BURGHARD

JR: The rededication of everyday objects, unexpected applications in daily use…to what extent to you call back to Situationism and the use of the techniques of dérive and détournement? B: Basically, we are advocates of the idea that a good stroll is a valuable form of artistic practice. To the Situationists we owe gratitude for radically expanding artistic engagement within a social context. JR: Let us now broach the issue of space. In his essay ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, Heidegger repeat- edly mentions einräumen – ‘making room’ or ‘vacating’. This space does not exist a priori, instead, it is constituted through locations – just as these are in turn set up through the constellation of things, entities and people. Space is being constituted by them in a twofold manner: By admitting and ‘ex- ercising openness’ but also by a specifying arrangement of referential contexts. To what extent are your arrangements characterized by this interplay of opening and closing, of contingency and order? B: Our deliberations on space have been increasingly influenced by the parameters of topical think- ing over the past years. If we imagine that space is stretched out via the locations, space becomes a function of the components of our installation and of the recipient. Indeed, our various actions have brought us closer to the concept of site. bauen, denken was a decisive waypoint. From object to site. Our artistic sense has changed. JR: Some of your works hint at a certain affinity to the discourses at the intersection of art and science. To what extent are you also guided by particular sources of cognition in your artistic strategy? At which position between the traditional positivist paradigm of science and art’s essentially auratic nature would you position yourself? B: The failure of the a priori in linear arbitrariness wearies on the surmounting of the immediate perfec- tion of art. The only acceptable line of reasoning is based on the contrast between the scientist caught up in his system and the artist facing his work. JR: Is your work based on an underlying code or system of ciphers that, – albeit aleatoric – does show a measure of structure or syntagmatic pattern? B: We see our work as far removed from the linearity of language. Our approach is not narrative and there is no legible code which, once understood, renders the whole work accessible. The vocabularies we employ are evanescent; our works are – in this given particular configuration – only valid for the moment. They are the reverse of stability. They are a process, life. JR: So more likely, to refer to Lacan, it is a language of the Real in the sense that it defies the sayable in the sense of determination and expresses itself as a gap or blank space? B: In the end, we don’t really have the power of disposal. We don’t own what we do. We are not creators. JR: We live in an era of accelerated expansion of technocratic, normative and institutionalized structures that demand constant restraint and thus lead to the retreat of the individual from societal engage-

BURGHARD

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