Oliver Laric
Oliver Laric Skyped with us recently from Berlin to discuss his video in this month’s showcase, his experience with psychics, and why he likes the internet.
LUMEN ECLIPSE: It’s been hard to find out much about you online. Can you tell me something about your background?
OLIVER LARIC: I usually don’t have that much information, because I feel that it’s become too important in a lot of ways – at exhibitions it’s a lot of times the most significant part, and the art is taking a background role. It’s very important what you have written in your c.v., where you’ve exhibited or what you’ve done, so I usually give fake c.v.’s when I’m asked to give a c.v. Recently I started giving real ones. I was actually born in Austria, in Innsbruck, in 1981. So that’s—I don’t know if you know Innsbruck? It’s a nice little village—well, it’s a city, but it’s more a village.
LUMEN ECLIPSE: Can you tell me about ‘Geisterschloss’: the translation of the title, where the image track came from and how it was made, and where the sound track came from?
OLIVER LARIC: Ok, well the visual part came from this software which is used by the Austrian and German and Swiss police to create—how do you call it in English, those images? If you were searching for a criminal?
LUMEN ECLIPSE: Composite sketches?
OLIVER LARIC: Yeah composite photos, or composite…what was that term again? Well, you know what I’m talking about. It’s used either to create the picture of somebody that is missing or for somebody who they’re searching for who’s committed a crime, and so on, and I came across a demo version, which is not as elaborate as the real thing, but the real software is also a couple thousand euros because it’s not made for home use but for professional police use. I pretty much used every facial feature that’s in the demo version, and put them together in a way that worked with the rhythm, so it’s not a very conceptual piece, I would say it’s a more formal piece. The song originated about a year before I made the video, and the song was based on many different records, I don’t even know which ones anymore, but I would say between about 20 and 50 different records, and a keyboard’s kind of choir voice that you hear in the background. I went for the title, ‘Geisterschloss,’ because it’s related to a video game that I used to play where there was a level called—well, kind of a ghost level, and it had a video game sound aesthetic, so that’s how I named it, and then it actually made sense to me. This is not really a big relation to the idea of using this composite imagery, but ‘geisterschloss’ would translate to ‘ghost castle,’ and the German term for this composite image is ‘phantombild’, and ‘phantombild’ is also ‘ghost image.’ It was just a coincidence, but I liked the coincidence because it felt like both would fit together and so there’s not really an in-depth concept to the piece. There were just a few coincidences which just worked well together, and that’s the product of those coincidences.
LUMEN ECLIPSE: So most people watching this video won’t know this about where the images came from?
OLIVER LARIC: No, I guess not. Some people have associated it with this game that you can play where you have a set of eyes and a set of noses—I don’t know what the name is, it’s kind of a very standard game that I assume almost every family owned, I don’t know what the title of it is. So I think some people associated with this childhood memory of playing a game, but even though it looks very playful, I think, the roots of this imagery that I’m using are very much for a serious purpose.
LUMEN ECLIPSE: Are you constantly working? How do you balance your time as an artist?
OLIVER LARIC: Yeah, I almost always work on my own work, and I don’t really do any work for anybody else, unless it’s a commission that allows me to do whatever I want to do, and so mostly, the projects, everything on the website is self-initiated, except for one or two pieces—no, one piece, I think, is not self-initiated. I don’t have enough time to do the things that I really want to do, I’m kind of falling back on getting things done, but it’s also getting to a point where I don’t enjoy doing a lot of things that I could imagine doing, because I’m not surprising myself anymore, so I think should more forward from some of the things I’ve been doing, and find a new place to go.
LUMEN ECLIPSE:I know you use a lot of source material for your work, but do you also shoot video or film yourself?
OLIVER LARIC: Well, I used to do more, like last year I was doing filming, and I’ve kind of come to the point right now where I don’t see any necessity in producing images myself—everything that I would need exists, it’s just about finding it. There’s a little bit of a change in my practice, which is going from producing to just searching and curating, so I think my task is more to find the right material now. And it’s really obvious, video material that exists, there is everything you can imagine, from on sites like Youtube, or just on TV, or stock image sites, so there’s not really any sense in producing anything, for me, right now. And I don’t understand why few artists still use this material, and why so many still produce their own material, because I have a feeling there’s just too much material produced—well, I don’t know if it’s too much, but there’s such a load, and I would rather just find the ones that I can use. I also don’t think that it’s an issue of copyright anymore, this is a topic of using Youtube-like material, or using material that I’m taking from music videos or whatever. I think you have to ignore this topic, it’s become kind of boring even to discuss it, to question authorship, and who owns what, because some of the more revolutionary changes that are unique to technology are linked with ignoring authorship. If Youtube would be done in a very professional way, where everybody would get paid for the material that they are putting on, or if the rights would be cleared, it wouldn’t work. I think it’s necessary to ignore authorship, to create a space for something that’s interesting again.
LUMEN ECLIPSE: Your work recently appeared in a show commissioned by the ICA in London and in Blend Magazine for a show at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam. Does this say something about museums and other big institutions’ attitude towards newer art forms, ones that use with the internet and engage with new technologies?
OLIVER LARIC: I think to a very small degree some of them have noticed that there is something going on which is interesting, and are taking new steps, but for the most part I rather see what is going on with art practice as a bit conservative and stagnating. If I look at most of the artists that I follow, it’s actually a bit depressing – but then again, it’s good because I have a feeling that there is kind of new land, and things that can be done which are not already done for the thousandth time, and you can still do something new. I don’t know why so few institutions or galleries are picking up on this and noticing this, because I think in their private life, they are all aware of it—I don’t think anybody is not aware of Youtube, and I think, for me at least, if I meet people who have no interest in art, it’s still very common for us to talk about Youtube videos; you know if we had dinner, and somebody would say, ‘have you seen the cobra and the baby?’ or ‘have you seen this-and-this Youtube video?’ so I think it’s very common for anybody I meet, to tell me about a Youtube video. It’s become a very—not important, but kind of a fixed part of social life, I think.
It’s also, for me, really evident that TV is not very exciting anymore. I haven’t had a TV for more than half a year, or almost a year now, and I’m not excited by TV at all anymore, even though I was a big TV junkie when I was like 18, because I wasn’t allowed to watch TV when I was a kid. Now I’m not interested in TV anymore.
LUMEN ECLIPSE: Is the internet your primary venue for making and/or showing your work?
OLIVER LARIC: Yeah, I think so, it really makes sense right now, and I don’t know, it might change if there is another change which is as significant, or takes it into a new direction where it doesn’t make sense using the internet anymore, but right now I don’t see any other platform which has such a potential. And it’s great on so many levels: one, because it’s very cheap for the viewer as much as for the producer, and I can make my work available to a huge audience, and it’s always for free. I really enjoy putting up work for free and not asking for anybody to pay to see it, and I think that’s one of the best steps in this development, that it’s less elitist, and also that you don’t have to be in one of the art capitals to go to one of the galleries, and be with the gallery crowd which I don’t really enjoy, you can just get the information from wherever you are, and also participate from wherever you are. I mean, it’s not at that point yet where really everybody is connected, because there’s still a huge amount of people who don’t have access to this flow of information, but in general it’s such a big audience who is participating, and I think it’s the best platform to use right now, to show your work, and also to create work for.
LUMEN ECLIPSE: How does this platform affect the way you produce? Do you think about the visibility of your work differently – of videos going viral for instance?
OLIVER LARIC: Yeah, I don’t think of them going viral, it’s just, if it happens it’s very nice because you reach an audience which is maybe different than your usual audience. But I do think it has an effect on the way you produce, because the attention span is a different one than if you are in a gallery setting, where you go and you devote your time to really looking at a piece of work, and trying to think about it, and it’s a much different environment than if you just skip from one website to the other, and you basically have the attention span of a five-year-old again. This is, maybe—I don’t know if it’s a bad development or a good development, but I do think it affects the way videos are being produced, and how long they can be—I mean, this is maybe different if you work for yourself and you make kind of free projects, or if you make a project that has to have a commercial success, but I also think it counts for free artworks and so on, so it doesn’t just affect the marketing and advertising worlds.
LUMEN ECLIPSE:You must use the internet as a way to connect to other artists and artistic communities, but are local communities also important? Do you have strong connections to the place that you live?
OLIVER LARIC: I’m in Berlin now, and I just moved here three months ago, and before that I was in Tokyo, and before that I was in Vienna, so I don’t really feel that I have a very strong connection to one specific home, it’s more of a nomadic lifestyle right now. And in Tokyo it was hard to have this connection to people who would maybe do something similar to me, even though I met people who would do something similar to what I was doing, but it was obviously just hard to communicate because I don’t speak Japanese. And because I speak German it’s no problem in Berlin, and there are people who I can talk to about things that I’m interested in, and I think it’s a good thing to have a place where you can really meet somebody and talk to him about what you have on your mind, and what you think about, and what you think is relevant. It also works via email, because I have a couple of artists that I speak to, not just artists but friends that I speak to about things that I’m interested in, and it can be via Skype or via email, it also works – it’s not the same, but it works, and it gives you the sense of being in a community maybe. Maybe if you have a very niche interest, like Art is probably a niche interest, it would make sense to move to a city and to be able to speak to people who also share this niche interest, just as with other subcultures. Yeah, but maybe it’s not so important anymore, maybe it’s possible to live on a Fiji island and still communicate with people about similar interests in your life.
LUMEN ECLIPSE: Who are some of your favorite artists?
OLIVER LARIC: At the moment I’m really not so much surprised by most of the things that I see, and this includes my own work, so right now I’m not too happy—well it’s not even about being happy, it’s just about really getting an excitement when reading something or seeing something. Sometimes the more interesting things now are done by amateurs, and by people who maybe don’t do it for the same—with the same intention that I would do it, or an artist would do it? Or, I don’t know if that’s even arrogant to assume that, but I think some of the people who have done work, and posted it on Youtube, and didn’t have this intention of making something which could be declared as Art, have done really great work. Other than that, I also have some people from more established fields which I really like – like I’m a big Woody Allen fan. Then, from art work, I don’t know, there’s a lot of people…I don’t know where to start. No, I’d say from art that most of the people that I’m interested in are the ones that are probably also using contemporary technology and not so much the paintings generation; mostly those who also understand the internet as a relevant way of spreading your work or using it to create work.
LUMEN ECLIPSE: Can you describe a project or projects you’ve done that were entirely internet-based? I recently saw your piece ‘Webchat with Andy’ (2007).
OLIVER LARIC: This was actually kind of an extension of a project that I started in 2004 and finished in 2005, which I called ‘Channeling Artists,’ which was almost exactly the same work, only that it was maybe more elaborate. It was based on finding psychics, but not online, who claim that they can communicate with dead people, and I was searching via newspaper and searching via websites and esoteric fairs, and I found a couple of people who said they could do it, and then my first experience was going to this lady who I brought a paper, and on this paper I had a picture of Joseph Beuys, and his name, and his date of birth and date of death, and I handed it to her and said I would like to get in touch with this person. I recorded it on camera, and I didn’t record it correctly, or I didn’t record it at all, actually, I just recorded the beginning and turned it off, and that was really frustrating.
But then I did about eight, I think eight further interviews with other psychics and this was a really good experience for me because I am highly skeptical of it, and I was hoping to have a moment when my skepticism would be put into doubt, or where I would be surprised, and from the eight people I interviewed, there was one occasion where I was really surprised, and where it was really a moment where I was getting scared because it was so close to what you would imagine it would be like if it worked.
This was also when I interviewed Joseph Beuys, but with another lady who lives in Munich, and she’s a middle-aged Bavarian—I don’t know what she does, but she works in a kind of public service, but she also does this channeling—I don’t know if she reads cards, but this kind of psychic practice. I gave her also the picture, and you know I never told them before who I was going to do, and so I gave her this picture of Joseph Beuys, and she started getting into a trance, and she first said that she had somebody who was my grandfather, but then somebody else kind of popped into her psyche, and said that she doesn’t know who it is or if it’s the person I’m looking for, but her head was really starting to hurt, and she was kind of putting her hand on her head and she was saying it was really hard for her to breathe, and she’s got trouble—she feels like she’s got weight on her lungs. It really fit well because Beuys, when he crashed in WWII, he had a metal plate put into his head, and it was really at the exact point where she was pointing with her hand, and then I think the reason he died was also related to a lung problem he had, so that was quite good, and then everything she said was really how you would imagine Beuys to be speaking. She was being kind of very degrading on painting and on people using old medias, and she was talking about the social aspects of art, and I was asking, ‘is there something which he minds that is going on today under his name?’ and she says ‘yeah, well she doesn’t understand there’s something with a cleaning lady who took away some fat or something, and everybody’s upset about it, but actually she did the right thing.’ I don’t know if you remember this, but he installed a corner and put some fat in it, or I don’t know if it was in the bathtub, but anyway, there was this Beuys artwork that was cleaned by a cleaning lady, and she was sued for a million euros, or I don’t know what it was, but it was a lot of money, and it was kind of a topic in the media also because it was obviously funny, but all the Art people got really upset that this cleaning lady cleaned this fat away, and this was one of the last Beuys pieces or something. But he was actually really cool about it, or at least the way she told is that he was saying people shouldn’t get upset about it, that’s how it had to develop. And so, it really fit kind of with his ideology, everything really fit.
I’m still skeptical about it because you just basically have to read one book of Beuys and you would get it, or not even read a book but just get a little bit of it, but when I was there and when she told me all of this I was really surprised, and I was even scared. When I got out of the place I was calling everybody and telling them that I had this incredible experience of, I don’t know, maybe talking to Beuys, but it was—so, that was a good experience. This developed further: I did a series of eight interviews, but I used—for this movie that I did, which was 15 minutes long—only four, because another interview didn’t turn out to be good, and another woman I had to promise that I wasn’t going to use it, and to sign a paper, and it was also really hard to get the people—to be able to film them. Some of the interviews I tried I wasn’t able to do, because they didn’t want to be filmed. So I didn’t succeed always in getting people to be filmed.
I actually did this for my diploma at university, this film, and I then failed my diploma, and I was really angry, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with the people there, and then I continued—I showed at an exhibition, everything went well with the video, it got an award and so on, and then I was contacted by Blend Magazine, who’s doing this special issue for Andy Warhol exhibition at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, and they wanted me to do something with Warhol, and I had thought before that I still wanted to try this channeling session, but not with someone that I’m meeting in real life, but to find somebody who would do it over another medium, so I thought Skype was ideal, and my working title was ‘Skyping with Andy,’ but I didn’t find any psychic who would use Skype. I found an Australian psychic who would do a webchat, so that changed my initial idea a little bit, but it was still interesting for me to try it again: how does this work if you’re using another medium, and how would it look if you’re doing it online, and it was also easier because I didn’t have to convince the person to film, so I just used Snapz [ed: a screen-capture program we used for this interview].
LUMEN ECLIPSE: Was the experience of the interview very different over the internet?
OLIVER LARIC: I was still really nervous when it happened. I was sweating, and after it was done I had this big armpit—you know, really wet under the armpits, and I always do that when I get nervous, so I was really nervous there. It felt just the same—I don’t know if you’ve used Second Life, but I was really surprised that it feels very awkward to talk to people in it, because it’s just the same as going to somebody in real life and just starting to talk to them.
LUMEN ECLIPSE: Have you thought about doing a project with Second Life?
OLIVER LARIC: I have, and I really wish I could find a way that would make sense, but I haven’t found any way, so far, that would make sense using it. I haven’t found any way yet, but I would like to.