Interview: Jon Kessler

Jon Kessler: The Palace At 4 AM, 2005. mixed media

The Palace at 4am is a very complex exhibition, if I asked you to nail it down what would you say?

The title comes from a Giacometti sculpture, which is like a beautiful abstract dream sequence. I took the title, because when I started to see pictures of the occupation of Iraq after the invasion, it just seemed like the kind of craziness that can happen at 4 o’clock in the morning; it allowed Abu Ghraib to happen. So I decided to title it The Palace At 4 am, and mostly what it is, besides 300 television monitors, miles of cables and about 25-30 mechanical sculptures, it is really what I consider as my apocalypse now, in the way that an artist is trying to come to grips with the insanity of war in a very subjective way. In this case all of the images come from the real world; media, books or the internet. I take these images and cut holes into them; reassigning meaning to them, trying to create a kind of situation which in some ways mimic the real world’s surveillance, and being completely enervated with media and news. I think everyone who walks into the show, has a very different experience. They are caught on the camera, they complete the images and they make the connection between pieces. Historically it really starts with the build-up to the work. The lies that were fed to the American public in order to start the war. Then part of the last piece in the show is Hurricane Catharina, which in some ways represents an event which was so much impacted by “here we are delivering democracy to the Middle East when we can’t even help our own people.”

Jon Kessler: The Palace At 4 AM, 2005. Mixed media		Jon Kessler: The Palace At 4 AM, 2005. Mixed media

It was shown for the first time in New York in 2005, how were the reactions at that time?

It got a tremendous media covering, and it was one of the first pieces that was directly dealing with the events of the war in Iraq. And at the same time, it is always difficult when you show in a place, where you’re speaking to or preaching to the converted; I was showing it at PS1, which is a satellite of MoMa, and most of the people that came to see the show were already feeling politically the same way I was feeling. But nevertheless, it was a very powerful experience for everybody, I think, to be inside a miniature situation which projected and artistically manufactured a situation, of what we were all feeling at that point. The insanity of watching Fox News. Even CNN, they already had the war logo. They turned the war into entertainment from day one in order to sell it.

Have the reactions to your work been any different in Europe?

I don’t know to be honest. It has been shown three times in Germany and the fourth time in Europe is here in Denmark. But mostly what happens is, I come and I install it, it is a very hard installment, it takes around five days of hard work, and then I leave. So I don’t really know.

Jon Kessler: The Palace At 4 AM, 2005. Mixed media		Jon Kessler: The Palace At 4 AM, 2005. Mixed media

Is it the exact same work that were shown in New York three years ago, or do you change the work to suit the exhibition space?

I do changes because of the architecture, and I try to add some specifics of the sight. There is a piece in the show, which is called Shock and Awe. A camera is placed in the café here at Louisiana, it points out of the window, where it films the nature, the sea and a Calder sculpture, but on the window I have placed a piece of a photograph of Baghdad on fire, and it is cut so it looks like the sea and the Calder sculpture are on fire, and that becomes part of the show. Everywhere I have shown the piece, I have included a local Shock and Awe. In Germany, in Berlin, I made a sculpture with Knut, the polar bear, and I put a bullet through his head, which got a lot of controversy. The place I was showing it in was originally a gift to the Berlin people from America, and Kennedy has given a very famous speech there, so I was really thinking about the loss of innocence, Kennedy and America. For me Knut became a metaphor for America, when Knut was a baby bear everyone loved him, because he was so cute. Then he grew up and became aggressive and no one could handle him anymore. I was interested in using Knut as a metaphor for a superpower.

The space here at Louisiana is actually very close to the first space in New York where I showed it the first time, in a big square room. It has been fun, actually, to return to some of the original ideas that I had for the piece. Everything is really gritted out very logically, but at the same time there is an insanity inside the work, which I like.

Jon Kessler: The Palace At 4 AM, 2005. Mixed media		Jon Kessler: The Palace At 4 AM, 2005. Mixed media

The show is not only a visual show but it is also very physical in the sense that you can hear it; there are so many sounds. It gives an extra dimension to the work.

I didn’t anticipate that, it was a bit of a surprise. I built a mechanism which I call a sniper, it is a camera that moves 90°, and I noticed it made a noise. But then I placed four of them in a room and suddenly there was this militaristic sound, which works well with this piece. Even though the work conceptually speaks about a mediated experience, the actual experience of the viewer is a very unmediated experience. It is about sounds, sights and motors.

It is fragmented…

Yes, and you have to watch out where you are going, so people have a very kinaesthetic experience.

There is a connection in the installation to your later collages, in the way that you work in 3D with paper, photo and video.

It all comes together and flattens on the video screen. But in physical space it is actually quite complex. I’m using a lot of special effects from film, for example as with Shock and Awe, where I use a well known special effect, where you take a piece of glass and paint mountains or whatever you want, and then the actors are moving in the front. It is a very simple technique. Many of my techniques come from the entertainment industry.

Jon Kessler: The Palace At 4 AM, 2005. Mixed media. Kurator Anders Kold og Lise Kristoffersen		Jon Kessler: The Palace At 4 AM, 2005. Mixed media

I couldn’t help noticing in your exhibition, that you have to walk through a woman’s vagina to get into the show. How does this pornographic theme relate to the very obvious war theme?

When the war in Iraq started, the only place to see real pictures of what was going on, was on amateur pornography sites where people would post pictures of their wives and girlfriends. Soldiers on the streets were taking shots on their cell phones and sending them back to their friends and families, and they were posted on the sites. But I do also think that war is pornographic, especially the way it is fought now through a lens, and a kind of entertainment. I wanted the audience to be born into the show, into this world of pornographic images. So you walk through the legs into the sensationalizing of violence, and war as entertainment, and a social construct where personal freedom is sacrificed for homeland security. I wanted all these things to be pushed, like a birth.

What do you want people to leave with? Is there any hope or is it merely bleak?

I want people to experience that they become the empowered viewer or the active viewer. Most art requires no active participation of the viewer, but in this piece you lose your passivity and take back control by being an active viewer. You are caught on the camera, you realize you are caught on the camera, you start to enjoy being caught on the camera, you start watching other people who are caught on the camera, you become a voyeur and an exhibitionist. In a funny way it leads you to an understanding of you being very complicit in this situation. You can change it.

After 9/11 the work changed, it was like a wake-up call for me. I live very close to the World Trade Center, and my daughter was at school a block away from the World Trade Center. That day New York was “a tale of two cities”. I was teaching at Columbia at that time, and upper state New York was blue sky and a beautiful weather, and everyone was talking about the event, horrified, but sitting at outdoor cafés. But then I took the subway as far as the subway went, and I showed ID three times in order to get to my house, and that was for me life-changing.

I made a piece called One Hour Photo, thinking about the view that the terrorists saw from the cockpit as they flew towards the building. I didn’t know what would come after, I had no idea that all this work would come out, but sometimes the best art comes from just reacting. I started to read more, and the work started to feed itself, and that’s how I have managed my paranoia, my hate and my fear, and bring that into the work, and it changed the work and made it stronger. But I hope that the viewer walks out with a vision of the work and of the world that is optimistic. I think the work is filled with invention and creativity, I really do believe in those things as important for art. Even in a post-Warholian, post-Duchampian ironic, ironic, ironic world, I still believe in those as strong and necessary values to make good art.

Jon Kessler: The Palace At 4 AM, 2005. Mixed media		Jon Kessler: The Palace At 4 AM, 2005. Mixed media

Do you wish to impose an effect on people?

I do not want to teach people, I just want to give them an experience. Giving people an artistic experience is a way of changing them. I do not like political art which becomes so didactic. If you told me five years ago that this was the work I would be making, I would not have believed you. I feel like I have been pushed into it. I had no choice.

What are you working on at the moment?

I am working on an even tougher show which is about suicide bombers, not explicit Islamic suicide bombers. But I’m making a show which is called Time Was Now. It invokes a certain time. If you look at watch adds, it always says 10:09 or 10:10. It is a smiley face and it does not obscure the brand. So the show is really based on the idea that it’s 10:09 and the bomb will go off at 10:10. I want people, when they come into my show, to feel completely alive, because they are about to die. It is almost as big as this installation.

How are you going to keep the suspense?

You’ll have to see.

Thank You!

See more of Jon Kessler in art talks at vbs.tv www.vbs.tv/video.php about past and future shows.

Jon Kessler: The Palace At 4 AM, 2005. Mixed media

Jon Kessler: The Palace At 4 AM, 2005. Mixed media