ART Habens BBB Johannes Deimling
ART Habens meets
Johannes Deimling
An interview by and
, curator
, curator
My main medium since years is Performance Art and Action Art. Even though I also draw, write poems, make video works this art form is to me the most adequate form to articulate my visions and visual concepts as it per se a process oriented form of art. The process implies that there is no goal to reach, but more a way to go, so even there is a presentation of my performance the process is still going on, guiding my thoughts and decisions even within the performance itself. This is because in Performance Art the‘ production’ is trying to sculpt the unknown. I never rehearse my performances before the public presentation, so even I conceptualize and think a lot of how the work should look like I have no concrete knowledge about how it will actually be. The absence of rehearsal is a distinct separation to other performing arts( theatre, dance, music) and focusses on the uniqueness of the creative act with all risks of failure. This requires that I need to take the process always with me in order to keep my awareness within the public presentation as high as possible. To begin the creative process I form single images. The so called‘ acted images’( agierte Bilder) consist of reduced, simple actions often with only one object, one material or one gesture. A visual alphabet of acted images accrues, allowing me to literally and visually write my art that is performance. Using the technique of collage I combine several acted images that allows me to play in a cinematic way with all of the visual elements by deconstructing the course of actions and putting the parts anew together. During this process various intersections appear in which unpredictable new images emerge. The term for this working method would be:‘ performative collages’. The quality of this working method is that there is no end result, each performance is unique which cannot be repeated and creates new questions which opens a new research. An open and free field of choices, responsibilities and possibilities. The process itself becomes the technique..
“ It’ s not the action that makes the performance” is the title of a recent published catalogue of my work( an online version is available here: http:// j. mp / PPLxX9). The title of this publication is a statement which includes the thought that even the artist and his body is a main focus in performance art, it is not the only quality.
The combination of the present body with various artistic components( size, shape, colour, light, space, sound,...)- and very important- time creates this holistic universe of a performative art work which- if it comes altogether- creates this‘ magic’ moments in which art is in direct conversation with the present audience.
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