![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/L1006964.jpeg\")
AA Bronson in front of “Anna and Mark, February 3, 2001, 2002”, his portrait of his husband with their premature daughter when she was 10 days old. AA wears a hand-embroidered shirt by MJKVL.<\/p>\nWith an experimental and political artistic practice spanning nearly five decades, the artist born Michael Tims, AKA AA Bronson, shows no signs of slowing down at the age of 71. Bronson welcomes us into his third floor flat in west Berlin, wearing vivid orange trousers and a white linen top. As he settles into a black leather armchair next to a taxidermied fox, he outlines upcoming exhibitions and projects that encompass his multifaceted career as a member of the General Idea collective, a spiritual healer, the director of Printed Matter and an independent artist. \u201cI still work hard, but I feel like I\u2019m semi-retired compared to how I used to work,\u201d Bronson says with a soft laugh.
\nThis summer and autumn, General Idea has posthumous exhibitions at MAMCO, Geneva\u2019s museum of contemporary art, and Mitchell-Innes & Nash in New York. Next spring, Esther Schipper and KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin will showcase works by Bronson and his collective, as well those created under his pseudonym \u2018JX Williams\u2019. Outside of the gallery and institutional sphere, Bronson is compiling the group\u2019s catalogue raisonn\u00e9 with Fern Bayer and developing a performance project at the Siksika Nation Aboriginal reserve in Canada.<\/p>\n
AA Bronson in front of “Anna and Mark, February 3, 2001, 2002”, his portrait of his husband with their premature daughter when she was 10 days old. AA wears a hand-embroidered shirt by MJKVL.<\/p>\n
Bronson \u2013 who dropped out of university to found a commune and free school \u2013 founded General Idea with Felix Partz (born Ronald Gabe) and Jorge Zontal (born Slobodan Saia-Levy) in 1969. Consumed by themes of appropriation, parody and media, among others, the trio pioneered the mail-art movement, published artists\u2019 books and staged conceptual and radical performances. Although success was not immediate, during the group\u2019s 25-year existence, it eventually became one of the first internationally recognized art collectives.
\n\u201cWe planned in a reverse way to be successful,\u201d Bronson explains. \u201cWe said we wanted to be famous, to be glamorous, to be artists, but it was said with tongue in cheek and no idea that it could ever happen. You don\u2019t think of famous artists coming out of Canada,\u201d he continues. \u201cSo our early work is almost a satirical response to what we saw across the border, with the Andy Warhols of the world. We were acting out being famous, glamorous artists, when in fact we were penniless artists in downtown Toronto.\u201d
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/L1007057.jpeg\")
\n\u201cFILE Megazine\u201d, one of the group\u2019s first projects, remains an early indication of Bronson\u2019s ongoing fascination with artists\u2019 books. The magazine\u2019s layout, color scheme and title appropriated LIFE Magazine, the familiarity of which brought unsuspecting readers into the art world. General Idea also published pamphlets resulting from mail-art endeavors that opened dialogues on sexual and individual identity. (For \u201cOrgasm Energy Chart\u201d, participants sent records with the times and dates of their orgasms. For \u201cManipulating the Self: Phase 1 – Borderline Case\u201d, participants submitted images of themselves holding the side of their heads.) In 1974, General Idea established Art Metropole, which continues, to this day, to function under its original intention of publishing, promoting, exhibiting, archiving and distributing artists\u2019 books, videos and multiples.
\nAs anti-LGBTQ policing increased in Toronto, however, the trio relocated to New York in 1986. In 1989 and 1990 respectively, Partz and Zontal were diagnosed HIV positive and General Idea\u2019s artistic output shifted from cultural critique towards a form of activism. In what became a public art project entitled \u201cIMAGEVIRUS\u201d, for example, they replaced the letters of Robert Indiana\u2019s ubiquitous \u201cLOVE\u201d logo with \u201cAIDS\u201d. Pills also became a recurring motif: Warhol\u2019s silver cloud balloons became pill-shaped; sculptures of various dimensions represented Partz and Zontal\u2019s pharmaceutical intake. One of these works covers Bronson\u2019s living-room wall; blue, green and red pills provide the backdrop for our conversation, a clear sign that Bronson has not, and will never, let go of General Idea.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/L1007137-1.jpeg\")
AA Bronson wears suit by Missoni, shirt by Giorgio Armani<\/p>\n
When Zontal and Partz died of AIDS in 1994, General Idea ended, leaving Bronson, then 48-years-old, feeling lost. \u201cThere have been periods of my life where I\u2019ve felt like I\u2019ve been in the bottom of a chasm,\u201d he says, \u201cand the biggest chasm was after the death of Jorge and Felix. It was an identity crisis. I\u2019d always thought of myself as General Idea and suddenly I wasn\u2019t any more.\u201d
\nWhen asked how and when he was able to come to terms with himself as AA Bronson the solo artist, there\u2019s a long silence before he turns from his armchair to repeat the question to his husband, Mark van de Leur, who sits in an adjoining room.
\n\u201cIt was a very, very, very gradual process,\u201d van de Leur explains. \u201cThe main thing was that General Idea always collaborated and that\u2019s why you were completely stopped dead, you didn\u2019t have anyone to collaborate with. Some of the projects you did early on were collaborations because that\u2019s the only way you could work. It was very hard for you to start working on your own. It was easily 10 years, not until the mid-2000s, that you embraced yourself.\u201d
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/80340004.jpeg\")
\n\u201cMaybe it had to do with being the director of Printed Matter,\u201d Bronson muses about his position from 2004 until 2010. \u201cBy being the director, it gave me a strong personal identity that I could build around.\u201d Before van de Leur returns to his desk, he notes: \u201cAlso the healing stuff\u2013 that was the first project you did with your own identity.\u201d
\nIn addition to General Idea, Bronson was deeply involved with Tibetan Buddhism for 14 years, and following the deaths of his cohorts, he spent time working as a professional healer in New York. \u201cAs I got this rush of clients as a healer, I was fascinated by the identity switch,\u201d Bronson explains. \u201cIt was no longer \u2018AA Bronson of General Idea,\u2019 but \u2018AA Bronson, Healer.\u2019 I started to think of the healer identity as an art identity.\u201d In recent years, Bronson\u2019s spiritualism has become integrated with his artistic output. His performance series \u201cInvocation of Queer Spirits\u201d (2008-2009), for instance, included five s\u00e9ances and healing rituals, carried out across North America. Each one, though different, reflected Bronson\u2019s shamanistic practice, which focuses on issues of individual and collective trauma and memory. They also contemplated the exclusion and violence in today\u2019s world, particularly the aggression directed toward the ill, weak, abused and those who are ostracised for their sexual orientation. This series continues to live through exhibitions of photographs, paintings and ritual objects, and the book \u201cQueer Spirits\u201d, published in 2011.
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/80340001.jpeg\")
\nDespite his ties to Buddhism and shamanism, Bronson grew up in an Anglican family. He refused to return to church at the age of seven, but from 2008 until 2013 \u2013 at which point he moved to Berlin for a one-year DAAD residency \u2013 he studied at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Here, he developed his own relationship to Christianity and is now preparing a performance entitled \u201cA Public Apology to the Siksika Nation\u201d.
\n\u201cSiksika Nation is one of the Blackfoot tribes of North American Indians and my great grandfather was the first missionary to the Siksika,\u201d he explains. \u201cHe built the first residential school and developed the written language, but also did some really horrible things. He took the children away from their parents. They weren\u2019t allowed to speak their own language, keep their holidays, or wear their own clothes. He tried to destroy the culture and was fairly successful.\u201d
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/80340003.jpeg\")
\nPlagued by this history, passed down three generations, Bronson decided it was time \u201cto make a gesture of reconciliation\u201d. His next step is to create a book and develop a performance, in collaboration with a Siksika artist, to be presented on the reservation. Much like the \u201cInvocation of Queer Spirits\u201d, he imagines that the documentation of this performance, as well as objects related to it, will turn into a travelling exhibition.
\nReflecting on his life and artistic practice, he says, \u201cthere was General Idea, this book thing in the middle as a hiatus, and then Berlin\u2026These are all pieces of my life that all engage me these days.\u201d Though each piece has eventually built upon the previous, it hasn\u2019t always been easy. \u201cYou have to fail to succeed and you have to succeed to fail,\u201d Bronson says. \u201cYou can\u2019t have one without the other.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We talk to the Canadian concept artist as he prepares for major institutional reflections on his former collective General Idea and engages with his ancestor’s persecution of Native Americans.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58034,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11856,139],"tags":[149,123,9394,7026,9395],"class_list":["post-58012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleek-art","category-art","tag-aa-bronson","tag-general-idea","tag-mamco","tag-queer-art","tag-queer-spirits"],"acf":{"legacy":true,"main_category":false,"exclude_from_ads":[],"hero_title":"","subtitle":"","hero":{"video":false,"image":false,"header_color":"black","overlay_color":"","overlay_text_color":"black"},"teasers":{"video":false,"image":false,"width":"4","proportion":"default"},"facebook_image":false,"related_articles":"","next_article":"","content":false},"yoast_head":"\n