Translations:
Kenzo Tange is no Longa
Le Corbusier is Dead
Frank Lloyd Wright is a Serious Illness
Mieses to Pieces
Viktor Horta is Dead
Gehry is getting Scary
Koolhaas gives no Solace

Things That Fall: Some Questions from Anaâd Demir

Anaâd Demir is an art critic in Paris. These questions (and others) were published in interview form in Le Journal des Arts, July, 2005.

Anaâd Demir: Tell me about your exhibition at Galerie Chez Valentin. What's the general idea of the exhibition?

Joe Scanlan: The title of the show is Ëthings that fall,Ó and that is the proposition: to think about sculpture and art through this idea. There has been great interest in the subject throughout the history of art, from the Dying Gaul to Brueghel to Mike Kelley. Things that fall often have beautiful consequences. Either their fall is beautiful, or their impact is, or their life at the bottom, or their ability to rise again. Falling is as essential to beauty and philosophy as it is to economics and physics.

AD: How did you organize all the pieces in the exhibition?

JS: All of the sculptures, either in material or content, had to qualify as a thing that falls. So: dirt, flower petals, coffins, consumer products, packaging, household objects, phonograph needles, light, sound, architecture. These are all things that fall -- either literally, because they are doomed by gravity, or figuratively, in that we consume them.

AD: One of your pieces is titled "Hommage à Eric Troncy". Could you explain why this piece is a homage to him?

JS: A while back, Eric Troncy reviewed a show I had at Ghislaine Hussenot. This show was the European debut of the Nesting Bookcase, a sculpture that I have developed over the years that is perfectly happy to be used, displayed, transported, destroyed or preserved. Now, as then, the Nesting Bookcase is an object that is offered to the public without any predetermined usefulness or value. It it is solidly made, has right angles, and is portable. Mr. Troncy seemed to like these aspects but flatly doubted whether the Nesting Bookcase would inspire anyone to act. In the end, he made a passing remark about Duchamp spinning in his grave over the folly of my proposition. Since then I have made over 100 Nesting Bookcases and distributed them all over the world. They have been put to all kinds of uses: some aesthetic, some practical, some economic.

"Hommage à Eric Troncy" is an unfolded Nesting Bookcase shipping carton hung on the wall with a portable phonograph mounted on it, and on the phonograph is a record displaying an image of DuchampÁs grave. The record spins. The record is a somewhat insipid collection of percussion sounds recorded in the early days of stereophonic technology, so it sits at a complex intersection between the end of art, the obsoletion of new technologies, DuchampÁs rather banal scientific curiosity (as in the Roto-Reliefs), and his death. The work is an homage to Mr. Troncy in that he is a perfect example of how insightful any personÁs opinion can be, even when that person has no idea what they are talking about or their assessments are completely wrong. This is especially true when neither of those faults keep that person from confidently speaking their mind.

As the current American president has demonstrated, we need clueless people telling us what to think and do so that we can think and do the exact opposite. Of course, the trick is knowing who these clueless people are. I am confident that Eric Troncy is one of them, hence my ËhomageÓ to him.

AD: You show some protest signs throughout the exhibition, lying at rest upside down. We can see famous architects' names like Koolhaas, Mies Van Der Rohe and Le Corbusier on them. Are you on strike? Why are you referencing these architects in particular?

JS: One of my favorite artists is Martin Kippenberger. At times he suggested that the job of an artist is simply to shit on everything and provide comic relief. Kippenberger was great at helping us relax for a moment and escape our obligations to be good productive citizens. That is the simple goal of these signs: to ridicule the way certain architects have become gods by making apocalyptic rhymes out of their names. They are satiric power reversals, jokes really, like Grandville's illustrations of human beings being walked by their pets.

AD: What give political meanings to your work in general?

JS: Skepticism on the one hand, and humor (absurdity) on the other, both of which are rooted in individualism. We live in a time of competing belief systems, but with no room for skeptics. Belief systems are not only blind to contradiction and deaf to doubt, they are social structures bound by common values and thus averse to individualism. In any system, be it religious or cultural or economic, the end of individualism is the end of dissent, and the end of dissent is the end of progress. I want as little as possible to do with this kind of peer pressure, this kind of group restraint.

AD: What's the link between you and architecture and design?

JS: I like architecture and design because it can be both admired and used without having to trade one kind of appreciation for the other. In fact, using it, destroying it, is part of appreciating it.