Interview: Mike Nelson

Mike Nelson: The Pumpkin Palace, 2003. 427 x 1220 x 259 cm. Converted 1954 GMC Bus and mixed media

Can you begin with telling me about your project – what is it about?

It was originally made in 2003 for a 4 person show at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco. So the project started off in San Francisco, where there are a whole mission area with a mobile church - where drug addicts live in busses - so it seemed like an opportunity to make a work as a bus. It was like a certain type of work I was starting to make, where I took buildings and rebuild them – almost like ’found objects’. So it was like an extension of that, to take a real vehicle and rebuild it, make a new interior and change it into something different. From the outside the bus appears as a Red Crescent mobile hospital, converted inside to a war veterans’ opium den. My immediate starting point was the bombing of Afghanistan by the allied forces in 2001. I remember that, when I was growing up in a small town in the middle of England, there was a big heroin problem in the middle of the 80’s, but actually you could track that back to the Iranian Revolution, where the wealthy sheiks escaped from Iran to the West – particularly to Britain and London. But they didn’t bring any currency, so they brought heroin in suitcases in stead, which soon became part of society. I have always been interested in ’social evils’, but social evils that lead into another form of social illness, i.e when a big world event affects upon an individual from the underclass in a small town.

Mike Nelson: The Pumpkin Palace, 2003. 427 x 1220 x 259 cm. Converted 1954 GMC Bus and mixed media		Mike Nelson: The Pumpkin Palace, 2003. 427 x 1220 x 259 cm. Converted 1954 GMC Bus and mixed media

Can you tell us about the different rooms inside the bus?

There is like a dispensary, and a reception area with long sleeping benches, and it sort of evoke railway carriers from the States that travelled across the country, a tramp culture from the turn of the century. My direct influence is a book by Jack Black What you Can’t Win, who was one of William Burroughs favorite auto-biographies. Black was like an underclass criminal who travelled around with railways and was an opium addict. So the background is about the immigration of the west of the United States, when the Chinese came to lay the railway tracks, bringing with them the opium, and the opium den came out through that. So that is also sort of an influence; the relation with the eastern exoticism and with the 1960’s counter cultures.

What about the real objects inside – the old rusty knives, the cross and the bible etc..?

Obviously the front cap is predominantly filled with small stickers, and sort of small ornaments with arab signs, and it keeps to this arabic theme from the outside into the front of the cap, then you pass through the doors from a military base in Hunters Point in San Francisco, and that is where the title of the piece, The Pumpkin Palace, comes from, it is a painted emblem that was at one of the doors already.

Mike Nelson: The Pumpkin Palace, 2003. 427 x 1220 x 259 cm. Converted 1954 GMC Bus and mixed media		Mike Nelson: The Pumpkin Palace, 2003. 427 x 1220 x 259 cm. Converted 1954 GMC Bus and mixed media

I’m interested in how people seem to grasp your things..?

I’ve always been interested in an equation between narrative fiction and physical spaces, in some earlier works I made a straight equation between narrative structure to a physical space, and the fact that in doing that there is a certain pact made. When reading a book, you may be at the open sea getting attacked by pirates, or in New York in the 1950’s as a criminal, but obviously you’re not, you’re in your arm chair reading it, and you have to agree to play along with this fiction, and in a certain sense the same thing is going on when experiencing a work like this – you have to agree to go along with it. But also, I don’t think it’s literal in it’s fiction, it’s much more about atmosphere, sense, objects and associations. So therefore it’s not so much about wether people actually get the stories, it’s more about the fact that there is a reason why everything is there, and that everything is in the right place. Some times I think that an object, if it has a reason, there is a certain gravity to its position – it has very much to do with a sculpture. You know, the work is there, and people can walk in and get an interesting experience...

But talking about references to the Afghanistan bombings, the drug addicts and so on, do you think that art has any potentials to change anything?

No no, of course not, it is art! It’s like when good music or good fiction deals with things that happen in everyday life, which influence and concern you. It would be absurd to acclaim any political statement by wheeling into Art Basel. So I don’t believe in art as politics. For me it doesn’t make any sense, it would be the same to claim that Joseph Conrad is a politician, but he’s not, he’s a writer!

Mike Nelson: The Pumpkin Palace, 2003. 427 x 1220 x 259 cm. Converted 1954 GMC Bus and mixed media		Mike Nelson: The Pumpkin Palace, 2003. 427 x 1220 x 259 cm. Converted 1954 GMC Bus and mixed media

I see a tendency among some artists, who think they can change the world with art?

Hmm, and does it work? You come from Denmark, where you have people like Superflex. I remember them back from the mid ’90s, when I had just made a piece in 1994 called Charity Shop at the Transmission Gallery. It was about the structures of charity, and also of the position of the artist morally. Back then it was interesting to come to Copenhagen and experience work by Superflex that was sort of similar, but also very different. It was almost naive in a sense.

They would argue that their works may change some structures in the real world...

It’s interesting, and I like a lot of the stuff they’ve done, but on the other hand; why should they go to Africa and dig shit to make gas...? It’s awkward, because in a sense it’s positive, and their intentions are ultimately good, but...

How does it feel to participate in Art Basel?

It's a reality check! These are the people that are going to buy me...(laughter)

I’ve never been here before, but I’ve been to Frieze – my God, I’m becoming an art fair monster!..... But you know, why are you here? Everybody’s here and there’s good art here, but I must admit, I still don’t really like it, I think it’s weird... But I like the idea of it being like a flea market; it’s all about finding the really nice things laying between all the rubbish. •

Mike Nelson: The Pumpkin Palace, 2003. 427 x 1220 x 259 cm. Converted 1954 GMC Bus and mixed media

Mike Nelson: The Pumpkin Palace, 2003. 427 x 1220 x 259 cm. Converted 1954 GMC Bus and mixed media

Mike Nelson with technician fixing the last details before showtime.