“In the Mirror Cabinet of History.”

Review

Fareed Armaly was born in 1957 in Iowa (USA) as a child of Lebanese parents. He is known as one of the most analytic minds in the young art scene. For him art is nothing static anymore but a dynamic process which also involves those outside of “art.” With videos and installations he creates in the Kunstverein München an analytical future panorama of the past.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung: What makes an American artist deal with media from the German postwar period?

Fareed Armaly: We do, after all, have something to relate and compare by considering postwar media, pop culture, television, film, etc. I've always believed it’s interesting to investigate what happens in the surrounding of the art practice. We live in the same world, still, you have a different perspective. For my generation, the artists coming out of the 80s, the media theory and the new identity politics were very important. Although these ideas existed in discourse, there seemed to be not enough connection to the American art world.

SZ: In 1987 you came to Germany for a longer period of time. At that point of time the climate was perfect for developing experimental production forms of art, which meanwhile have gotten labeled “context art.”

FA: Historically, Germany has a tradition of art that allows the audience to be quite open (to what is expected). You think in other categories than America, where the question of mass media is a main subject of discussion. To really register in America, one has to do the same thing over and over and work at the level of the image.

SZ: If we look at your work in the Kunstverein, we can see that you take up threads of the past and investigate historical disruptions in culture.

FA: In contrast to such 1980s New York artists as Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman or Barbara Kruger, my generation tries to re-embed history within art. One of my favorite directors is Fassbinder. In his films, one can perceive a condensation of history. Similarly, in my work, my exhibition is not about history—say of hip-hop or techno—but you can find that ‘history’ is referenced and signaling.

SZ: You are using the museum as a platform to reflect another different, socially transforming space. Why don’t you do without an institution as the Kunstverein?

FA: To be honest: for my artist generation there isn't an existing art institution. The methods have changed, for example, from how to organize the budget, to publics and press. Of course, there is the architecture of “Kunstverein München," but the space I am working in is more comparable in thought to that of people who produce film and video.

SZ: With your oxblood-red wall painting in the exhibition entrancehall, you are projecting the outside of the Kunstverein to the inside and vice versa. Do you want to make the architectural borders permeable?

FZ: The architecture of the Kunstverein resembles a mirror cabinet. The arcades form a dividing line between the outside and the inside, between a public and a ‘cultural’ space. In a way, the ensemble is odd, if you know some of the history: on the one side you see the protected arcade ruins of the original Kunstverein building, and then on the other side, a different, complicated postwar building whose ground floor still has the historical forms, while the upper exhibition hall is a typical 1980s assemblage. I wanted to develop a sensibility for this asymmetrical architecture.

SZ: Why did you specifically interview the German film-voiceover actors and synthesizer musicians in the parallel showing video program?

FA: The “Arcade Channel” takes up the architectural situation of a borderline again. The program is another way to show how an American can approach German culture: over historical conditions of television culture, over the specific idea of synchronizing [dubbing foreign movie dialog to German] and over a sound that was known to my generation as the typical German New Wave. I am not speaking about Germany, I speak about my reality.

SZ: Parts of the Munich Olympic Stadium roof are part of the exhibition. Is this due to the current occasion?

FA: I had this idea nine months ago. The architect Arnold Walz, who worked with me on the computer calculation to cut and create the new arcade arch, had studied with Frei Otto in Stuttgart. It is strange to me that the roof is being renewed now. It is a symbol of an attempted zero-point in history with the idea of a new society. A utopian idea of the future is reflected in the Olympic stadium, and now the roof looks so old-fashioned. Not only in terms of the plexiglas material, but also the original idea.

SZ: What can one understand from the title of the exhibition, Parts?

FA: Parts stands for the different methods of investigating phenomena, but also has to do with my perception of society. In English the word “part” also means a role, as in a play. In all my last exhibitions I tried to find new ways to bring architects, designers and other creative people together. The focus is on a question: how to construct a different space for art in the next millennium.

SZ: What is your opinion of the designer group Tomato? (exhibition parallel in Munich)

FA: I didn’t see the exhibition in the Neue Sammlung yet but a designer group may stand for something conceptual. It is often more interesting to talk to people out of the design area than to concept artists, since the designers deal with current questions in a more understandable way. We have today this sense of an ‘open space’ and the play within can be with art. That’s why my work has something to do with ‘Crossover’: one should be able to recognize that there exists a shared syntax between all these different Parts.