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Arijana Kajfes works as an artist, board member at CRAC and, currently, as a researcher at the Interactive Institute. Her works centre on light and perception. Her latest exhibit was this spring at Galleri Andreas Brändström in Stockholm. Shortly she will be leaving to study in San Francisco. http://www.nada.kth.se/~arijana/hybrid.html
Annika Hansson
is the chief editor of CRAC in Context http://www.crac.org
. At the same time, she contributes to the Moderna Museet web site |
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| Art - technology - science is a trinity that attracts attention within both the academic and the art world. But what do cross-disciplinary projects really mean for the artist and the artist role? Arijana Kajfes, an artist working at Stockholm's Interactive Institute, talks to Annika Hansson. | |
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Annika Hansson (AH): We've talked about the artist's role in academic and artistic circles before. You once said that the artist must be weary of becoming a "mascot" in this context. How do you, with your experience of working within the Interactive Institute, view the position of the artist in cross-disciplinary projects? Arijana Kajfes (AK): The condition that needs to be fulfilled if it's going to work, is that everyone involved in the project can enter a kind of uncertainty as regards their own role. That you somehow throw your basic suppositions overboard and build new ones, that you're willing to let go of your professional identity. When that requirement is fulfilled interesting things can happen, and by that point the role of the artist is not less valuable than that of the others. But it's difficult. On the one hand, "academism" is rooted in the word, it requires that you set certain criteria within a scientific structure. The artist doesn't necessarily do that. But I believe that even those that do it have a more abstract view of language than the one a scientist can allow for himself, and this creates problems in the cooperation between the two. You essentially end up having trouble understanding each other. And seeing as how the word is so powerful, the artist easily comes at a disadvantage. AH: But how can we overcome that? Isn't it basically that we have different languages. Art is a language too, but maybe not always a very verbal one. How do you solve this at the Interactive Institute and at the Smart Things studio? AK: The simple fact that we've been placed in the same room means that we have to discuss the confrontation with each other. When you're continually forced to re-evaluate your language you don't as easily get caught up in face-threatening discussions. Obviously it's a precondition that you're curious about the other participants' work, it would be a shame to be doing it just for the sake of adjustment. In that case, it runs the risk of leading to mediocre compromises. At the same time it's very important that everybody in the group can work using his own unique method and contribute with his own unique knowledge. The Smart Things studio also works with topics such as emotional communication, where you in a way aspire to wordless communication. As a result, artist intuition becomes an asset. AH: How is the relation between theory and practice at the Interactive Institute? Is everyone expected to take in some kind of theoretical material as well as practising? AK: We've discussed this very much. Our capital lies in the abstract values. It lies in persons with different kinds of knowledge coming together and forming a sort of knowledge bank. You should be able to focus on knowledge as capital rather than on the production of bits and pieces. It isn't foremost a production place. What's important is that we point to the new ideas emerging out of this union. It isn't necessarily on a theoretical level, rather on a conceptual one. In the Smart Things studio we join around an abstract idea, a problem, but out of this problem we can get one or more practical results. AH: And it's allowed to take its time? AK: It can take time. But we do have time to experiment and I believe we should take that opportunity. We don't need to think in commercial terms today. We're financed for the next ten years. If we don't dare take risks now - when will we ever? Take as an example Konsthögskolan [Stockholm's Art College], where I myself studied, and where you can sit 24 hours a day with full access to resources and study allowances. How many risks are taken there? People are normally in such a hurry to adapt to a system. It's a shame when you realise that the better off we are, the less risk we are likely to take. AH: How is the situation - do you have any concrete goals that you need to fulfil towards the financiers? Any political goals? AK: Yes, but I don't know how concrete they really are. I think it's more about creating a certain climate and possibilities for work - a spirit of entrepreneurship that creates new jobs. In that context I can sometimes feel suspicious, sensing underneath an "oh well, at last we've found a use for these listless artists who just go around costing us money, provided for by artist grants and studio programmes. Costing society a bundle of money." Once the companies start talking about creativity it's conceivable that politicians too realise that "oh, perhaps these artists aren't so useless after all. We need to get them into society." And there I can get a bit alarmed. I personally believe that one of the best sides of art is that it allows you to move on the margins of the structures, where there's flexibility. You cannot, and should not, force a perspective of usefulness onto all kinds of work processes. AH: Right now you're in a special situation, or have a special position as an artist in the Smart Things studio, and by extension also in the art world. I wonder, do you ever feel alone as an artist in the research group or alone among your artist colleagues? Is there anyone in the art world who knows or understands what you're doing? AK: Not many. But I think you always feel alone as an artist. I've looked for a place where I can find an interesting dialogue because I can't find it in the art world. And that has led me here - there are greater challenges here. But eventually it might be the other way around, if I drift further away from the art world I might be able to realise what the dialogue is there. After all, it's a fact of life that you get used to a certain kind of environment, and once you get used to it you also grow blind to it. AH: You can't see the forest for the trees? That happens in academia as well. AK: Yes, but after a while the forest may appear again. You don't have to get too fixated on anything. And more artists will join our group soon. Now that we have this platform we can gather artists who might be looking for alternative paths and pose different questions. Especially questions about new technology or science. I act as some sort of gathering person who actually can connect people and create new possibilities. I've never had that role before. I like it. AH: Are there any institutes abroad, I mean in an international context, that resemble the Interactive Institute or the Smart Things studio? Is there a sister institution? AK: The MIT Media Lab was obviously a role model and MIT was even supposed to have a subsidiary branch here in Stockholm. Eventually it became clear that they placed unreasonably high demands on how the whole thing was to be built so that it was to the benefit of MIT. As a consequence, the Swedish financiers declined MIT's proposal to place a branch here. And the Interactive Institute came about partly as a result of that. Even though MIT wasn't going to place a branch here, they still wanted some kind of institution here that would work in an innovative way with art and technology. But at the MIT Media Lab the technological development is given great preference, and it's a prestigious laboratory into which large investments are poured. And that places high expectations on the outcome. I think the people here realised that it would be better to create a Swedish version that could be more open. We don't have to think in commercial terms yet - today - but it's just a matter of time. So what we have is a Swedish version of the MIT Media Lab. Abroad there are several organisations working to promote and support this kind of work, but their internal organisation depends on the country where they are - how commercially or governmentally controlled they are, or how independent they can be. AH: Do you have a dialogue with an international art and science world? AK: Everyone involved with the studio comes from different backgrounds. Once they come to the studio their links automatically become the studio's links. A programmer's link to a big conference such as CHI in that way becomes our link, when he presents something there which he incorporates into his research. At the same time we're working to establish contact with more art-centred projects such as InterAccess, CAIIA, or ZKM. We'll probably have to create new contexts when the existing ones aren't enough, maybe even host our own conference sometime in the future. AH: Arijana, you're going away in December. My notes say "SF" and it isn't Suomi Finland... AK: San Francisco... AH: What will you be doing there? AK: I'm going to visit Steve Wilson and his CIA program - Conceptual Information Arts at San Francisco State University. I'm going there as a visiting scholar for a year simply to get a better knowledge and better skills within the cross-disciplinary work form at the intersection of technology, science, and art. I'm going to explore some questions concerning physics and optics, where my artistic training hasn't been enough. Once you leave the purer art forms behind the questions come into a slightly different light. AH: Are you going as a representative of the Interactive Institute? AK: No, I wasn't even aware that the Interactive Institute existed back then. I felt that nothing was happening here at home, so naturally I looked about and tried to get away, as I always do when there's not much happening. And it turned out that several things happened at the same time. It's the Fulbright Commission and the Sweden-America Foundation that send me to the US to study, but it coincides rather conveniently with my working at the Interactive Institute. I hope that one complements the other, and that I have time to make the most out of both opportunities. For me personally it's a way to find new paths. The other day I read in the paper: art and science meet through technology. How do you grasp such big words? The technological development, which now also the artists have access to, becomes some kind of bridge to other work processes, both in science and business. The more widespread this technology becomes, then perhaps the more likely it is that these two forms will meet again - art and science.
What is the Interactive Institute? The answer to that question can be found on the Interactive Institute's web site at www.interactiveinstitute.se There you'll find descriptions of backgrounds, visions, goals, research, and expected results. You'll also find information on the studio where Arijana Kajfes works: Smart things and environments for art and everyday life. Activity here has only been going on for a year, and therefore work at the Smart Things studio still hasn't found a fixed form. The research team works unconditionally with small and big laboratory experiments and formulates step by step, its hypotheses. At the present time 14 people are working at the Smart Things studio: Arijana Kajfes - artist, Aurelian Bria - engineer, Sara Ilstedt-Hjelm - industrial designer, Konrad Tollmar - computer scientist, Stefan Junestrand - architect, Esbjörn Eriksson - MScEE scientist at HMI, Lennart Andersson - industrial designer, Jacob Boje - industrial designer, Cristian Bogdan - engineer, Thomas Broomé - artist, Fredrik Petersson - student at EE, Lotten Wiklund - art and communications scientist, Olof Bendt - student at NADA, and the director, and artist, Ingvar Sjöberg. Translation by Johan Gille |