Interview: Boris Eldagsen
Michael Dooney
I talk about photography & the art world. | Host of Subtext & Discourse Art World Podcast | Co-founder Jarvis Dooney Galerie
This interview was made on 24. July 2014.
Boris Eldagsen (b.1970 Pirmasens, Germany) is a visual artist working with photography and video. Since 2005 he has exhibited extensively throughout Europe, North America and Australia, with notable solo exhibitions at the Australian Centre for Photography Sydney in 2006 & 2007. The recipient of a number of coveted awards including the K?rberstiftung Hamburg, Boris continues to challenge our perceptions through his photography and explore the possibilities of depicting our inner reality and subconscious. Safety by Numbers is an earlier work of his which we have included in Typologien, presenting an unexpected view point of Australia as experienced by a German artist.
Michael Dooney: You made Safety by Numbers whilst travelling within Australia, so I guess my first question is how did you come to be in Australia?
Boris Eldagsen: I moved over to Australia because I fell in love within an Australian girl, an artist. So the first reason to come to Australia was because of her. The idea I had of Australia was just through movies and music, the usual clichés, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Crocodile Dundee, Mad Max, and Nick Cave . That was my idea of Australia before I went there.
MD: How much did your idea of Australia change after arriving and spending a lot of time there?
BE: I think the big thing I noticed is that there is so much administration and so many things that you have to do and things that you're forbidden to do. Those safety advices are really everywhere and that was my way of entering Australia. Reading the safety advices was my way of trying to understand the country and trying to understand what it is all about.
MD: Safety by numbers was almost like a reaction to your experiences?
BE: Yes exactly. It came naturally as an idea. It was commissioned by K?rber Stiftung as a kind of talent award and the subject was safety, but I had the idea in mind before the award approached me. It started of course because coming to Australia put me in another place and position. In Europe we don't have nature which is potentially hostile. Everything that is dangerous here is extinct. In Australia there is danger in the wildlife, the climate. The weather change is obvious and was an unknown force for me. Naturally I tried to understand ?do I have to be careful about snakes?“ ?do I have to be careful about spiders?“ and when? I realised that the safety advices which I first found in tourist information didn't stop outside the tourist information office. They were everywhere! Then I began collecting, I travelled for two months throughout the continent, just collecting stuff. I did photography mainly from an image point of view not a conceptual point of view. Later for the work I combined the images from my photographic perspective with the concept of dangers and safety. Then I put all the safety advices in an order, numbered them and combined the photos with the safety bible that I created.
MD: Were you surprised how many warnings you collected? Because there are around 750 items in the book.
BE: I was surprised that there are so many. However I collected those things in a time when George W. Bush was still president and Howard was still Prime Minister, so politics after September 11 was very much focused on the War on Terror and were very much driven by fear. Or lets say they used fear as a tool to push their political interests. For me this was obvious, so Safety by Numbers was the most political work that I've done so far. Making a comment on fear and how easy it is to instil fear in people's heads.
MD: How long did you spend in Australia when you were making the work? Did you move to Australia?
BE: I moved to Australia in 2003 and until 2010 I spent more or less half of my time in Australia. I would say a minimum of 7 months and a maximum of 12 months at a time.
MD: Were you making the work over this time?
BE: I was making the work over a period of 2,5 years. Collecting the information started much earlier, but in 2006 I was approached by K?rber Photo Award, who gave me 6-7 months to complete the project, so that was when it all came together.
MD: I guess when you first went, you were probably surprised by this abundance of rules and warnings, did you speak to other Australians about this emphasis on danger? Coming from Europe and outside Australia, do you think you had a different perspective on things that Australians may not necessarily notice?
BE: I think it depends on the background and the age. I could say that my mother in law she was aware of it, she emigrated to Australia in 1968 and she called it the nanny state. I could see it was really moving towards a nanny state. I read a book in my Australian times from a British sociologist (Frank Furedi 'Culture of FEar') about fear and safety and how it changed in the 90's in the UK. He wrote about how the term accident didn't appear any more in administrative language. If something that we used to call an accident happens, then we have not been prepared well enough. So from this perspective, if you are prepared then nothing will go wrong. That became more and more apparent. I realised that tenancy is not uniquely Australian but also comes from the British and American influence on Australia.
MD: So from your point of view in our whole lives we're becoming more precautions of everything, we have to be much more careful and we have to prepare for every situation?
BE: I believe so, much more than Germany. Generally if you asked someone does Germany or Australia have a tendency to be over regulated, you would think that it's Germany, but I realised it's Australia. Of course it's based on legal issues. If someone can sue McDonalds because they burnt their tongue on hot coffee, you have to print on a cup caution this is hot. Here (Germany) I don't think this would be possible, because if you order a hot soup, you get a hot soup. So it's also a change in the legal system. What is possible? When can you sue somebody? And if this is possible, then you need to have this safety fence and so all this information needs to be printed and set up. The most ridiculous thing I read was on Australian Airlines Qantas. They had 10 different radio channels with a certain kind of music and they had a one channel with meditation music, this channel had the warning Caution this may make you become Dizzy. No joke. It was printed in the magazine where they list all these terms.
MD: I think definitely as an Australian living in Germany, thinking back to the stereotype before I arrived that everything is efficient and in order, I assumed that you would be much more rule bound that what we are in Australia. However I think in Australia we do have this tenancy to be wrapped in cotton wool. One of the things that I've noticed in Germany is that the responsibility is more on the individual rather than some external force. so if you don't wear a helmet, then fall off your bike and hurt yourself, it's your own stupid fault for not wearing a helmet. Where as in Australia you can get a fine for not wearing a helmet.
BE: I think because through these dictatorships, Nazis, Communist Germany, people are really careful about how much they allow the State to take over and tell them what to do. I think this a healthy thing to maintain a distance there are some things that you need to decide by yourself.
MD: Coming back to Safety by Numbers, how does this compare to the work that you're creating now? When we spoke about Poems, I get the impression that you have a different artistic philosophy now when creating your work? The Poems I feel are a little different, perhaps you can talk about how you are working now as compared to when you produced your earlier work.
BE: Safety by Numbers is a conceptual work, and I still work conceptually with video and those works that I call THE SCHOOLS. This is about combining diverse elements that you wouldn't expect to fit together, but they do. All the video works are set up like this and I see a parallel to Safety by Numbers. When I photograph THE POEMS, it's more the technique,how I combine things in front of the camera to create an image inside the camera that is the same approach. But conceptual works can be explained in one or two sentences, like safety by numbers. The photographs that I do today cannot, because they work on a subconscious level.You see, they have an effect on you, an emotional effect, they are interesting, they are thrilling, it's like an echo of something that you've maybe seen before but not in this style. I'm trying to dip into archetypes, into ideas that are timeless and not dependent on cultural background. I'm really close to ideas that Jung formulated in psychology, ideas you can also find it in many other theories and ideas around the globe. So where I want to get with the work is a completely different direction than with Safety by Numbers. Safety by Numbers can be understood analytically and the poems can't.
MD: Would you say that your current photographic approach is like free association, that you're just working in a direction until something emerges?
BE: Not really. I can explain the process to you. First I am trying to get a map of psychological or unconscious, subconscious archetypes that I react to. I have done it for the last two years using Tumblr, intuitively liking images that I respond to, without thinking about it. Every 6 weeks I look at all of my likes and try to analyse, why did I like it? What is the structure and how many similar images did I select before? So I came up with about 30 categories or more and this is a kind of map of the images that I respond to on an intuitive level. When I work with models I send them this list and ask them to select 5 categories that are the most interesting to them. Out of those 5 categories they get 5 images each that I collected from Tumblr. Then they need to pick the images that they respond to the most. This creates a cross over between their subconscious and mine and it's from these images that I start creating the staged photography from. This is a completely different process and I'm trying to make something visible that's invisible to the world that is in front of the camera. To make a picture of something that can't be photographed. It's an interesting journey and I'm curious to see where it's going to take me. One of the masters in this way of working is Roger Ballen. He has a similar process in the way that he works but what he produces is completely different.
MD: I remember seeing the Roger Ballen exhibiton in 2006 / 2007 at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth.
BE: I didn't see it in Perth, but I saw it in Hamburg at the Deichtorhallen. It came to Hamburg in 2007 or so. It was the same time when 'Safety by Numbers' was shown with the K?rber Photo Award at the same venue. One half was the K?rber Award and the other half was the Roger Ballen show. I had no idea of his work before and I stayed 3 hours, I watched the whole documentary, it was amazing.
MD: It's quite interesting how it came together then,
BE: I'd not thought about it, but this is how it started. In 2013 I did his workshop and spent two days with him and it was really fascinating. Now he is waiting for me to send him a selection of my images which he wants to write about. For me this is a huge compliment. I showed him my work last year and I asked him if would be willing to write something about it. The publication that I'm planning to do is called 'how to disappear completely'. I asked a variety of people, curators, artists, intellectuals to write a 200 word essay why my work is going to disappear. Quite the opposite of what you would normally ask a writer, not 'why is it important? why is it going to stay?', but 'why is it going to disappear?', and he quite liked this idea.
MD: It's interesting how it all fits together.
BE: At some point it all falls into place.
Safety by Numbers was exhibited as part of Typologien from 19. July until 30. August 2014 at JARVIS DOONEY, Linienstr. 116, 10115 Berlin.
More of Boris's work can be seen on his website: www.eldagsen.com
Boris has also initiated a number of other collaborative projects including:
Additional articles about Safety by Numbers: