Chris Clarke: Hi Ohad. I wanted to introduce myself as the editor of the Time To Meet catalogue and to see if you're interested in contributing to the interviews section of the publication. Due to distances, I was hoping I could conduct an interview with you through e-mail. I also find this a nice way to work as it allows for more thorough and thoughtful exchanges of discussion. Let me know what you think and if you could forward any relevant information and material relating to your work in the show (or your practice in general) to me at this address we can begin a dialogue as soon as possible. I look forward to hearing from you.
Ohad Ben Shimon: Hi Chris.
I just received your email regarding the catalogue. Wonderful idea. To start with, I must say I have no work to talk about. I lost all of my work. There was a terrible accident in which all of my negatives and prints were burned. I have to start from scratch...
The only thing I can talk about is how much I really liked all of my photographs. I think they were wonderful. In fact I think they were the best photographs anyone has ever made. One look at them and immediately BAM!, it was there, you probably know what I mean.
That feeling that what you are looking at is genuine, one of a kind, eternal. You could see yourself 100 years from now still looking at the same photographs and asking yourself, who is the genius that made these extraordinary photographs? If you would ask me what were they about, I would tell you - Everything. Everything, you know, the shit, the love, the hate, the long nights without her, without him, all the trouble all of us go through to pass by time, to catch whatever we can catch, to try whatever there is out there to try. And yet, something always escaped my understanding. Something I never managed to figure out. Why did I keep on taking all those photographs? Why did they mean so much to me, to them? Perhaps it is better like this...perhaps it is better that they disappeared...
Chris Clarke:
And yet, here you are. How does one go about being a photographer without any photographs? If one thinks of the photograph as a document, a snapshot of a moment in time, never to be re-experienced except through the substitution of a singular image, can the continuation of your practice be seen as an extension of this principle? Is the work about the absence of work, about its replacement with an anecdote or ceremony?
Ohad Ben Shimon:
I think most of all its about a movement from thinking rationally to thinking irrationally given the internal paradox in the later form of thinking. Perhaps you could call it the end of thought...and a return to basic emotions, feelings, and even romance. To make things a bit more simple, the answer to your question is yes, the continuation of my practice, even if it does not refer to anything but its own continuation, can and should be seen as an extension of my previous preoccupation with photography. I like to call it photographing without a camera. The work which I dont have and am not working on, is not replaced by anecdote or ceremony but by life itself. My life. Me.
Chris Clarke:
You stated in a recent interview with Bart Rutten that 'my whole life can be regarded as a performance.' For one to make a conscious, deliberate decision to move towards irrationality seems to question our common understanding of emotion or romance as somehow 'authentic'. Such a shift might even require a cataclysmic event (for example, the destruction of one's negatives in a horrible accident), something outside of your control, in order to start again and move beyond the physical object, and to re-address your artistic practice without the influence of previous works, recurring themes, signature styles. Is this transition towards art-as-life therefore a way of re-asserting control over your own practice?
Ohad Ben Shimon:
Hi Chris. I'm just about to depart an airplane in an hour so I'll be short.
In the interview with Bart Rutten, which was under heavy artificial lighting and mise-en-scene, I felt very awkward, which led to my thoughts about my whole life being a performance.
Besides that point, I was also questioning the validity behind the designation of performance as a specific art form. If my whole life can be regarded as a performance, why is performance - art? From this does not necessarily derive the art as life argument. I was just pointing out the fallacy in the definition of performance art. As for the deliberate decision of moving towards irrationality, I see it differently than the way you suggest, even though I see the logic of your argument. I'm trying to avoid a destructive approach as it only strengthens the thing you are fighting against. In fact I have no problem with rational thinking. I just suggest a loosening up of the cortex muscles. A flow. A derive in the situationist sense if you wish.
As for my negatives I did not destroy my own negatives, its something that happened to me, an accident, in the purest sense of the word, be it even a fictional accident that I made up for the sake of this interview...a thought exercise..as in OOPS...its all gone. Now what? Well, now as I see it I have two options. One, as you suggest, to reassert control over my own practice or two to take it easy. I choose for number two. Wish me a safe flight.
Chris Clarke: Hi Ohad.
Hope the flight went well and thrilled to follow this correspondance. Continuing on...Perhaps this already answers my next question, of whether the accident was an intentional one…
However, I am intrigued with the notion of the absent artwork, regardless of the intent behind its disappearance. Usually one would think of John Baldessari ritualistically burning his paintings or Guy Debord’s politically-motivated decision to withdraw his films from circulation, not to mention a whole body of dematerialised artworks. Yet the work I keep coming back to would be something akin to Tehching Hsieh’s ‘performances’, where he’d decide to stop making art for a year, or spend 13 years making but refusing to exhibit his pieces. This blurring of art into life, life into art, while premeditated, seems to involve a move beyond dichotomies, an acknowledgement that any separation between the two is a false one.
In this way, can one understand the destruction of the artwork as simply another medium, another project, for an artistic practice which no longer requires such artificial categorisations?
Ohad Ben Shimon:
Hey Chris.
I landed safely, thanks. Spent most of the day after sleeping. Back to our dialogue. The idea of the absent artwork can serve as a metaphor, analogy, or representation of many things. I think we should not go into that now, even though its something I'm definitely interested in.
What I would like to expand on for the moment, has to do with what you point out as the move beyond dichotomies which I'm definitely all for. The problem starts when we locate this kind of realm of going beyond dichotomies, on the trajectory of art and life, because ART seems to be the one 'capitalizing' on this so called move beyond dichotomies. Artists make life-like art, writers write about the life-like art, curators curate life-like art, museums exhibit life-like art, magazines, websites, art journals, visitors, architecture, all these things seem to be in the hands of the art part of the dichotomy. Its not that life itself really has any say on the move beyond this specific dichotomy. Art comes with its hand on the upper, and this is very problematic. Life, seems to become absent, silent, a thing of the past or some kind of sacrifice or ritual. It is useful to think about those artists that you mention, but after all I wouldn't want to glorify anything but the everyday, as I think they were and are simple people just like you and me. The art world tends to fetishize these 'real' experiences of being locked up in a cage or doing nothing for a year, or accumulated dust in an artist' studio. What I suggest is a dissolution of any form of aura, epic, heroism, external reference and live a simple day-to-day life of doing nothing, something or everything, that's up for the certain individual to decide. For all I care he or she can also be someone standing on the corner of the street looking sideways. I dont need art, to package that for me in the worn out notion of art as life, life as art and all that crap. My suggestion to all the 'performance art' artists out there is to just follow their lives and leave us alone to our business as human beings.
Now, for your question, can the destruction of an art work be another medium? Hmmm…interesting thought, though I think all you will achieve with this acknowledgment is the eradication of categorical and medium specific thinking in the arts, which is fine enough but not enough. There needs to be no 'De', 'Re', or 'Mis', those signify lack or moving towards a certain lack or absence. All I'm saying is just Be.
As a final note, Im quite happy and surprised to see that we manage to reach these points in our dialogue, taking in consideration that what we were dealing with from the start was a very medium specific discourse within photography. It makes me realize how stupefying the medium specific practice and disscussion is. Thanks for opening my eyes to it.
Chris Clarke: Hi Ohad.
Glad to hear you made it alright and hope you're rested up!
Many thanks for this contribution - I think this most recent reply makes for quite a succinct, even beautiful, end to the dialogue. Re-reading the entirety of the interview, I'm also very pleased with how we covered so much ground while remaining true to that initial, first statement. I hope you're pleased as well.
Once again, thanks - it was a pleasure to discuss your practice and I look forward to meeting you in Antwerp.
Ohad Ben Shimon: Great! It was a pleasure for me as well. And Im also very thankful for the opportunity to really go into these issues with you. Much luck for you on your way and see you in Antwerp.
Chris Clarke is a Cork based visual artist, curator and editor of the Time To Meet catalogue.
Time To Meet is an international platform for artists working with the photographic medium.