by Chuck Mutscheller

Megazeichen 1990

Mischa Kuball is a German installation artist best known for activating spaces with light. For his six-week long Megazeichen (Megasigns) project in 1990, Kuball arranged to have the office lights in Düsseldorf's nondescript Mannesmann skyscraper systematically turned on after business hours to create mathematically-inspired symbols. Most recently, he used slide projectors and disco balls to create a hectic, vertigo-inducing environment at the Chicago Cultural Center. He conceived a more sedate setting that showed simultaneously at the Vedanta gallery.

I had the opportunity to speak with Mischa Kuball following his presentation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and I discovered an energetic man who is both frank and serious about his work. He possesses a keenly understated sense of humor though, too, as he cites (with a wink) the smell of paint as a major influence on his decision to make art. In this candid conversation with the artist, Kuball divulges how he became acquainted with Joseph Beuys, why Christo and Jean Claude shouldn't have wrapped the Reichstag, and how those disco balls made their way into his art.

Chuck Mutscheller: Please tell me who or what most influenced your art.

Mischa Kuball: When I was born in 1959, the year one of the most impressive Cadillacs had been designed, it was a kind of very special situation. I don't know much about wine, but maybe it was a good year for wine too. These were the years of Rock and Roll and a lot of things started to happen. I grew up in Düsseldorf, which is not a big city, but we were known for a strong arts academy. And during that time Düsseldorf Arts Academy had been influenced by teachers such as Joseph Beuys and this guy made a very strong impression on me. I was working as a laundry delivery boy and one my clients was Joseph Beuys and that's how we met. Once, he asked me to come in, we had a tea, and we talked about things. I did this job like a year and a half and then, at the very end, I said to him I would like to apply for an art school. He said, "What do you want to do?" I said I want to do work in public and he said, "You don't have to go to the academy - do it." That's a very American expression, but he used that kind of term to express that if you want to do something you just start doing it. And looking back at all those years, he was right. I mean I just picked out the issues, and I was writing a very brief concept, I was sending it to people, and I was setting up maquettes to visualize my ideas. I called people. I was very ambitious. I was putting a lot of energy into communicating the work via catalogues and via press conferences, and also talks and lectures and teaching.

CM: And so you opted not to attend the arts academy in Düsseldorf?

Refraction House

MK: When I was 18, I decided to study psychology. And it was work related to children in the years between 3 and 6. We know our childhood, but observing the childhood is a different thing. By observing it I figured out that there is a strong positive naiveté in place to deal with very elementary things. So, how to explore the world? It's simply done by questioning. It's simply done by exploring, by walking, by moving. I think finally all these aspects went subversively into my work. I started as a performance artist for a very short period. I was an actor for a very short period as well. However, I felt that all these endeavors had somehow straightjacketed me into one area, and what I figured out was that this was not my capacity. My passion is going into public spaces and to meet people and to socialize and get the energy flowing and give something back to them and take something from them and just create a piece.

CM: The give and take in your art is a very democratic ideal. You appear to maneuver your projects through bureaucratic red tape rather easily. Artists like Christo and Jean Claude tend to get more entangled in that red tape to the point where the process begins to overshadow the finished piece. Are you better equipped to navigate bureaucracies because of the democratic appeal of your work?

MK: Regarding the work of Jean Claude and Christo, and especially the Reichstag project, I said to myself, and I did it in public too, that if the government has to decide if this piece is going to be or not to be, the artist should reject the project. That was my criticism and it's very simple. I argue that because it was about the process, rather than to see the Reichstag wrapped, keep it in a vision rather than realize it just for the sake of realization. I think tourism took advantage of the project. People took snapshots, and had an ice cream in front of it and had some curried sausages. I also believe it was oversized because the action of an artist inside an urban society, inside the social context, has to have the right measurements and this was so overdone financially. It was causing a lot of environmental trouble too. Public art, especially what Christo and Jean Claude are working on, should make a statement not only to the artists as a community, but also to the community itself. As an artist I feel that it's about contribution rather than about exposing yourself to the public in a very selfish way - just feeding yourself. Attitude.

And if we talk about the democratic aspect in the work I do, I see this process in two ways. Number one, I design an idea, and I create a concept and I create the maquette, and I put up the issues to discuss. So that means there is still the artistic attitude and a non-democratic process which I think is basic to create works. And then I involve the people to realize the piece, to negotiate how this should be done without any compromise ever. I never did compromise on the projects, rather I was socializing on the projects. So that's a big difference. The democratic part is only in proceeding it and succeeding, not in developing the piece.

CM: There is something very austere and serious about your work, but there's also a hospitable element to it. How do you make work that employs a serious level of address while it simultaneously embodies a certain playful optimism?

MK: That's a game of balance. I have been criticized in Germany for a long time for being more or less didactic. I think this idea comes from the fact that I was trying to convey a certain issue and I did it in a very precise way and people felt somewhat guided by that. But I took this criticism to benefit. I figured out that if I want to convey and discuss a very serious problem or a very serious question, if I do that in a more playful way like the installation at the Cultural Center, then people appreciate that and they get more involved. The opposite is if I just press them into this - just read this, look at this and then this is the bottom line. I was more strict at the Vedanta gallery. It was a much more precise statement. I do have a critical statement to make. There is something I want to say. And I did it in a playful way at the Cultural Center and I did it in a different way at the Vedanta gallery. So, at the same time, two different shows compare with each other by discussing the same energy, but using a little shift in the methods.

CM: Speaking of methods, what inspired you to start working with light projections?

Space-Speech-Speed

MK: I think that using light as a medium is very much filled up with mythological things and people do relate it to a kind of mesmerizing universality - especially the piece at the Cultural Center. I do appreciate if I'm inside the room of, let's say James Turrell for instance, and right in the middle of this fascinating light experience. But when this comes to my brain after just appreciating the phenomenon, I start thinking. He invites me to take part of his world, of his vision, in many ways: from the technical point of view and from the experiential point of view, as well as from the intellectual and philosophical points of view. James Turrell is one the most impressive artists in the field I'm working in. But I also admire the work of Kryzsztof Wodiczco, using the light as a medium to transport political issues. I have a certain respect for him as well. Or Jenny Holzer. She uses light in a way we know like billboards and messages via LED announcements. I do see that we can all use the same medium, but we can express very different issues like the painter can do. They use oil and canvas, but they can express so many things in an abstract way, a metaphorical way, a figurative way.

But using light gives me a special privilege that is more in line with my ideas. When the painter finishes his or her work there is the painting left over and there's something to look at. But if I finish my work it's done so it will disappear. Part of my work is disappearance, nonexistence. It's weightless and it doesn't exist. It doesn't continue to be there visually, but it's an imprint and a grammatical memory and I do believe that this energy could be stronger than the physical appearance of any object we know. It's like the person who left you who could give you a long life impression, rather than the person you are with. It's the existence of absence.

CM: Sometimes things are better remembered than they actually were. Do you ever worry about the nostalgia that accompanies remembering?

MK: I can't say never, but not really. People didn't really know when they saw the skyscraper project that this was an artist who did it. They just saw something was different. Maybe after six weeks they had a clue that this could be a piece by an artist, but it could also be an architect, it could be a designer, it could be, whatever, the people who are working there. And it was a combination of these, in fact. People still saw signs even if I was finished with my work. They still understand this as a sculptural thing, but my sculptural work was finished. It was just the regular lights going on and off by people working there. So the sensibility after I work there has been increased for that building so they now see it as a sculpture. That is not nostalgia, but rather transformation. And I am finished for years now and still, even my wife, when we cross the bridge looking at this Mannesmann building, she says, "Look at this, it's another sign?" And it's not me who did it, it's just done by random.

CM: I'm curious to know where the idea to use disco balls came from?

MK: Well, they come from all of our experiences. I went to a club and was dancing and then suddenly I had the idea, what's going to happen if it's not just a simple light spot, just simple color or whatever just spinning around? What's going to happen if I use that? That was the first thing and then I bought one and I was trial and erroring and it worked. And I was going like, gosh, this is something I should show, and I did.

CM: Is there any advice you would offer to a young, aspiring artist?

MK: I could say that every artist, it doesn't matter in which field the person is working, it doesn't matter what kind of material he or she is using, the topic for me is just to do it - not waiting until somebody is going to ask you to do this and that. If somebody is interested in doing pieces in the public context, for instance, sculpture or doing interventions or doing installations I would tell people to never hesitate. Always call up people, be initiative, don't wait. The only thing that can happen is that people say, "Well, I'm sorry we are not interested." Maybe it's a disappointment that you have to deal with, but I do see that it pays back. If you just keep exploring yourself, if you just call and do things and want to do things, people are impressed by your enthusiasm. You know, just burn them with your energy. Don't wait until the museum curator is calling you to say I want to organize a show with you. This can happen. Don't forget the galleries, they are important, but I don't think that is target number one. I think the goal could be just related to your own ambition, just to find your issue and then try to transform the concept into a real thing.