Asta Gröting and Stella Rollig discuss the series "The Inner Voice" which Gröting has been working on with ventriloquists since 1992. In early 2003, the artist staged a live performance for the first time with "The Inner Voice - Dead Air".
While Rollig tries to maintain her composure in her role as interviewer, Gröting's inner voice indiscreetly intrudes into the conversation, but does so at a level not audible to both women. These interjections are reproduced in italics.
Stella Rollig: You've been working with ventriloquists for more than ten years now on a series of works entitled "The Inner Voice". You once said that the ventriloquist's milieu, variety or vaudeville shows, "was just something that put you in a good mood". I also take this to mean that it puts you in a better mood than the fine arts milieu. What is it about this other world that attracts you?
Asta Gröting: I'm interested in the people I meet there and they are interested in me. That's really the most important thing for me. The people I associate with and the people I really want to work with and spend time with. It was a liberating moment for me when I started working with ventriloquists. It's been productive work and the reason for that may be that, for me, it hasn't been weighed down by all the things that belong to the art world.
Especially since I felt quite inhibited when I was working as a sculptor... while I was a student at the Düsseldorf School of Art from the early 1980s to the early 90s, most of the work being done in that part of Germany was concerned with formal aspects and there was a lot being done with different materials. A whole language evolved out of this, but eventually a lot of artists started to wonder if that was enough for them; they wanted to work in a wider context. At the time, my interests shifted towards psychological and social issues. By writing scripts for ventriloquists, I found a forum where I could express my ideas. And in the process I learnt quite a lot about how to actually put on performances.
(Basically I agree with this answer but I'm already scared that people will judge me or pass sentence on me or that I'll look stupid.)
S: I'd like you to tell me more about the difference between variety shows and art. What is it about ventriloquists and their milieu that you like better and find more interesting than the world of artists? What were the demands that you felt liberated from when you started working with them?
– And, I might add, you haven't left the art world behind at all because, ultimately, you came back to it with these works. But let's talk more about that later.
A: I'm not at all interested in defining boundaries and categories. That simply doesn't work. And I never intended to criticise the art world in a didactic way. I was looking for new ideas and a new way to work productively with other people.
(That's true and, what's more, you'll never catch me standing up and criticising the art world anyway.)
S: That was well deflected. You elegantly destroyed my attempt to elicit a criticism of the art world from you. All right, I'll pick up on this idea of working together with other people: right up to "The Inner Voice - Dead Air" you've been getting the ventriloquists to perform texts that you wrote using a dummy that you constructed. You made videos out of these performances. Now, for the first time in the "Inner Voice" series, you've produced a live performance and worked together with a scriptwriter, Tim Etchells. Tell me, how did you explain to him what the critical elements are in the dialogues between dummy and ventriloquist?
A: Art is a huge performance. It has a lot to do with inventing one's own identity and it seemed to me like the obvious thing to do to put on performances that dealt with the question of identity because I want to be an artist, or I wanted to be. (Laughs.)
I told Tim about the things I'd learnt from working with ventriloquists. For instance, when ventriloquists are talking with a dummy, the thing they have to concentrate on most is making the dummy move in a lifelike way. If they don't create the illusion that the dummy is alive then the show won't be good. On top of that, ventriloquists have to remember to appear to be uninvolved and to keep their mouths closed when the dummy is doing something or speaking. The ventriloquist also has to be able to substitute labial sounds like "M", "B", "P" with other sounds without it being too noticeable.
(I always end up looking at my answers through the eyes of someone who thinks I'm a bad artist, and then I think how many other ways I could have answered the question. I'm like a ventriloquist who is constantly being censored by the dummy.)
S: The dialogue in "Dead Air" is about being put down, failing, being miserable. Derived from that, it's also about how people put each other under pressure. But it's not as one-dimensional as that description makes it sound; it also has some very poetic moments, like the part about the protagonists' personal alphabet – a way of understanding one's own world in 26 terms. I'd like to ask you to describe the script from your own point of view and tell me what you like about it.
A: The story to "Dead Air" is that the dummy toys with the idea of dying but then the ventriloquist actually becomes terminally ill and dies. The situation develops from there playing out between heartlessness and compassion. The dialogue constantly changes back and forth between an intimate, genuine conversation between the two, where each shows real concern for the other and accepts the other, and vicious abuse, each hammering the other into the ground with insults and attempts to destroy each other.
I'm very interested in this theme of "being together," in fact I'm more interested in this than anything else. How does it work, "human coexistence"? (Gives the interviewer a smack on the nose.)
But the script is also about the artist's fear of failing in public and of not connecting with the public, and it's about the tactics and skill it takes to connect with the audience successfully. It's an extension of the attempt to be accepted by one's peers. The wonderful thing about the script too, though, is that it's a classic ventriloquist's script: it's not intellectual, it's short, crude, insulting and it plays on taboos. I like its unpretentious style. This kind of language creates a good atmosphere, I find. Tim calls it workman-like and human-scale.
Speaking out loud about taboos existed a long time before ventriloquists' dummies were allowed to break taboos and before ventriloquism was a form of entertainment. Because dummies could not be held responsible, they could say what people were not permitted to say. They could express political criticism in front of powerful people which human beings would not have been able to do without being censored. Before they had dummies, ventriloquists worked by throwing their voices. They gave voices to inanimate objects and other people. Napoleon was entertained by Le Sieur Thiemet, a very famous ventriloquist of the time who could imitate all the sounds of a foxhunt. Long before that, ventriloquism was used as a way to secretly manipulate people. At Delphi, the words of the Oracle were spoken by a ventriloquist: "Help your friends! Master your anger! Stay away from unjust deeds!..." Even earlier, thousands of years ago, ventriloquists were pagan priests who spoke with tree and water spirits.
(I'm no cultural historian, but I'll have to say something here because I just can't pass up the opportunity of being interviewed, although, personally speaking, I really don't need to do interviews.)
S: How do ventriloquists react when they have to perform a script that they have not written themselves? I would imagine you've come across some performers who didn't want to do it or who weren't able to work together with an artist. For "Inner Voice - Dead Air," you again worked with Wendy Morgan and Buddy Big Mountain. What do you appreciate about them?
A: A few years ago I went to a ventriloquists' convention in Las Vegas to look for a Native American ventriloquist who I thought of as THE "inner voice" of America and that's where I met Buddy Big Mountain. I was impressed by the way he told me about his life; he has a very subtle style. He grew up in a theme park with his parents and his brothers and sisters. He was performing Native American dance on stage with them when he was just two years old. I've worked more closely with him than with any other ventriloquist.
So far almost all the ventriloquists I've asked to work with me have been interested in doing it and were happy to have the opportunity to do something other than work on a cruise ship or perform at office parties. Only a few German performers had reservations, they were afraid that something could go wrong or that it wasn't possible to predict what might happen.
S: How do you feel about the response you've had from your colleagues in the art world? I heard of one person who said: I have no idea what to think about the performance because I don't know anything about theatre.
A: When I showed my first German ventriloquist film in 1992 there was some lack of understanding among people who had previously thought my work was good. The stage performances have generally been well received.
(But I'm also really glad I found something new to do.)
S: And what will you do next?
A: Right now I'm working on a series of interviews with ventriloquists about their work and their lives. I've already done an interview with Buddy. And I'm preparing two performances. One of these will be in the Mouson Tower in Frankfurt in December 2003 – Tim Etchells is going to rework one of my previous scripts for this. And I'm also trying to organise a ventriloquy festival where ventriloquist's will read aloud from original newspapers from the post-war period and from current editions and think about inner voices together with neurologists and psychologists and brain researchers. And I'm also working on my contribution to the 2004 Sydney Biennale.
August 2003
Stella Rollig is a curator and art publicist. Since 2004 she has been director at the Lentos Kunstmuseum in Linz