others. However, since the possibilities are infinite, this “restriction” is the place of the linking points. Therefore the restriction is illusory, because the “proper” links increase the value of the installation in question.
(11) Do you like making installation to order or at request?
A request or an order may either come from outside or inside. If the customer is good the order is good, too, and the work is done with pleasure.
(12) What do you think of preserving an installation?
An installation preserves itself depending on its own abilities, that is to say, it is preserved if someone has any spiritual interest in it. The installations made before and after “art” - like other products as well - will still be downloadable and present in the unimaginably far future in the form of images generated by the digital code.
(13) Can the value of an installation be estimated, or how?
The spiritual value of an installation can be estimated by the number of the good links and, consequently, by the duration of its existence. If it is regarded as a consumer’s product its monetary value is market-dependent, as in the case of any other products.
(14) What copyrights apply to installations preserved only in documents?
Artists usually do not bother with copyright, it is the owners who do so. The practice of copyright is an attack against the spiritual value of an art work, for the author and his/ her work is a gift from nature; and the present copyright is unfit for defending it. In the distant future copyright will be replaced by the right of the “author” when the institutions and/or the states will offer the “authors” conditions in which they can work for their full self-realization for the benefit of mankind. In this sense there will be no authors any more but permuters.
- “Authorship” is a result of a “critical” decision regarding the product, so “copyright is institutionalized criticism”. “The words critique and criminal come from the Greek krinein and the Latin cernere, which mean something like ‘break’ in the sense of ‘break apart’ or ‘break the law’. We have known these double meanings at least since the Enlightenment (and especially since Kant), as it became clear that the one criticized saw the critic as a criminal, as did the critic the criticized. To read a text critically is to take the writer to be criminal and to commit a crime against him. The whole thing is steeped in a criminal ambience.” (Vilém Flusser)
- The goal of permutable installations is to be received and then to be changed and passed over. If the word ‘author’ is replaced by the word ‘permuter’, and ‘criticism’ is replaced by ‘discourse’, we will perhaps use the word ‘exchange’ instead of ‘copyright’.