Tableaux vivant tv

This article was published in Living Ethics: issue 80 winter 2010

German artist Christian Jankowski is one of hundreds of artists participating in the seventeenth Biennale of Sydney. For this event, he has created an art work that consists of TV journalists reporting on the production of an artwork, which then becomes the artwork itself. Living Ethics asked Jankowski about his work.

LE: You are interested in the way artists can be misrepresented by media. How are artists different from other media subjects? 

Misrepresentation is also a creative act. Misunderstanding can lead to a new perspective, which can throw some light on the mis-presenter and on the topic.

LE: In much of your work, you use theatre-like settings staged in the style of a tableau vivant. People act out roles that you direct, much in the same way as a theatre or cinema director. How does this approach comment on the staged nature of media stories?

In my latest project Tableau vivant TV I use this motionless artform to put the media in a tricky situation. I was interested to have no direct dialogue with the media, but to confront them with an image to which that they could give a meaning by delivering an interpretation to the TV audience.

LE: Can there be any kinds of media representation, or indeed public discourse, that aren’t staged?

Of course. For example, see all the work that is done with hidden cameras. Or look at images of the world taken from satellites.

LE: What are you telling us with the work you have created for the seventeenth Biennale of Sydney?

Please ask the art critics. The question that is more interesting for me is what do you make of it? I try to create artworks that are very open to different interpretations. The more interpretations, the better. I’m mistrusting words – that’s why I became a visual artist and not a writer.

LE: Where do art and ethics collide for you?

Concerning my work, I thematise this topic by inviting different authors into my work (eg. the TV journalists). If you have different authors inside the same artwork you leave the audience uncertain about who is speaking to them ... and why. The viewer is asked to find his own position and understanding.