Berlin Art Week<\/a>. The Danish performance artist deals with notions of ritual and group mentality in his works, which have included the artist himself playing different stereotypes of an artist (as in “Masculine demeanor as a consequence of social power relations between artist and audience” (2013) and directing participants, like extras, in a music video (“Opening” (2013)). We spoke to the artist before Berlin Art Week about the differences between showing a performance at an art fair and and an institution and what being a white heterosexual male has to do with his art.<\/p>\nSleek: Tell us about the work you created for \u201cVertigo of Reality\u201d.<\/b><\/p>\n
Christian Falsnaes: I was invited for the exhibition because I work very strongly with the interaction between the audience and the artist -you could say that\u00a0I work with the audience as a material. The work I present is very much a situation that viewers can participate in. The piece was shown for the first time at Art Basel – but will\u00a0now\u00a0be shown for the first time in an institutional exhibition. The work is called “Justified Beliefs” and consists of five headphones with synchronized, but different, audio tracks. Each audio track is a series of ongoing instructions to the one wearing the headphones. When the viewer puts on one of the headphones, immediately a voice tells you what to do. Since the five headphones are synchronized, they correspond to each other in a way that a choreography occurs when people follow the instructions. I have also hired two people who are in the installation all the time. So there are always people that you can engage with.<\/p>\n
So you showed it first at Art Basel…. how do you think it would be different at the institution?<\/b><\/p>\n
I was very surprised with how well it went in Basel because art fairs in general are a really difficult context for showing art. This work requires intense interaction so you need to invest some of your time and yourself into the piece to make it work. I was surprised by how many people actually interacted with the piece and to which degree.<\/p>\n
I can imagine that it will work even better in an institutional setting where people have time to really experience the works. Because of the theme of the exhibition, people already go there with certain expectations and therefore might be more prepared to invest themselves in the works as well.<\/p>\n
It’s interesting because you’re not in the piece while in a lot of your other pieces, you are very present. Is there a reason for that?<\/b><\/p>\n
Yes, I have\u00a0actually\u00a0been thinking a lot about trying to take myself and my personality out of the work. The works I did where I performed and controlled the situation had developed a specific language to create this kind of situation. I noticed that the audience, very often, think that the work is all about me and how I behave. That is\u00a0actually\u00a0not what interests me. I’m more interested in the idea of how certain rituals are played out and how they influence certain behaviour. So I’ve been thinking about situations where I would not need to be present myself to open up the pieces a little bit. This is one of the approaches that I’ve tried.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Christian](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/resized-Christian-Falsnaes-Justified-Beliefs.jpg\")
Christian Falsnaes, Justified Beliefs, Performance, 2014 \u00a9 Christian Falsnaes \/ courtesy of PSM, Berlin<\/p>\n