Invest Week Interview #15 Valentinas Klimašauskas

Recent texts include How to clone a mammoth, in three voices and with a fisherman’s exaggeration; Gertrude Stein wouldn’t pass the Turing test and others. Recent curated exhibitions include A Hat-Trick or A Theory of the Plankton; Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana; A cab. If cabinet of curiosities were a vehicle… and Thinging, just to mention a few.

We have conducted a Proust Questionnaire.

As a curator, I don’t believe in the concept of happiness, especially in perfect happiness. Exhibitions and reviews can always be better. A larger audience, a better audience, whatever it means. And as a writer I read that happiness is a pretty bad reason to start writing. Paul Valéry would say that optimists are bad writers. Maurice Blanchot would answer that pessimists don’t write at all. I wonder if it also works like that in art world.

Very average artists taking over art history? Getting good reviews in bad magazines? Bad reviews in good magazines? Forgetting your own opening? Not having a relationship with the youngest and oldest generations of artists?

I don’t believe in the ‘self’, although, paradoxically, this sentence starts with a capital “I”.

The more of others others include, the more I love others.

Hybrid persons, all kind of hybrids – bacteria, centipedes, partly dead and partly alive artists, party animals, fossils.

I still have a couple of exhibition ideas I’d like to share.

News feed.

Participating in biennials.

When I don’t consider a lie being a lie and in the art world there is no truth, only images, right?

I have no wheels. And no tentacles.

I don’t believe in the dualistic concept of sex and gender which is almost too easy to declare for ‘a white man’ as I have already been told.

“Chthonic, miasma,” David Bowie once answered similarly.

Participation in a huge demonstration.

After I finally connected to Wi-Fi a few minutes ago!

Quoting Google search from memory. Or knowing everybody’s names, including usernames.

I’d like to add a wheel. Or a banner.

A museum.

Maybe it would be nice to be yogurt bacteria in fresh milk, but then, who cares?

The right answer is eyes, right?

Wars and slavery in all their shapes and names.

Reading artworks, books, faces, leaves, coffee cups, clouds, etc.

Internet users.

Your average consumer and citizen.

The Cheshire Cat’s grin. Or Argentinean artist Alberto Greco (1931–1965) who, as early as 1962, introduced his “Live fingers,” a new form of art, as he declared, that was achieved by pointing his finger at people on the street and declaring that they were his works of art. And this was not the beginning — as early as 1954 Greco claimed that he started signing walls, streets, and bathrooms in Paris. He also claimed to have signed the whole city of Buenos Aires in 1961. However, there is no way to prove this. After he committed suicide in 1965 due to being unhappy in love, an inscription “Fin” was found on his palms. I really like how consistent Greco was in his various activities, how there was no difference between the art he was producing and the daily life he was living. I have respect for that although I have no idea if you should identify with someone doing something like this.

Art critics.

Unnaturally.

Motto Distribution.

“The ones I take in my head“ Giorgio Armani once answered this question.

In aanloop naar de aanstaande Invest Week in juni presenteert Jegens & Tevens in samenwerking met Stroom Den Haag een reeks persoonlijke portretten. Meer informatie over de Invest Week is te vinden via www.stroom.nl.