Aline Bouvy and John Gillis interviewed by Andrew Hunt.

This interview took place on rue Antoine Dansaert, Brussels on 1 December 2006.

A.H.: Although this is your first solo exhibition in the UK, your idea isn’t to produce any sort of retrospective project, it’s a show of new work, right?

J.G.: Yes, we’ve just started to discuss it. At the same time we don’t really want to go back over what we’ve done before.

A.B.: Yeah, but if Andy asks questions we can reply simply from our point of view today.

J.G.: Of course.

A.H.: I’m going to ask you about your working process as part of my questions, so maybe we can talk it all through in the interview?

J.G.: OK.

A.H.: The first question is ‘Can you tell me about your latest work’?

J.G.: There’s a link beween our ideas for International Project Space and our latest work involving sculptural figures. The exhibition in Birmingham will be a continuation of ‘Another Drenched Night at the Pagano Club’, the show at aliceday, which opened last night here in Brussels. We will probably use sculptures and paintings to combine and develop our ideas further.

A.B.: The sculptural works that we made for our recent shows in Chicago and Brussels are extrapolated from our paintings or drawings. They feature a combination of two and three dimensional ‘collaged’ assemblages that form schematic, ‘dis-organised’ bodily forms. They present a pose, or an attitude. The figures are presented on the walls of the gallery. Together they form a ‘ronde macabre’. Their size makes them appear majestic, like representations of divinities or totems from another time, or rather of a time yet to come. Their faces, which are entirely made out of magazine cuttings, follow the same features. Their ‘bodies’ differ in their treatment. Each male figure, for instance, always has a single element sticking out of the wall: an oversized, stylised penis or ‘cockholder’. These figures belong to the same family but each one has its own character. They are enigmatic and surreal, mystical and psychologically loaded, yet they also simply comment on the human body today using erotism, beauty, violence and extravagance.

A.H.: All of the works in the current show look like self-portraits, but they’re also like Gods or religious icons. Can you tell me about this?

J.G.: These works are certainly not representations of ourselves as such, but we don’t really see the point in using someone else’s face or features if we are available to each other as models.

A.B.: There’s no autobiographical link for instance. Maybe they’re ­ yeah, they’re projections of ourselves, which are different from us as social beings. They’re projections of ourselves through a particular pose or attitude.

J.G.: The work simply depends on how we feel each time we represent ourselves. It's not us ­ its more than us ­ these works really become the inner us that is embodied in an attitude, a feeling that depends upon our interests or influences at a particular moment in time.

A.H.: What made you decide to start working together? Was it something that just felt natural?

A.B.: It happened when we were both at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. We collaborated on our first series of works in 2000, which was called ‘The Young Man’s House’, a re-reading of Charlotte Perriand and Le Corbusier's 1935 study for the ideal home of the ideal young man. In 2001, Eva Schmidt, who was then the director of the Gesellschaft fur Aktuelle Kunst in Bremen, invited us to make our first collaborative solo show, which we called ‘To a Severe Mathematics’. Our collaborative practice seemed more project-based at the time, but we naturally started to change our way of working. Our works became more subjective, which I think can be an exciting issue when it involves two people. Before it was easy for us to give clear ideas about each work, with theoretical and cultural references. We don' t define what we do the same way now; we quickly became bored with that kind of language within our work.

J.G.: One thing that we are both really happy about is that we don’t need to have meetings or discussions.

A.B.: Yeah. We argue a lot in our life, but we don’t have to argue at all about our work, we understand each other completely.

J.G.: Of course, for exhibitions, we are conscious that we have a date to work towards, but we usually start very simply and independently of each other, and head in a certain direction.

A.B.: Each of us knows what the other is doing, but we don’t forcibly work together all of the time. John and I can be in a corner doing separate things, and it just happens that we are both interested in the works that we make.

J.G.: Or we find things that already exist and assemble these elements in a different configuration.

J.G.: I think this is where the influence of the ‘pose’ or ‘attitude’ comes in. For example, Aline and I have the luxury of being able to show each other our attitudes, desires, or passions in a very intimate and private way. For me it’s nice to play with this in the work.

A.H.: Sometimes in collaborations people give each other reasons to realise ideas that they’ve been to afraid to do on their own. Each person might push the other on. Do you think that you give each other that kind of confidence?

A.B.: Yes. If we finish a work successfully, for instance, and we are both happy with it, it’s almost like nothing else matters.

J.G.: In terms of the confidence in working together, its nice to say, ‘ok, this is what I’ve done’ and give it to Aline and then she works with it. It’s this that gives a work its sense of ‘community’.

A.H.: Can you tell me more about the references to fashion in your work?

A.B.: I’ve always been very interested in clothes and style and so on. I find reading fashion magazines great because I like to see how the representation of the body changes from one season to another, and from one year to another. I think that fashion indicates where we’re at in terms of the representation of the body. Fashion photography ­ I’m very interested in it. It really seems to me to be the best theme ­ even though this is played out in a predictable way, there’s something unusual about it. And when you say to people that you like fashion they can criticise you very easily, it’s very superficial and so on, but even though I know it’s played out and false, it doesn’t seem to matter ­ this is where our collective desire is. That’s how we want to see each other and this is how we are. It’s nothing to do with an ideal image, it’s a projection of… I don’t know… behind fashion there’s something fantastic, it’s a projection of these feelings of the body or the perfect…

J.G.: …human state or attitude…

A.B.: …it’s about life, yes.

A.H.: Can you tell me about your use of collage?

A.B.: I think we started using collage very much by chance, and it’s specifically collage, rather than montage. It’s not that we take an image because it represents something. We wouldn’t cut a shape out because it looks like a mouth, an arm, a hand, or a person, and so on ­ we take things for their shiny quality, or because they contain a certain colour, or because they look like a material that you’d really like to try and paint.

J.G.: The funny thing about collage is that you can fabricate your desires. You can construct them, and you can build with them. You can lie with collage, and you can feel with it. Perhaps at the beginning we were more interested in montage, and we enjoyed exploiting this reference. But since then, the work has veered towards collage.

A.B.: Again, it’s simply to do with finding things that we want to put in our work but don’t want to paint, draw, or take pictures of. We just like finding things that already exist, and then assembling these elements in a different configuration.

J.G.: Also, if I am painting in a certain style, and Aline is painting in another style, we make a collage in this way too.

A.B.: Our collaboration is also like a collage. We each have several styles, ways of working, or ways of seeing things. When we assemble our work, we don’t try to erase the division of labour, or go through a process of homogenisation that would render everything seamless.

J.G.: Yes, it’s a collage of techniques, of references, and of our different ways of working. How can you put two individuals together? To us, collage puts two individuals together.

A.H.: The current work that you’re showing at aliceday consists of figures that use scraps from fashion references to point to the fact that people are constructions in a really direct way, doesn’t it? I mean we’re all constructions of everything we know aren’t we?

A.B.: Of course, of course…

A.H.: …we’re built from everyone we’ve ever talked to, all of the things that we’ve ever learnt since we were children, but in a unique sort of way…

A.B.: …yeah, yeah, yeah…

A.H.: …and there’s also something that exceeds that interpretation as well. It’s not like A plus B equals C, is it?

J.G.: Construction for me is culture, and it fascinates me to examine what we are made of.

A.B.: We are constructed of things that are there beyond our will, things that we haven’t decided upon.

J.G.: Yet we still live in a society that’s steeped in popular culture, and I think this is another interesting way we construct ourselves.

A.B.: I like the idea of culture as a construction and collage. For instance, we’ve revisited Egyptology in our work, and how Egyptology was revisited in the early 1930s as a fad. It’s the idea that you can reconstruct something at any stage from the past…

J.G.: …history is also a construction…

A.B.: …which in turn mixes ideas of the future to construct something else. Things change all of the time. There’s no fixed point of view.

A.H.: The future’s an interesting idea as well isn’t it?

J.G.: Making constructions of the future excites me a lot.

A.H.: Every culture’s got an idea of the future, and it’s been said that our idea of the future is really poor today compared to concepts of the future in the past. It’s not as good as it used to be is it?

J.G.: Things are pessimistic today, and I think everybody feels that. The future isn’t very bright nowadays.

A.H.: Do you think your work addresses the future?

J.G.: That’s the very purpose of our work. We try to point optimistically towards the future without projecting any fixed ideology.

A.B.: It’s because we’re attempting to present or project a field that is free. It’s a projection toward the future and big possibilities. There was a stage in our work when we referred to cultural events of the past…

J.G.: …but now it’s much more fun to project ideas forward in a strange way.

A.H.: Can you tell me about your take on affirmation over melancholy? I’m thinking about the way that melancholy dwells on, or is fixated with the past and history. Obviously it’s impossible and dangerous to deny the past, but whereas some young artists (and critics) enjoy using melancholy to lend their work weight and intellectual gravitas, you’re not concerned with this at all. Are you interested in the way an overtly positive practice might point towards a more interesting position?

J.G.: I went to an art school in Brussels where Gilles Deleuze was considered to be a…

A.B.: …God…

J.G.: …not a God, but the main figure in thinking. All of the professors were, in essence, Deleuzians in an absolutely massive way. So, for me, Deleuze is something I just don’t even have to read anymore, it’s so much a part of me.

A.B.: I really believe there is a big difference between the Anglo-Saxon world and the French speaking countries. At the beginning of the 90s, when we started art school, or even before then, Deleuze was everywhere, and you couldn’t take any course without having to refer to him. Our teachers in practical courses were all very influenced by Deleuze and attempted to transmit that ‘love’ to us. Deleuze wasn’t initially taken very seriously in the Anglo-Saxon context ­ his writing is something that arrived there later.

J.G.: I think Anglo-Saxon readings of Deleuze are interesting.

A.B.: Yes, by comparison the French can sometimes be quite boring and a little pretentious.

J.G.: Different readings open up other routes to Deleuze.

A.B.: That’s true, that’s true.

J.G.: And that’s quite intriguing. The Anglo-Saxon world interprets from a distance. And this is what interests me ­ in our work, we like to keep a distance.

A.H.: Is there a direct relationship between theory and practice in what you do?

J.G.: We don’t reject theory, it’s important, and we have a background in it. But, personally, a few years ago, it got to the stage where I was reading more than I was producing, and that imposes a lot of things on what you make. We still read literature. I really like writers like Dennis Cooper, whom I first read in John Russell's Frozen Tears, he’s been a massive influence for me.

A.B.: When I first met John [Gillis] he had loads of art theory books, mainly in English, and, as I would say, they had no pictures in them.

[Laughter]

A.B.: John is Flemish, and has spoken fluent English longer than I have, so he was closer to Anglo-Saxon art theory. In the mid 1990s he was reading new books that were published in Britain and the US, and I read them years afterwards when they were translated into French. Again, we went to a school in Brussels, which has always been good for its theory as well as its practical courses, and this gives you a certain grounding. We’ve had and still have our favourite theorists, but now we mostly read literature, and more unusual references.

J.G.: For example, I’ve never been interested in Manga or Japanese culture, but lately, because of the work we were making, it’s pushed us to go to comic stores. I went to one place, and this guy was showing us books, saying things like ‘look at this Manga, it’s all printed in blue and white instead of black and white’. It’s great to discover the beauty of these things.

A.B.: Also, we have a great second hand bookshop here in Brussels we go to for research material. The people who work there know us, and they always get their weirdest stuff out when we arrive because they sense we’re going to like it.

J.G.: Coming back to your question, there’s also a mainstream reading of art theory, and again, a lot of people read the same stuff. It’s like you’re obliged to read the same thing, reference the same footnotes. What I’ve found in the last five years is that I buy books that I would never have thought of buying before, and that’s fantastic. We have a theoretical context but it’s good to read things that are less predictable.

A.H.: Yeah.

J.G.: And fair enough, theory’s a good tool. But it’s also sometimes foolish to be completely a part of it. When I was younger I was really into October. I was a massive fan and thought that it was a necessary tool to access and make art. It’s still interesting and important, but at a certain point it’s just good to say ‘I don’t need that shit to make art’. Theory is like a father figure, and you have to kill it.

A.H.: Someone in Brussels made a very good point a couple of days ago about the fact that it’s only now that we’re really fully comprehending what the Renaissance achieved, hundreds of years after it happened. I know it’s a grand comparison, but have you thought about how your work might be received in the future, or how it will change?

J.G.: I hope it will change, we never make work with a conscious strategy of how it will be received, but we deal with the future so it will be interesting to affect that in some way.

A.H.: To change the subject slightly, Linder Sterling’s show is at Dépendance a few streets away, and there are burnt collages that reference the tradition of Surrealism and Dada, or artists like Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Hoch. Do you see your work within this tradition?

J.G.: In terms of collage, certainly, but as Robert Garnett has pointed out in the accompanying text to our last exhibition, this is essential ‘as long as it is concerned with connecting, rather than communicating, extending rather than undoing, going beyond the anti-aesthetics of montage and its neurotic obsession with fragmentation, negativity, irony and mourning’. The other important thing for us is to change our location and context often. As artists coming from Belgium it’s interesting to go to different places like Berlin or London. We lived in Berlin for a year and spent all of the time clubbing hard and working hard, and then we went to London, which was really important for us. It was a very important confrontation.

A.H.: In what way?

J.G.: The open culture in London gave us a fantastic context for our work, and it never made me think ‘I’m from Brussels, a small city’. It’s the eye of culture and when we were there it was about luxury because the art scene is a lot bigger.

A.B.: In London, when we were making our work, we felt close to a lot of things that were going on. It gave us confidence in what we were doing. Sometimes we don’t get that here, we don’t feel close to that many artists in Brussels, for instance.

A.H.: Maybe your work is more geared towards a British situation because you are rubbing against the grain of, what in England we would probably call, a more ‘European’ aesthetic?

J.G.: Yeah, I understand what you mean but you shouldn’t pigeon hole us. I think we are looking as much at German art, for instance, as much as anything else.

A.H.: Can you tell me about the use of humour in your work?

J.G.: Humour?

A.H.: I mean in terms of a convincing form, and the possibility of total collapse. Where there’s a total belief in an artwork, coupled with the fact that it might just fall down at any given moment.

J.G.: Maybe I’m completely wrong ­ I’m speaking for myself now ­ but I’m quite jealous of people who use humour successfully. I don’t think I’m capable of it. Martin Kippenberger was a funny guy and he could present things in such a way that humour evolved in his work in a self critical way. English artists are very good with humour, but I can’t do that, and I think neither of us are very good at it. I’ve got big questions about humour in art. It’s rare that it works for me. Maybe for Kippenberger it works because of the question it creates within his work, but I have quite a difficulty with the use of humour as a tool.

A.B.: I think what John means is that British artists have the ability to create little twists in their work, and sometimes this contains a lot of humour. I don’t think we are capable of bringing that to our own work. Instead there’s a freedom that we give ourselves that comes from elsewhere. It’s in the mediums we use, and it’s simply in how our works look. I’m thinking for instance about the exhibition that we are currently preparing for Naples. There’s a feeling of freedom in drawing and constructing things that looks quite daft, but this isn’t done on purpose.

A.H.: Tell me about your animated collage, Politics of the Self (2005).

J.G.: It’s an accidental self-portrait.

A.H.: It represents a female figure masturbating doesn’t it?

A.B.: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A.H.: And I suppose there’s a certain immediacy, desire and excitement that exists very directly in that particular work, isn’t there? It’s like that moment of laughter and recognition, and very much like a joke in that respect isn’t it?

J.G.: Of course, maybe it represents humour, or perhaps it’s simply your reading because you’re from the UK? Or maybe you’ve put it in a good context and answered the question yourself? That’s why I love art, because you can undress yourself. You can be naked, you can be in whatever state you want to be. I can draw myself naked, but it’s not about those things being provocative. That’s what’s great about art. You can undress yourself.

A.H.: At your opening last night, it was quite interesting because everyone was doing their normal social thing and there were your works in the background. It did make me laugh a bit.

A.B.: I don’t see these works as being very sexual though?

J.G.: No, I don’t think we’ve ever made a sexual work in a proper sense.

A.B.: No. I don’t think it’s sexual at all.

J.G.: Not even Politics of the Self.

A.H.: Would you say your work is transgressive?

J.G.: Well, for example, I’m a massive fan of Gilbert and George, but I would never make a work where I’d deliberately include something to shock someone. Never, because I don’t care about that issue. Maybe it’s an issue for you or for somebody else, but it’s not an issue for me.

A.H.: A lot artists work on more context-based projects, or have more socially engaged practices. Perhaps, paradoxically because your work’s so different to this, there’s a political side to the aesthetic of your work, or at least an interesting frisson there?

J.G.: Yeah.

A.H.: And perhaps one of the reasons why your work is interesting is exactly because you don’t really mind that it’s not made for a specific audience?

J.G.: Yes, and by the same token, perhaps a curator should be motivated primarily by a desire for good work no matter what context they’re working in? In our case, I hope that you chose us out of a desire for our work, rather than for any other reason.

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