Up The Organization - Joep Van Lieshout, Atelier van Lieshout - Interview

ArtForum, April, 2001 by Jennifer Allen

JA: How are you going to salve the problem of sexual practices? Will you promote polygamy or monogamy?

JVL: I think people should do whatever they want. But to make sure they can explore all the possibilities, last year we designed Robotec, a forty-by-eight-foot shipping container that will be outfitted for a variety of sexual practices, from bestiality to S&M. We also have robots that can fuck you, or you can fuck them. I have nothing against monogamy, but maybe you don't feel like having sex with the same person. Or with any person. Then you can use the robots. They will be very high-tech, basically computerized pleasure machines. Our work is about being autonomous with respect to energy, food, and the law. Robotec plays with the idea of total independence with regard to partners and sex. For me, it would be challenging to have Robotec operate in different situations--not only in the art world, which is the easiest, and in the sex industry, but also in the medical world. A hospital wouldn't offer prostitutes to patients with handicaps, who need to have sex too, but it might accept machines. I'm not intereste d in making just artworks. A work should function on many levels--as art, design, and life.

JA: It sounds like a cross between William Morris's utopian aesthetics and the libertine sexual practices of the Marquis de Sade.

JVL: I like them both, but I don't like the word "utopia." AVL-Ville is not utopian; it's absolutely the farthest place from utopia because the latter can't be realized. I have no interest in things that can't be realized. I like Morris's socialism and the absence of morality in Sade, but I also like Machiavelli. They are very much alike: Sade is surrealistic and Machiavelli rational. It's a nice contradiction.

JA: How do your mobile architectural designs further your philosophy of community?

JVL: We made a lot of mobile homes and containers because, at the time, there were no building codes for these temporary structures, so it was a way to work around the law. Things became mobile also because I consider architecture to be an object. I don't like my structures to have a foundation--that would make them too static. The architecture should be dynamic so that the community can move around and be flexible, too. At the farm, the plants and trees are mobile, so we can move them and set them up anywhere. AVL-Ville will never have roots, or foundations.

JA: Why do you use fiberglass, not just for the mobile homes but also for bars, bathrooms, and even your extra-large dildo sculpture, Bioprick, 1992?

JVL: It's durable, cheap, and practical. I like the colors, the material, and the surface. You can build a structure with different materials and then cover it with fiberglass, and it's watertight. A house is usually built out of wood, bricks, and steel, but it's hard to make them function together because they have different properties. When you cover a surface with fiberglass, the problem is solved. I also like the fact that it's an artificial material. I use wood, too, for interiors and furniture, which I leave unfinished, like the Modular Multi Women Bed, 1997. There is a contradiction between natural and synthetic elements: wood versus fiberglass, an ecological farm versus a sex robot. Everything lies between rational and nonrational decisions; that's the theme of the works.