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Dan & Hanne: An Interview with Dan Adler

Submitted by Magenta on Sun, 09/06/2009 - 02:20 in

By Bill Clarke

Hanne Darboven, Kulturgeschichte 1880-1983 (Cultural History 1880-1983), 1980-83. Installation view at
Dia:Beacon, Beacon, New York. Lannan Foundation; long-term loan. Photo: Florian Holzherr.

The German Conceptual artist Hanne Darboven, who died last March at age 67, pursued a practice that was
disciplined and uncompromising. Born in Hamburg in 1941, Darboven moved to New York in 1966, where she
absorbed the principles of early Conceptual and Postminimalist art that were emerging at the time. The concepts
of time and history, and how to capture and express them, informed Darbovens art for over 30 years. Her
exhibitions often took the form of complex installations and enigmatic book works filled with handwritten
notations and cursive script.
Darbovens maxim was never apologize and never explain. Fortunately, there are others brave enough to
attempt explanations of Darbovens art. Dan Adler, an assistant professor of modern and contemporary art at
Torontos York University, recently published a book on what is probably Darbovens most complex work, Cultural
History: 1880-1983 (1983). Adlers volume is the latest addition to Afterall Books One Work series, which
provides authors with the unique opportunity to write in depth about one work of art that has made a
difference.
Adler sat down with Bill Clarke, Executive Editor of Magenta Magazine Online, to discuss Darbovens importance,
the challenges of writing about her work, the pitfalls of Conceptual art, and her influence on artists working
today.
Bill Clarke (BC): First, congratulations on the book. How did the opportunity to write it come about?
Dan Adler (DA): Quite simply, I met artist Janice Kerbel, who is Mark Lewiss partner. [Lewis is the editor of the
One Work series and an artist; he is currently Canadas representative at the Venice Biennale.] She mentioned
that Mark was going to be in town for a show at his Toronto gallery, and so Mark and I met about an artwork that
I thought would be suitable for the One Work series. The opportunity to do a close reading of an installation that
Id been thinking about for 10 years, and doing justice to a work that is visually and thematically complicated,
really interested me.
BC: It sounds like you had no doubt that Darboven and Cultural History were what you had to write about. Why?
DA: Mark and I recognized that she is an understudied figure in Conceptual art. We agreed that Cultural History
was arguably her most important work, and we thought this was an opportunity to give Darboven some
deserved recognition. There has been writing about her in German, but very little in English, so this book

addressed a need. Im hoping this text will start a new wave of interest in her work.
BC: And why did this particular work appeal to you?
DA: Cultural History is the sort of work that stubbornly resists being described. It is so enormous and complex
that it needs a book to describe it. It presented the sort of challenge that, as a writer, I want to take on.
BC: How did you approach writing the book?
DA: My approach is very object-oriented; all the
theorizing and interpreting I do flows naturally from my
description of the work. In other words, the work comes
first. This book is, in some sense, a statement of my
priorities as a critic, and a test of what my principles will
be as a teacher and nascent curator. Conceptual art is an
area that I specialize in and Id like to see more under-
recognized figures added to the canon. In my teaching, I
try to emphasize figures especially those associated

Hanne Darboven, Kulturgeschichte 1880-1983 (Cultural History 1880-

1983), 1980-83. Installation view at Dia:Beacon, Beacon, New York. Lannan

with the Conceptual art movement who have been

Foundation; long-term loan. Photo: Florian Holzherr.

important, but have been relatively ignored by

institutions.
BC: It sounds like you think most art writers dont put the work first.
DA: It seems that, so often in the field of art writing, many people approach the work with a pre-arranged
agenda, which blinds them to how the work operates on viewers. It is important for me to relay my experience
of the work in the gallery and to provide a discourse that is accessible and coherent. At least part of the time, I
want the reader to feel like they are in the gallery space with me.
BC: Youve said that you dont like the use of the term pioneer to describe Darboven. Isnt being a pioneer a
good thing?
DA: Well, yes and no. A number of obituaries have described Darboven as a pioneering German conceptualist,
but that feels like an excuse for why she was given less attention. Its a label that designates her as ahead of
her time, and not as canonical as, say, Gerhardt Richter or Sol Lewitt. Women artists are more often labelled
pioneers. Other than Eva Hesse, Darboven is one of the very few female, first-generation conceptual artists
from Europe who have gotten any detailed scholarly attention at all.
BC: So, the pioneer label is a bit of a double-edge sword?
DA: Oh, it can be positive, too, because it indicates the artist did something new and that they have become
influential in some way. Darboven is a difficult artist, and she never made any apologies for that. It is
understandable why people might want to avoid her, so my challenge was, in part, to make her more accessible
without oversimplifying her artistic interests or process.
BC: You first saw Cultural History in 1996 at the Dia Art Foundations Chelsea space. Can you recall what your
response to the work was back then and how its evolved since?
DA: (Laughs) My initial response was of being overwhelmed! The installation took up several large galleries. And,
the amount of material to look at! Over 1,600 panels containing thousands of sheets of paper and all these
uncanny-looking sculptural objects punctuating the exhibition. I took notes at the time as a way of dealing with
my feelings of intimidation, my fear of the work. So, its fortunate that Ive had such a long time to reflect on the
work and my notes, and to consider it in relation to other major statements, such as Richters Atlas. This
gradually made Cultural History less intimidating for me.
BC: How familiar were you with her work before experiencing Cultural History?
DA: I was familiar with some early drawings - the Konstruktonen series made in the mid 1960s, but these are
very different from Cultural History. They are humble in terms of scale and materials, consisting of numbers and
graphs on paper. Because of that simplicity, they are considered key Conceptual works; the emphasis is on the
ideas contained within the calculations. Cultural History, however, is concerned with issues such as historical
memory, the reception of traumatic events, and the material reality of things. So, the Cultural History
installation was a big surprise because it contrasted with what I though her work was.
BC: I feel her concern with history, especially Germanys turbulent 20th century history, is shared by a number
of her contemporaries. You mentioned Gerhardt Richter, but when I was reading your book, I also thought a lot
about Christian Boltanski.

DA: Yes, both he and Darboven convey the events of the Holocaust and other traumatic situations in their work,
and how that history is coldly archived, transmitted and distorted by historians, the culture industry and the
media. They both deal with the politics of transmission, but in very different ways. By this, I mean the ways
through which those horrors have been received by us photographically and textually. We live in a world in which
there are forces distracting us from those realities, and that capitalize and make money off of those realities.
BC: You talk about earlier attempts to create atlas-like
works in the book, such as Aby Warburgs Mnemosyne
Atlas from 1929, but it seems to me that a work like
Cultural History could only have been made in the latter
half of the 20th century. I say this because when
Warburg was constructing his atlas, history was probably
conceived of in a more linear way - of one event
happening after another rather than things occurring
simultaneously. Word of events taking place on the other
side of the world took days, if sometimes not weeks, to
spread. Today, we learn about events almost
Hanne Darboven, Kulturgeschichte 1880-1983 (Cultural History 1880-

immediately. We have much more of a sense of the

1983), 1980-83. Installation view at Dia:Beacon, Beacon, New York. Lannan

simultaneity of events; however, this seems to have a

Foundation; long-term loan. Photo: Florian Holzherr.

levelling effect. The media often seems to give equal

weight to everything. News of a celebrity having a

meltdown is delivered to us in the same format as news of the latest complex developments in the Middle East.
Cultural History seems to presage our current situation.
DA: Yes, there is a feeling of dilution of the power of the image today. For example, in Cultural History, well see
an image of Hitler saluting, followed immediately by an image of a cartoon picturing a baby eating. The images
are brought down to the same level of information. No one subject is more relevant than another.
BC: Darbovens work is critical of this.
DA: Yes, absolutely. Cultural History is meant to raise our awareness of how we have become detached from our
own histories. The role of the culture industry is to detach us from such realities. Its role is to create spectacles
that pacify us and make us less aware of ways of subverting the powers that be. One way is to keep us in a
constant state of visual stimulation, which distracts us from the realities and injustices of history. The culture
industry and the media are always forcing us onto the next thing. Think about the injustices that occurred during
the Iraq war. Doesnt it feel like weve already forgotten about them?
BC: Another element of Darbovens work you mention is the act of itemizing, list-making and cataloguing. Again,
this is a trait she shares with Boltanski, as well as artists like Mario Merz or Alighiero Boetti. What is the purpose
of Darbovens itemizing?
DA: Cultural History gathers together varied things as pre-World War II postcards, pin-ups of film and rock stars,
World War I-era German cigarette cards, geometric diagrams for textiles, illustrated covers from Der Spiegel
and Der Stern; the contents of an exhibition catalogue devoted to post-War European and American art, musical
score sheets, pages of numerical calculations and a form of repetitive cursive writing, and imagery from some of
Darbovens earlier works. It also includes three-dimensional objects such as animal figures, a robot, a crescent
moon hanging from the ceiling, a kiosk, a ceramic bust of a moustached man, a pair of shop-window mannequins
wearing jogging attire, and a book placed on a pedestal. Darbovens is a personal and non-hierarchical collection
of materials, and it provokes consideration of how history is made and related. It draws distinctions between
history and information, everyday and historical significance, and documentary and aesthetic import. Her work
powerfully questions the division between the personal and the universal, as it operates in the process of
portraying history. Most importantly, her work refuses to answer the call for interpretive synthesis.
BC: What were some of your challenges while writing the book?
DA: Strangely enough, one of the biggest challenges was not to itemize Cultural History by simply listing whats
in the work. I wanted to provide an alternative reading, and one way of doing this was to present it as an
allegory, putting it into an art-historical context and talking about Darbovens work in terms of aesthetics and
spirituality. Shes often associated with anti-aesthetic Conceptualism, and pegged as a purely intellectual artist
who was only interested in things like mathematics. So, one of the things that I emphasize in the book, and that
Im particularly proud of, is the aesthetic dimensions of the work, such as colour and abstraction. I also describe
some spiritual readings of her work, which may recall Modernist artists more than Conceptualists. Another
worthwhile challenge was to broaden the historical background of her work, by considering sources such as

Courbets painting, The Artists Studio (1854/55). Im not sure other scholars
who specialize in Conceptualism would necessarily agree with this approach, but
there you have it.
BC: Ann Dean [the Director of Art Metropole in Toronto] mentioned to me that
she felt there are a lot of similarities between Darbovens work and that of
Vancouver artist Geoffrey Farmer, and that your next writing project is going to
focus in part on Farmer. Do you see similarities between Darboven and Farmer?
DA: First, the new book is going to be about single exhibitions by several
different artists, Farmer among them. So, the format is going to be five chapters
and each exhibition is like Cultural History in that they are difficult to describe,
expansive and dispersed, and make use of relatively humble materials, so theres
a conspicuous absence of slick presentation and gimmicks in favour of forms and
Dan Adler

content - a monumental scale achieved using unmonumental materials.

BC: Farmer often does use unassuming materials
DA: Yes, and the other interesting element to consider is artistic labour. Unlike a lot of other so-called

Conceptual artists, both Darboven and Farmer are very laborious in their methods, but it is not always clear how
the labour translates into value. They make artistic labour into an issue, which fascinates me. I see that youve
brought along one of Darbovens artist books
BC: I thought it would be nice to have a piece of her work with us during the interview.
DA: Ive not actually seen this book [Information, 1973] before, but it is a simple illustration of artistic labour,
the pages and pages of repeated handwritten script. (Laughs.) She sure punched the time-clock on this one! At
his mid-career retrospective in Montreal a few years ago, Farmer stuck a bunched-up piece of tape on the floor
of the gallery as part of a larger installation, and it was like he was saying to viewers, I dare you to find value in
this. Darboven also seems to often be making similar kinds of provocations. But, because there is an obvious
indication of labour in her work, it prompts the viewer to attempt to find meaning in it. This contrasts with some
canonical Conceptual works that have no indication of labour at all. Theres only the idea behind the work.
BC: I have sometimes thought artists hide behind the idea of a work as a way to excuse poor technique or
shoddy construction.
DA: Yes, sometimes Conceptual art suffers from the perception that an artist hasnt spent any time on it, so why
should viewers spend any time considering it? This is not always the case, though. There are plenty of works that
have almost no labour, but are still compelling.
BC: Unfortunately, you werent able to meet Darboven before she died. What would you have asked her if you
had?
DA: No, and that makes me very sad. I would have loved to have learned what she thought the limitations are in
my reading of her work. I hope to write more about her in the future, so I would have wanted to take her
thoughts into consideration. She was, apparently, a very frank person and incapable of being diplomatic, so Im
sure she would have been very honest with me.
BC: That sounds typically German!
DA: (Laughs) Yes, it does!
Hanne Darboven: Cultural History 1880-1983 (http://www.afterall.org/currentbooks.html?book_id=19) , by Dan Adler, was
published in 2009 by Afterall Books. For more information on Afterall Books, visit www.afterall.org
(http://www.afterall.org) .

Published in Magenta Magazine Online (/epublish/1) , Fall 2009, Volume 1, No. 1 (/issue/fall-2009-volume-1-no-1)
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