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[Novenber 13 th 2002]
Interview
FOS at the bar of Liquid Chain....
Liquid Chain - Into the Vapour Wall
A social design project #9
Interview with FOS
Fos
Liquid Chain - Into the Vapour Wall: The Fall
November 1st - December 6th
Press Release
www.socialdesign.dk
Galleri Christina Wilson
Sturlasgade 12H, 2300 Copenhagen S
Phone +45 32 54 52 06, fax +45 32 54 52 04
Tues-Fri 12-17, Sat 11-15
gcw@christinawilson.net
www.christinawilson.net
Thomas Poulsen (FOS) is about 30 years old and was
educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts. Amongst his earlier
projects are OSLO and Inhaling Human Suffering - Exhaling Well Being.
Text and interview Julie Damgaard and Torben Zenth.
Photo: Torben Zenth and Bent Ryberg, Planet Foto.
Edited and translated by Kristine Ploug Pedersen.
 
Installationviews
What is social design?
Social design is a project that tries to make us conscious of
social structures. By social structures I mean the way we humans
react towards, with and around each other. It is not just ourselves,
our families and our social traditions that govern the social structures;
there are many influences around us as well. Especially three things:
Market, Information and Technology - MIT. The market is what manufactures
the products that surround us. Information makes sure that the products
of the market are passed on to the right consumers. It helps by
finding segment groups. Information is about distributing knowledge
within and without the system. Then, finally, there is technology,
which gets everything running, and which develops things further.
All three systems are auto-poetic - self-referential systems - that
produce their own garbage. The market creates new products, and
new products create new side effects, that again can create new
needs.
We mirror ourselves in products and they are part of creating the
social realities that surround us. This means a lot of possibilities
that you have to be able to navigate through in order to become
a human being capable of developing, meeting other humans, and helping
them to develop. There is not a lot of ideology in this; social
traditions have more become marketing ideas and therefore we have
a lack of social tools to help us navigate through all this.
The social is not able to create visual expression or physical forms
in the same way the market is.
It feels like pressure from MIT. The market is always more interested
in reducing language into objects, signs and symbols than in creating
a pluralistic society.
This is the material and background that Social Design stems from.
 
Installationviews
I feel that art takes its point of departure in the social, exactly
because art in its social network is only an auto poetic society
- a society that produces its own exhibitions, that then creates
curators, that again create meanings. It creates its own garbage
that someone else then eats. That's why it's so important that the
different fields of knowledge such as art, politics and culture
come out of their institutions or try to change their platforms,
in order to communicate in a different fashion.
Social Design tries to make us aware of the different social structures
and ideas and tries to say that many of the systems and structures
we see within different fields are actually the same. An economist
has the same structural point of departure as a biologist and an
artist. The subjects may well be very different, but my angle is
the same as a biologist or an economist. It’s just that one
thing ends in a good loan and the other in a painting.
  
FOS
So what are arts and aesthetics actually for?
An artistic object is not a symbol, it's more a string of thoughts
that are connected, a web of references that become an object. That's
why I begin with an activity, and this activity then crystallizes
into an object that is an echo of the activities taking place.
This exhibition consists of two parts. One part deals with what
Social Design is. As a string of associations related to MIT I have
created these things - the sculptures, the drawings, the chair and
the objects. They are a crystallization of the experience I made
at my last exhibition. In the next room we then have the new active
platform, which consists of 18 tons of earth and hay and an inflatable
thing. During the next month or so there are going to be a number
of events, and I also think that some extra sculptures will be added
in order to say in a banal fashion that now things have changed
- now something has crystallized.
The room will be filled more and more, and at the final event there
will be a transformation from this exhibition to the next, which
will be curated by Jesper Jørgensen. He’ll be using
my interior and my design. His point of departure will be the frame
that I have created.
So the chain of events will end in the next exhibition. And in order
to show the guests of the next exhibition what's been going on,
we've got Joachim Hamou to film the program.
 
Installationviews
The sculptures you are exhibiting you describe as a crystallization
of something that has happened earlier. Can you explain this further?
I've used two basic sentences to model the sculptures: "Culture
as the conscious" and "Nature as the unconscious".
These sentences have been the structure of the sculptures. But their
content stems from MIT. If you can imagine that we carry all the
information we get during the day with us, then this creates a figure.
The sculptures are two variations on how to carry this information.
One is a dress that consists of six shells, which can be unbuttoned.
The other is a walking figure with a very low center of gravity
since it has no upper body. It is an accumulation of a lot of material.
It is the feeling of sitting down between two sentences and getting
a feeling - and then a sculpture emerges.
Pictorial art has the ability to break down recognizable ideas and
materials into neither-nor. I've never made such sculptures before,
and it's been fun to have such a passive part in the exhibition.
  
Installationviews
On your website you mention the "social figure". Can
you explain what this term?
When you regard one another you have an understanding. You have
your girlfriend, your mother, your friends, and every time you talk
to them you refer to a figure that is always the same. The basic
structure of this figure is always the same. A huge fight might
add a new facet or remove some of it, but the basic structure is
always the same, even with someone you haven't seen in a hundred
years. I speak of this basic structure as a physical form that actually
exists. In other words, I try to turn what we don't set words to
into physical form. Through an artistic preparation maybe we can
create some ideas of how such a structure might look.
The social has different hierarchies, and so does the art world.
There are different borders, classes and groups within the art world
that don't collaborate particularly well. It would be quite an offer
if one tried to get rid of this concept of originality. Tried to
let go a little. One social level for new differences!
But then I'm not really that interested in the art world…
 
Installationviews
So what are you interested in?
Trying to raise awareness of what the hell is going on in a
political sense at the moment. We think we become wiser as human
beings just because someone invented the locomotive, but it's just
going in the opposite direction. We have become dumber. Now that
is more important than an exhibition at Christina Wilson. I would
have liked to add a political aspect, but you really have to make
a distinction and say "now I'm working within the artistic
field, and I have to specify what I mean by social design.”
It is possible to imagine that art within the social field is about
creating rings, new bases, networks that spread out more than they
gather… Saying that, it is easy to clean up, but it's harder
to navigate in the mess. And life is messy so you might as well
get used to changing your priorities.
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