Interview with Asta Gröting/ by Marius Babias, 1999
Are you looking forward to our interview?
Yes, I like talking and the interview could be, as it is constructed in dialogue form, the extended form of the "inner voice". I'm curious about it.
On the telephone you said you find it problematic to commit yourself, do you mistrust language?
I'm sometimes worried about committing myself and having to give an explanation for everything I do. If I say something wrong, which I often read, it hurts.
When I saw your ventriloquist films for the first time I sensed a strong psychological concept. In the film series "The Inner Voice," you construct the perspective shift of an observer situation between ventriloquist, dummy and spectator.
In the first ventriloquist film it is even more complicated as the dummy also has an inner voice so that a triangle is formed between the ventriloquist and the dummy. The dummy is the technical inner voice of the ventriloquist which talks to the psychological inner voice of the dummy which the ventriloquist doesn't hear or understand. In the films which followed I simplified this and only wrote one dialogue between ventriloquist and dummy talking about one subject. I wanted to examine how a subject is perceived, the pro and contra. Everyone has an inner voice which speaks to you. It may be encouraging, reproving, strict or corrective.
You made a dummy especially for this. It discusses with various ventriloquists – until now in eleven languages – subjects including friendship, self awareness and identity. Does your main interest lie in communicating psychological abstract and complex areas of recognition in everyday language?
I'm interested in the psyche, the soul, humans, love, death, life and aging. The subject changes depending on language and cultural region. Each ventriloquist has his own characteristics depending on culture. The whole project is an examination of the different languages, cultures and personalities and the differences in which the illusion is created and the image conjured up that the dummy is alive.
The ventriloquist belongs to the genre of comedy. He speaks with two voices – his own and another one which articulates the unsaid, what is not said, the suppressed. Who does this other voice belong to?
Who do the different voices belong to which speak in ourselves? These are all voices that speak to us, in a broader sense, social authority e.g. parents, television, it used to be the church, today it is advertising.
If this inner voice were society wouldn't it just be a rush of words. Who can give a voice to complexity?
No-one, no-one asked for this. I didn't mean it so all embracingly. Our thoughts are connected with how we grew up. They are perhaps this rushing which we often no longer want to hear. What is comprehensible, though, is where this comes from. The dialogues aim for this. For many years I saw my organ sculptures as the psychological equivalent of this subject. I once read that when bodies were opened in medieval times people looked for the soul because they believed that the soul had an organ. Here I thought of the ventriloquist as the equivalent. A sculpture seemed, to me, too tacky for this. Also, I didn't want to work on my own in the studio anymore, I wanted to work with people.
In one text it is assumed that you are the dummy. Is this an over interpretation?
Yes. Many people think that the dummy looks like me. Our biography, undoubtedly, plays a role in everything we do but I am certainly not the dummy. I'm also not the ventriloquist. Although, considering the amount of time I've spent with ventriloquism, I could have perhaps learnt it. But I don't want to be the dummy or the ventriloquist. I want to instigate the game of dummy and ventriloquist with my ideas.
People often define you as a "producer of images" of natural processes. Are your works really "specimens" of a mechanical idea of nature, similar to E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Olimpia" automaton?
Everyone interprets their own interests into the works. Before I became interested in the psyche I was interested in what the body looks like inside. I looked for organs which were sculptural, for example the digestive system. It would be a dreadful image of man to view humans as the mechanical progression of natural processes. I want to put humans in the centre and understand them. I refer to the physical but without placing it higher or lower.
The ventriloquist builds on a monologue form of dialogue. He puts discourse and contradiction in one. This dramaturgic device dominates theatrical history. Why does this Manichaean formula still seem suitable to you for making psychological statements?
"The Inner Voice" is, for me, a game which gives a space for my subjects and because I want to raise questions and not make any claims or judge. I present subjects in the same way as making sculptures which shake their heads or nod and can't decide. I attempt to express this openness for the pro and contra in the form of dummy and ventriloquist. Depending on origin, culture, language, sex and individual characteristics, every one of them uses the dummy in a different way. I'm not in the least interested in theatrical tradition here.
Your interest for the world of jugglers, showmen and artists could also be seen in your production "EIS" (1995) in the ice rink in Frankfurt in which there was, besides the figure skaters, also a honey loving bear. Doesn't this association of a counter world also adhere to your word / image dualism.
I'm interested in seduction by the trivial, the aesthetic of the fair, the injury of good taste. Ventriloquism is bad taste. But the world of ventriloquism puts me in a better mood than if I had to spend all my time as an artist only with sculptures. Ventriloquism is more lively, communicative and not so concerned with the artistic context. In this way I can construct open images and subjects which interest me much more easily.
In one of the short films of the series "The Inner Voice", the actor distorts his voice in a dialogue with a red glove. These scenes are, different to the ventriloquist films, usually about employment / unemployment, they are concerned with specific social issues. How did this come about?
This subject appears to stand out because the style of filmmaking is different. Firstly, it is a dummy show – the ventriloquist is not a real ventriloquist and the dummies are a fat glove out of plastic and an old ski glove. But it is also an inner voice as it is an improvisation of the performer on working and not wanting to work or not being allowed to work and, therefore, not being able to be part of a group and all that which work brings with it. Work is a very important issue in everyone's life.
In the end the red glove gives the theory for everything: "light, air, desire and love." Are your films moral pieces?
The film is filmed far too unclearly for this.
You became famous as a sculptress. In the ventriloquist films, seemingly not sculpturally compatible, and in the performance of the figure skaters, I do, nevertheless, see a sculptural element – namely the attempt of working, through the performance, an immaterial subject matter, communication, seen as psycho-social action.
I recognised that there are too many sculptures in the world and no longer wanted to burden myself with material. I wanted to say a lot with only little material. I also wanted to get away from the exploitation cycle of the market and probe more into subjects. If art is put together only by aesthetics of effect it becomes design. Despite this, I still see the right to be able to express thoughts with material. With material I mean everything. Here I can also overcome the dualism of word and images. A bear on ice is, for me, material like cast bronze. Of course you can't do what you want with every material – in this respect I'm quite moral.
Can art assume forms of reality which are not bound to a material?
That's difficult. To be very reduced is good but art is always bound to a material of one kind or another. It would be the highest form to manage with very little or with exactly the right amount of material. Where material is at the forefront the work becomes stupid or superfluous, certainly frozen.
Are your films an attempt to escape being bound to a material which is a central problem in sculpturing?
Yes, that was the reason for starting the work with videos. Although I have, meanwhile, discovered that so much extra stuff is involved – all the technology is a real nuisance. Sometimes a lump of clay is less material. Everything left standing around stupidly in the end has to go again.
What does your horoscope say?
I'm Aquarius, in my horoscope it says I'm a "justice pit bull" and forgetful.
Marius Babias, director of Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.)