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An Actionist Begins to Sing
An Interview with Otto Mühl
Are there any contemporary filmmakers — including those who may cite you and the other Actionists as "inspirations" — whom you think are truly subversive? Or, contrarily, are there any contemporary filmmakers whom you would single out as people whose attempts to shock have failed?
No, I'm not familiar with anyone. The avant-garde is not shocked by my films. Many of my films are deeply human. I inform and show what should be. I do have a flaw, a weakness. I have a great lust for women. If that were depicted, everyone would get all worked up. Those who are shocked I have rightly shocked. I count on shocking them and attune my actions to it.
Today, has the very possibility of "shock" been forever lost to commercialism?
The artist clears away taboos. What really shocks is being confronted with the facts. There is plenty to show. No one questions the State. The State doesn`t work. One cannot change it, not even through revolution. Private property is the end of ethics. Rousseau writes: "The first person to fence off a spot of earth and say, ‘That belongs to me, no one is permitted to trespass,' should have been declared insane or beaten to death." With this, the catastrophe of exploitation began. In the end it´s the police and the courts that hold the State together. Mr. Bush would have signed 400 death sentences had there been no protest in Berlin. A judge commits a murder without further ado. He represents this position. He must murder because he does not wish to lose his job. But I say that all murderers are innocent. No child is born a murderer. If a murderer comes up, one must remove him. The murderers should live in luxury. Every one of his wishes should be fulfilled. We are all responsible. We have allowed him to grow up in the ghetto. He has been trampled underfoot. We fail to cope with the world. We let it drift. Where is the critique of our educational system? Since when is that product of cultural education, the child, so deformed that murderers, thieves, muggers, armed police, priests, deceivers, proletarians, swindlers, and normal idiots are produced? I saw some Russian artists who imitated Actionism. One had himself chained like a dog and then barked. What's the point of that? Insulting the public? That's an absolute joke! It has never yet been shown in a film that fidelity in marriage is only preserved by the brothel. The State needs the whorehouse for the maintenance of law and order. The brothels bring money and taxes to the State. Sexuality cannot be ruthlessly lived out, but must receive a social framework. It should not be purchased. Sexuality is no game. Sexuality without social ties is imperiled by AIDS. Someone who has had a bad childhood finds it difficult to recover, stays perverse and needs his porno. He has anxieties. He can only react in front of the TV or with porno films. That gives him pleasure. He takes no risks. He plays it safe. The imagined woman can´t defend herself. There, in his fantasy, he can do whatever he wishes with her. Free sexuality is an ethical, moral undertaking.
"Soon the sculpture filled the entire space."
A typical Mühl action.
One needs to create an organization in which the sexuality of the group is socially bound. Then no one will need to go to a brothel or sit in a restaurant or a coffee house. All of these businesses that exploit frustration would no longer exist.
I see the family as a model. But I'm not returning to the monogamous nuclear family, but rather to the large extended family, which in this form probably never existed. Men and women have equal rights. There is democracy.
Getting back to your work in the 1960s, how do you view your ZOCK manifesto of 1967 today? Though undeniably a product of its times, its vicious social satire is in a sense more relevant — and revelatory — today than it was in the 1960s.
Zock is a comedy. The new humor. It made many things look ridiculous. I also make fun of myself. Everything´s overdone, but behind it all there´s a small truth. I don't believe anything. I don't even believe in myself. I also don't believe in the commune, in the future, and so forth. I believe that I'm very happy at present. Whoever wishes to participate is cordially welcome. You too, Mr. Grossman, to whom I write this letter. My dear Mr. Grossman, change yourself. You also presumably live wrong. I enjoy confounding people.
That is my big idea. I have nothing more. Cezanne did not believe that he was a great artist. Rather, he believed he wouldn´t make it, but by then he was already amongst the gods. But I don´t want to go up to that heaven. It is pretty boring there. I want a heaven on earth.
What prompted you to stop making films in the early 1970s?
I won't give that away. "That is my secret which I will take to the grave." This quote comes from one of my films. But I have never stopped making films. You are misinformed. Rumors make their way to America. It seems to be a vacuum which exercises quite a suction. I am very inclined to throw myself into this vortex, because it will be to my advantage.
Did you continue to make films, then, once you started the commune?
I was in America in 1973. After that I started the commune. The actions became self-representation; the material action became therapy.
In the commune I made films: a "Picasso" film and a "Van Gogh" film, each of which ran more than an hour. A film, Back to Fucking Cambridge, which dealt with the society at the turn of the century in Austria, Emperor Franz Josef, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Richard Gerstl, and Arnold Schönberg. Many artists from Europe participated (Naim June Paik, Philipp Corner, Dokupil, Orlan, Francesco Conz, Brus, Nitsch, Dieter Roth, Oberhuber, and Norman Rosenthal). I filmed Emily, Inferno, No cookies today, a "Stalin" film, a "Hitler" film, and I filmed many others with the children.
Jesus was my last film. I could not finish my "Andy Warhol" film because I had to go to prison. That was the enforced seven-year break, because I was on State vacation. In jail I developed a "Freud" film.
Recently I have done many photo actions. My "Grimuid" actions13 are actions that are made from single photographs.
"Will you ever make any more films?"
From the action "Can Anyone Explain?"
In the action "Can Anyone Explain?", every adjustment was checked in front of a mirror. The staged photograph transformed the snapshot into a work of art. Just like a painting, a photo also transports art. The art is not in the photography but in the staging of the scene. The art is in the staged happening with objects and material. In the material actions of the 1960s, there was still a difference between the actionists and the model. I now enjoy making myself into an object of art. The artist does not stand in front of the picture, but he is in the picture. He does not sit like an analyst behind a screen. The analyst-patient role is abolished. It is preposterous and obsolete. These are despicable old roles, playing the priest and sinner in the confessional, the teacher and the pupil, the judge and the accused.
Your Blood Organ Manifesto of 1962 openly admits your "craving for recognition." By the 1970s, would you say that perhaps you received too much recognition?
The Blood Organ Manifesto is naturally humor and provocation. All of Austria was up in arms because we had elevated ourselves to the status of doctors. I don`t care about any doctor title. I don't need that. The Beatles, every pubescent child, even you and I, we want to be famous. Naturally one has to do all kinds of things to achieve that. I have never heard of you (laughs). Perhaps I am misinformed. You can also send me your works. I would like to exploit you a little too. I find no one whom I could exploit. If one is still a beginner, one can exploit Cezanne, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Marcel Duchamp. In jazz, Charlie Parker is great, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Fats Waller, Earl Hines, and Sonny Boy Williamson. Schönberg can also be exploited. But they are already gnawed-up carcases. All that is left over are the bony remains. Now is the time in which the worms begin to gnaw at me. I'll gladly let myself be exploited. It is a great honor for me.
Yes, it is a great honor to be exploited, if one is so lucky — it presupposes you are worthy of being exploited. Anyhow, was the creation of the actions-analytical commune tantamount to renouncing public life?
The "creation" of the actions-analytic commune was not a renunciation of public life. I hate public life. I am no politician — I don't even know what that is. I no longer worry about painting or art. I make a higher art, the art of life. The praxis of creating life as it would be worthy of the 21st century. That's what it is about, it´s about the future.
Indeed, the creation of your commune seems to signify the destruction of the boundaries between life and art, as the "frame" that defines art becomes indistinguishable from the social "frame" that defines a life-as-performance.
It did not destroy the boundaries, but it was stepping over the circumscribed boundaries that lay in the brains of little dwarves. It is completely natural to create one's own life. A person cannot only make art. That is a petit-bourgeois thing. The artist makes art, is free, and lives without sex or must go into the whorehouse. It is pitiful what Van Gogh or Gauguin had to go through. What kind of freedom is that? Nobody is changed by art. Life is art and not a show. Performance is a show that is limited by theatrical means. The action also has a frame, a stage, and people stand around. It is not serious. It is artificially produced. I want to rid myself of the word "artificial." What interests me is the border that lies between reality and the artificiality of art. In my actions I became aware that the crossing of boundaries is as much formal as it is thematic. In my 10 years of continuous Actionism, which practically speaking began in 1961 with the destruction of the canvas, I worked my way through paintings to spatial figuration and finally to temporal events. The creative process of formation was more important than the production of pictures. The pictures thrust out of the artist, like a woman giving birth. Actionism overlaps into life. Then there are other aims. Everything changes.
I never wanted to change the political world. I have, at the most, undermined it. I am no warrior.
How was your commune formed, and what kinds of people joined it? Did the commune members come from particular social classes? Had they been previously involved with your art works?
They were naïve people who were washed ashore during the student revolts in the 1960s. They came in innocent and left the same. They didn't know what they were saying: "We don't want couple relationships." They didn't know what that meant. They thought they could fuck around. They saw that they couldn`t handle their sexuality. The women in the commune were those who created culture. They chose their partners for themselves. Those who could not succeed outside in society in inspiring a woman to love them had even less success in the commune because the competition was greater. Many were very disappointed.
I invented the action-analytical method — very effective! It is like an injection, as when someone gets lumbago and receives a shot. For two or three days it calms down; then it can happen that the pain returns. Action-analysis was also like that. They made analyses. They were in a good mood. Maybe it lasted a week until the next disappointment, when a female commune member was suddenly not so thrilled with her partner. He experienced a rebuff. I believe that no analysis can change anyone. People can only change if they do something themselves. Art is an analysis in itself. The members of the commune did not change themselves.
NEXT: Life in the commune
Notes
13. The "Grimuid" actions are explained at the end of the interview.
