In a Western culture of doubt avoidance, we want to be decision makers. Doubts contain beauty we don’t recognize. Lampoon 29: an interview with Carsten Höller and some mushrooms
Carsten Höller – a carnival of estrangement
Carsten Höller has been investigating for a few decades a carnival of estrangement, re-proposing disorienting states of alteration or excitement to the public. Sensations that reflect the widespread need to escape reality. What is the pinnacle of this collective escapism desire today? Maybe money, sex, drugs, alcohol or a mix of the above. Can art still elevate us to an elsewhere where, as the philosopher Robin G. Collingwood believed, the act of creation coincides with the exploration of one’s own emotions?
Carsten Höller about escapism and roughness – an interview
«We don’t do enough experiments on ourselves – we have problems to solve. Escapism is a difficult word. It makes one think of people taking refuge on paradise islands away from everything. This is connected with the idea of fun that I have been working on lately. Doubt can be an escape route. Making a choice can also maximize pleasure and enjoyment. We do not usually question it but take it for granted. It may sound provocative, but one cannot live without fun. It’s a human attitude, not present in bacteria or mushrooms. A scientific hypothesis could be the following: fun is a parasite that lives in human bodies and makes them act in certain ways to reproduce. Why do we seek amusement?»
Carsten Höller’s Laboratorium – the Roughness behind human thoughts
A video shows a car covered with stickers bearing the same words in different languages: The Laboratory of Doubt. In 1999, Mr Höller drove a white Mercedes connected to a megaphone through Antwerp streets. An action arose within the group exhibition Laboratorium, curated by Barbara Vanderlinden and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
«It’s always a long process before something like this becomes mature enough to solidify and make it into fiscal artwork. I didn’t know what to create for the Laboratorium. My first idea was too complicated and didn’t work out. I questioned my decision-making style. How I could contribute to specific demands, such as a group show. I thought to thematize this situation and see what the conditions are while talking about a decision. I used my miserable Mercedes full of stickers in French, English and Dutch repeating the phrase ‘The Laboratory of Doubt’. The speakers were on the roof and the microphone was inside. The idea was to drive while spreading a sense of doubt in the street – a solution reminiscent of advertising strategies. I was in a place where more than five roads converged, without a roundabout. An intersection where I found myself driving in circles because I was unsure where to go and where to find my way».
Carsten Höller and the Laboratory of Doubt
More than twenty years later, one might wonder whether doubt still plays a specific role within Carsten Höller’s artistic research.
«The classical method of science is to formulate a hypothesis, often based on other research. From this hypothesis, you generate an experiment to conduct. From there you formulate conditions for a certain event that may or may not occur. Wherever you repeat the experiment, if the conditions are similar, the result does not change. Doubt is something else. We perceive doubt as an enemy. In a Western culture of doubt avoidance, we want to be decision makers. We always want to know what to do. After The Laboratory of Doubt, I saw that doubt contains beauty that we do not recognize. Doubt is also a privilege – spiritual and physical at the same time. If you don’t need to choose, you can keep more possibilities around you».
Carsten Höller and his rough entomologist’s approach
In a past interview Carsten Höller said, «I’m more of a mad professor». What remains of the entomologist’s approach, which marked his early career, when it is translated into art? What aspects of being a scientist cannot be reconciled with those of being an artist and the freedom that comes with it?
«Curiosity remains, the rest changes. Science and art have much in common. Science has a method, it is rigid and sometimes fraud is tempting. Scientists’ work is demanding in terms of time, resources and budget. All to get a small result. Here cheating could be contemplated. So maybe you get fame and social recognition which is difficult to obtain. That’s why scientific rules are so formal and many publications involve peer review. If you publish something in Nature or Science you’ve made it to the top. As an artist, everything is different. There’s no reason to tell the truth. The message is different. When I call myself more of a mad professor, I mean an artist who can do subjective and out-of-the-ordinary experiments. Propose something that has never been done before and find people who want to participate in experimental creation».
Understandability is often achieved through other media that do not include language
A certain sense of control also remains present in Höller’s artworks. Always knowing what you are doing can also be pervasive in art to avoid repetition. To avoid this, it is necessary to cultivate evolutionary group awareness within the art system.
«You need control even in art. You have to know what has already been explored by other artists. It is a social phenomenon, not something you can do on your own. At the same time, an artist wants to act in a context where rationality is not the predominant factor. There is no need to communicate in a direct way. Understandability is often achieved through other media that do not include language. Among the artistic community, I do not perceive much risk in experimenting. I regret this because it was the main impetus that led me to become an artist».
Carsten Höller and the acts of conscious freedom – roughness in art
Regarding the audience, some critics have compared Carsten Höller’s viewers to laboratory rats. In 1967, Guy Debord analyzed society of his time, highlighting its unstoppable drift and consequent transformation into a collection of helpless, passive spectators. Debord argues for the alienation of the spectator, who the more they contemplate, the less they live. From this perspective, the artist’s work can stimulate, according to Umberto Eco, «acts of conscious freedom».
Through Mr Höller’s works one witnesses a shift in the observer from voyeur to a viveur. Nicolas Bourriaud says relational aesthetics consists of the «set of artistic practices that take as their theoretical and practical starting point the set of human relationships and their social context, rather than an autonomous and restrictive space».
If, then, the work of art is conceived as a collective creation, is the public just a mass to whom certain actions and experiences are proposed or, in a perspective of shared vulnerability, are there no barriers between the artist and those who experience his works? «It is about conducting self-experiments. It is not a dual relationship – between the artist and the observer – but a triangle is formed between the participant, the exhibition, and the other visitors. The observer can be observed and vice versa».
Community, co-existence and the work’s paternity – Carsten Höller on art nowadays
Carsten Höller’s artworks create a sense of community, which originate from the participation of those who activate them. In this dimension of co-existence, where does the work’s paternity begin and end?
«During 2001, I realized a time-based experiment in the Atomium of Brussels called The Baudouin Experiment. We rented the main sphere of this architectural molecule created for Expo 1958. With Barbara Vanderlinden we invited different people to stay with us for twenty-four hours in this space, doing practically nothing. You could sit, everyone had a bed to spend the night in, but no entertainment was provided except for newspapers. No TV, no photos, no videos, no phones. What happens when people do nothing? It was an experience similar to when individuals are on a boat moving from one island to another but we were only moving temporally, not spatially. This work was inspired by King Baudouin of Belgium who had to ratify a newly passed law on abortion. The king refused to sign, as he was a Catholic, so he found a solution: he decided not to be king for twenty-four hours and had himself declared insane. A substitute ruler had to sign the new law in his place. I find this solution, a one-day suspension of one’s existence».
Carsten Höller artworks on Amanita Muscaria – Rough works
Carsten Höller’s works also branch out into the doubling and repeating slides of Amanita Muscaria – the mushroom believed to triumph over death – and related studies on the influence of human emotions on plant growth. What aspect of other living organisms remains unexplored?
«I am interested in other life forms. Although it is already complex to understand ourselves, we need to understand other species. Sometimes it is impossible. The main idea is that if these organisms – animals, bacteria, plants, mushrooms – are as alive as we are in this world, why can’t we humans accept that our way of life is not the only one possible? This affects the level of understanding. We base our lives on thinking that by using our minds, and their creations, we can solve every problem. I do not believe this to be the case, not only because of its limitations. My works inspired by plants and other living organisms have to do with our perception of these different forms of life. For example, mushrooms’ life is almost incomprehensible to us. Sometimes we have to surrender to doubt».
The Roughness behind Carsten Höller: Who would ever dream of painting today?
In a materialistic world where major creative breakthroughs are rare, one wonders whether artists still fear repetition. The post-modern contamination between elements from different fields of knowledge seems to have dried up long ago and the quality of the works suffers in terms of idea, medium and realization.
«I fear that. We live in a way where it seems that strides have already been made. The art scene is currently declining. Who would ever dream of painting today? Yet, I find paintings everywhere. We are back to the idea that an artist can express his interiority on a canvas, something that has been done for centuries. I see no reason to paint today. It is a disease that needs to be cured».
Carsten Höller
Born in 1961 to German parents in Brussels, Höller holds a doctoral degree in agricultural science and worked as a research entomologist until 1994. He began to make art in the late 1980s, alongside other artists experimenting with space and experience such as Pierre Huyghe, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Philippe Parreno.
