#1 [May 2005]

Reykjavík Arts Festival 2005 – Interview with the curator Jessica Morgan

Jessica Morgan is curator of contemporary art at Tate Modern, London. She was previously chief curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston where she curated numerous exhibitions. She was appointed curator of Reykjavík Arts Festival 2005.

The Protagonist of the Reykjavík Arts Festival is the German Artist Dieter Roth. He had come to Iceland in the 1957 for the first time and kept, after living in Reykjavík for several years a close relationship to this country until his death 1998. How was the situation for Visual Artists in Iceland at that time? And what is so special about today’s situation?

Dieter Roth
Reyjavik Slides
1973-1975; 1990-1993
34.000 slides; carriage of slides, projectors, wooden closet and paper print
Variables dimensions
MACBA Collection. Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona Foundation

Though I am not an expert in Icelandic art or Dieter Roth for that matter, I have very much enjoyed talking with artists, curators and many of those who have collaborated on this exhibition about Roth's appearance in Iceland at that time. Of course, like everywhere, the art scene was considerably smaller and I think the significance of Roth's presence was in relation to this small scale. It would seem that Roth’s interest in concrete art, his fascination with the merging of art and design, and his copious production of books and typographic art had a seismic effect on the development of art in Iceland in the 1950s. Although his initial work there as a jewellery designer, furniture maker, interior designer, and publisher may have been economically disastrous his naturally collaborative nature meant that the spirit of his production spread fast. Equally dramatic for his Icelandic neighbours was the artist’s appearance, behaviour, and social habits that were unconstrained by the relatively conservative standards of 1950s Iceland. It was his unconventional attitude to both art production and life that perhaps had most impact on the development of a conceptual art movement in Iceland in the 1960s, in particular the group of artists who were the founders of the Icelandic conceptual group SÚM.

Today of course the opportunities for artists to travel abroad, to consider their practice in relation to an international art scene has radically changed the situation. The arrival of a Dieter Roth figure would probably not have the same influence.

What was the main aspect in Dieter Roth’s work, which interested you most regarding the selection of the other Artists?

Roth was famously copious in his chosen media: he was, amongst other activities, a painter, filmmaker, poet, musician, and designer; and this abundance of production is reflected in the permeation of his artistic practice into all areas of his work, life and environment. The three overlapping temporal spheres that ordered and inflected Roth’s production provide the title and framework for the Festival. Material Time/Work Time/Life Time determines the selection of work commissioned and included, which suggest an influence and conscious or unconscious continuation of aspects the artist’s heterogeneous project.

For Roth, the time of work, the process of making or thinking, his studio surroundings, and the structure of his practice were all part of what constitutes an artwork. Similarly, his domestic life, friends, children, and numerous homes or adopted residences did not merely inform his production but were intrinsically part of it. Finally, materiality and its vast scope for chronology—from the daily process of decay, to the history of civilisation, and the geological time of place—feature prominently in Roth’s work, and often point to a melancholic, perhaps dystopic view of existence as an endless struggle to order the ephemeral debris of the world and thereby attempt to overcome an inevitable slide towards ruin.

From this point of view Dieter Roth is probably the perfect artist to be the main character for such kind of Festival. But nevertheless, was it a problem to find and to integrate Icelandic artists into this large scaled and wide spread exhibition?

It is fairly unusual for a large, international group exhibition such as this to have so many artists from the place where it takes place (especially given the small population of Iceland). In general if one looks at biennials or triennials, for example, around the world if a quarter of the artists are from the hosting nation it is considered to be a lot. However, I found it very easy and most pleasurable to learn more about the Icelandic artists (both those based in the country and abroad) whose work was very appropriate for the exhibition. One of my concerns was to include different generations and I had been very impressed with the work of some of the more established, older artists and so the list of who to include became more a question of selection and refinement (there were certainly more who could have been included) rather than any concern about "integration."

The variety and amount of exhibitions and artistic statements is tremendous. What will for you finally characterize the success of this festival?

Success is a very difficult thing to guage of course as there are many different perspectives from which to view this: if the artists involved are given the opportunaity to realise work that is important for them and speaks to the ideas behind the exhibition that is one important achievement, if the viewers in Iceland are introduced to work that is both intelligent and entertaining, thought provoking and relevant that would also be a significant result. But there are other ways in which I think this exhibition can, and I hope will "succeed," and these are related to everything from bringing attention to a figure who was instrumental in changing people´s ideas of both art and life, to giving visual art the serious and professional attention it deserves in the country, and witnessing the power of collaborative practice in the coming together of so many and such diverse institutions throughout the country.

EMail-Interview with Jessica Morgan and Christian Schoen in April/Mai 2005.