Joseph Nechvatal is a very interesting contemporary artist-cum theoretician who has read Baudrillard’s take on the thought such as « everything is a virus » and listened to Howard Devoto’s song « there’s no answer- everything has a cancer »… I have met with Nechvatal in his French gallery « Jean-Luc and Takako Richard »where he has just shown

his most recent work, beautiful and educational – both!

Question: When and how did you decide to become an artist?

Joseph Nechvatal: This might sound a little strange Nina, but I made the
decision to be an artist rather suddenly: in one night and in a split
second.
I was a sophomore at University pursuing a degree in Sociology, deeply
involved in the political/social issues of the early 1970s; i.e. the
anti-war, woman’s liberation and equal rights movements. I was home in
Chicago for the summer, working at some shit job to pay for my University
expenses. Art had been a hobby-interest with me up to that point. Anyway,
I was riding around downtown Chicago on a motorcycle, somewhat in a
psychic funk. As I zoomed pass some cathedral, a large illuminated
stain-glass window caught my eye. It was an intense moment of color in a
black night. Something told me then and there that the way to social
change was the way of art - in that art addresses the inner unique
individual rather than the group, the sociological statistical. In that
sense I saw art as a means to foster social change from the bottom-up,
rather than top down, if you will.
So bing. That was it. I felt compelled to go around the city and
photograph stain-glassed windows for the rest of the summer. I wanted to
try to understand what had happened to me. Back at University I changed my
major to studio art and never regretted it for an instant.

Question:Where does your fascination with technology come from?
Why this particular genre - electronic medium - and not something else?

Joseph Nechvatal: As you can tell Nina by what I just told you, I see art
as a means of practicing politics on one level. In the mid-1980s I could
already observe the coming rise of electronic media (computational media,
more precisely) as the controlling, organizing force of social power. I
felt that to adequately address this topic I should approach it from
inside of electronic medium, and not from an artisanal pre-electronic
practice.

Question: Could you elaborate on your idea of using art as a
means of practicing politics?

Joseph Nechvatal: The key political notion for me concerning art is
omnijectivity, which is the concept stemming from the discoveries of
quantum physics which teaches us that mind (previously considered the
subjective realm) and matter (previously considered as the objective
realm) are inextricably linked. It is a political concept for me because
omnijectivity is possible only with the conflation of polarities; a stance
which recognizes the mutual interpenetration that unites apparent
opposites (specifically the subjectivity and objectivity). For me art
which takes seriously such scientific understanding supersedes the tabular
space laid out by classical political thought. A new sort of political
art then may promote a non-teleological noology that makes use of the
mutual interpenetrational and rhizomatic nature of the thought process
typical of the art experience - multiplicitous and heterogeneous.

For me, the basic function of a new sort of political art is to create
mental spaces that allow unaccustomed creative situations and sensations
to connect socially. My idea of a political art is where the particular is
seen as part of an accrual total system by virtue of its being connected
to everything else. The strategy of hyper-anything includes principles of
networked connections and electronic links that give multiple choices of
passages to follow and continually new branching possibilities. The
total-hyper-being model for a new connected political art is the
self-re-programmable internal function that explicitly offers a
furtherance in envisioning anti-hierarchical models of political thought
to ourselves.

Question: How do you relate your art to contemporary performance
and theater, such as Pina Baush’s? What does it mean to you - and to your
work, to your inspiration, to see such giants of performance?

Joseph Nechvatal: An early formative experience I had, in this respect,
was the time I attended The Jimi Hendrix Experience concert December 1,
1968 at the Chicago Coliseum and sat in the very last row – far far away
from the stage. Hendrix appeared miniscule, however the speakers were
located just behind my head and the sound was earsplitting; an intensely
pleasant, if disjunctive, experience. This experience of technologically
pulling things apart was stunning for me as it suggested an explosion that
collage implosion implies.

Working as an archivist for LaMonte Young, meeting John Cage, and learning
of the famous “9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering” of 1966 that Robert
Rauschenberg helped organize with the engineer Billy Kluver was salient to
my formation in this regard. Rauschenberg understood that through the
mediation of chance and machines, the technological built-in can be
contorted, thus changing our awareness of what technology is or can be.
Surely I have a great appreciation of Merce Cunningham’s dance company. In
the mid-1970s I moved to New York City into the Tribeca area. I was dating
a dancer at the time who’s prior boyfriend worked for Bob Rauschenberg and
one day we went to Rauschenberg’s studio on Lafayette for a visit, but he
was not in. Still he soon came to represent for me an exemplary artist,
one engaged in political concerns tied to technological means. He seemed
to me capable of harnessing both the forces of explosion and implosion
that manifested a new hyper-rhizomatic era in the making. This was an era
in which the new technologies of media distribution, virtual systems,
computer networks, and information processing began supplanting industrial
production and the gold-based economy as the organizing
synthesis/principle of society.

Question: You’ve worked with theory a lot. Is it important for
an artist and what did this theoretical approach do for you; for your
creative expression?

Joseph Nechvatal: I can say that it has been important for me. When I read
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari describe non-hierarchical networks of
all kinds in their seminal book A Thousand Plateaus, my mind was liberated
and this fostered a wave of creativity in me. Through my reading (and
thinking through) of Deleuze-Guattari I came to hypothesize (and hopefully
demonstrate through my art) a counter-mannerist approach to life based on
principles of latent excess. The idea was to establish a new critical
distance via viral excess, a critical distance which Jean Baudrillard
pessimistically had claimed was no longer possible.

Through latent excess I wanted to establish an ambiguous private critical
distance: a distance achieved through the challenge of (and disparity
between) pleasurable frustration. This means an art that demands of
society an active visualizing participation in private interpretations -
and thus is a legitimate metaphor for contemporary art as a form of
simulation-shattering engagement.

During the time I was engaged in these ideas, the notion of the simulation
was prevalent. I chose to argue for the contrary (de-simulation); that is,
a post-pop art that would be fundamental to free thought by demonstrating
how an art of counter-mannerist latent excess (produced in the
Baudrillardian milieu of image superabundance and information
proliferation) is an art that can problematise the pop simulacra and hence
enliven us to the privateness - and unique separateness - of the human
condition in lieu of the fabulously constructed social spectacle which
engulfs and (supposedly) controls us. My idea was that this private
separateness could offer us a personal critical distance (gap), and thus
another perspective on (and from) the given social simulacra.

My hope was that such an art of latent viral excess (circuitous,
extravagant and décadent) might provide us with two essential aspects
relevant to our lives. First, it can provide a private context in which to
suitably understand our simulacra situation. Secondly (but more
importantly) it may then undermine this understanding of the simulacra by
overwhelming our immersion in the customary simulacra – along with our own
prudent pose as observer and judge. Through the destructive-creative
bacchanalia at the root of an art of latent excess we might be prodded to
lose our position of detached observer, as it is a style of art that
demands our engaged intellectual and perceptual production. For me that
meant that I had to develop a viral style which takes us from the state of
the social to the state of the secret distinguishable “I” by overloading
ideological representation to a point where it becomes
non-representational. It is this non-representational counter-mannerist
representation which I think can break us out of the fascination and
complicity with pop information and the mass media mode of communication.

Question: Can art be taught in school - to an artist? If yes -
Is it important?

Joseph Nechvatal: I think it can be taught, and it is, but that does not
mean that it is the only route to becoming an artist. As a teacher at the
School of Visual Arts in New York City I stress passing along knowledge
about radical art ideas and dada art techniques. I tell the students about
what some notable recent artists have done - and expose them to the work
directly. I intentionally avoid suggesting to the students what kind of
art to make or how to make it. That is their own personal quest, in my
view. What is important is for the pre-artist to be inner driven to become
an artist regardless of the fact that it is a frustrating way to lead a
life.

Question: What do you think about contemporary American art
scene? Any movement you admire?

Joseph Nechvatal: Yes I admire greatly certain American artist who work
primarily digitally, such as Bill Seaman, Frank Gillette, Victoria Vesna,
Robert Lazzarini, G.H. Hovagimyan and Michael Reese. Of course artificial
life art is one of my keen interests, the basis of my computer virus work.
For me artificial life is a way to do magic by any means necessary. The
sculptor Ken Rinaldo is a very good artist in this realm.

Also there are what I might call digital conceptualists in the USA that
interest me, such as Jenny Holzer, Patrick Lichty, Suzanne Anker, Kenneth
Goldsmith and Matthew Ritchie. I also have a keen interest in audio art
that deals with noise and/or ambience and have been following the career
of Phillip B. Klingler (PBK), Minoy, Randy Grief and others over the
years. Some painters as well hold my interest, like Benjamin Edwards,
David Reed, Carl Fudge, Chris Finley and Shirley Kaneda. But can we really
speak of art in terms of nationality any more? What about fantastic
European and Asian artist that sometimes work in the US, like Carlos
Casado, Gilles Barbier, Merzbow, Pascal Dombis and Matthias Groebel? It is
only a certain quality of thought and sensibility that I admire. Not their
passport.

However, I’m not very interested in artists that use capture technology
anymore (straight photography and video). What engages me is the meeting
of art, science and technology in the virtual land of the digital -
because I think that digital technology allows and facilitates changes in
consciousness by primarily allowing artists to act differently with new
tools. For example, digital painters, like myself, work and think much
differently from traditional painters through their mastering of digital
tools.

This digital realm connects to a new sensibility that I am feeling which I
have called Cybism. It is a sensibility based on my observation that art
and science, after centuries of separation, are becoming entangled again
through the discredidation of the concept – one might say presumption – of
objectivity. Richard Rorty writes persuasively about this as does Manuel
Delanda; particularly in his book Intensive Science and Virtual
Philosophy

Question: Any tendency you despise?

Joseph Nechvatal: Yes. The “bad painting” (or “MFA outsider art”) movement
disgusts me. It is both ugly to behold and stupid to contemplate. It seems
blatantly a creature of top-down marketing to me (think pyramid scheme)
and as such it, or any market driven art, will not stand the smell test of
time.

Question: How is it different from the French scene? Advantages
of the French?

Joseph Nechvatal: Oh la la! Though there are elements of globalized
marketing in Paris, the French scene is much smaller. It is marginal by
comparison - and this can be a good thing. For example I have experienced
in France a wonderful sense of collaborative community and have
established important relationships, like with my artificial life
programmer Stephane Sikora. The philosophy and music scenes here are
superior to those in the USA, in my estimation.

One feels in France a sense of preservation of artistic ideals, such as
the idea of art performing a visionary function, which at this juncture
seems increasingly important given the homogenization of thought and
perception that has been taking place

Question: Disadvantages?
Joseph Nechvatal:

No baseball.