Aron Fleming Falk: I really liked the techno soundtrack, and several visitors at the DEATH exhibition wanted to buy it, I know that you are a big fan of techno, but have you done a lot of music before, and do you plan to do more, either as part of your artistic expression, just for fun or both?
Jes Brinch: I really like doing music as a part of my work as an artist. I am not really a musician or a great computer technician, but I enjoy making music a lot, and I think art shows benefit a lot from having a custom made soundtrack. By having sound and/or music as a part of an exhibition, it is possible to shape the atmosphere even more. I am definitely going to make more music, and really like changing media now and then, to stay fresh.
Aron Fleming Falk: The exhibition was very varied in both your choices of material and expression; what are the reasons behind that?
Jes Brinch: Basically I like to work in as many different medias as possible, both for practical reasons, and because it honestly becomes boring to work in the same media. I have worked as an artist for 20 years, and if it should continue to be fun variety is essential. Otherwise it becomes another pay job, and then the entire point is gone.
Aron Fleming Falk: Compared to many other artists you seem very concerned that the audience understands what you want to say. What is your comment about this?
Jes Brinch: For me art is communication. I work with ideas, which I express and communicate to other people through art. If my ideas are not accessible and understandable to the audience my art work is defect.
Aron Fleming Falk: You live in Vietnam since a couple of years back, how has that influenced your work?
Jes Brinch: First of all Vietnam gives me the freedom from living in my own culture, with all its inherited norms and conventions. In Vietnam, or any other country foreign enough, I can live outside the conventions of society to a further degree than it is possible for me in Denmark. So I experience a greater sense of freedom here, which is of course conductive for my work as an artist. I have tried to channel this experience into my art, as for example in the exhibition “Unlearning reality – dissolving self” that was about this very thing.
Vietnamese society is a bit more chaotic and disorganized than Danish society, or any western society for that matter, which suits me fine. It is great to discover that it is actually possible to exist without the social security and Danish pastry world view, and that it is actually a relief to let go of all that inherited shit. So I find the looseness of Vietnam inspiring.
Also I have fantastic possibilities for producing art works here. There is a great variety of crafts in Vietnam, and I have had great fun working in all these media, sewing banners, painting porcelain, commissioning work with carpenters, wood carvers, stone masons, printers and neon sign makers. So at a formal level it is also very inspiring. I have excellent possibilities for artistic production, combined with a free lifestyle unconcerned with commonsense reality.
Aron Fleming Falk: In your work I can see a hard criticism of the western way of life, not only in this exhibition but in all your works. Am I right and if so could you explain why and how?
Jes Brinch: Life in Denmark felt like a mental straightjacket for me, controlled and predictable from birth to death, like a straight motorway from beginning to end. It is so normative that it is hard to imagine other ways live, function and define one self. We get force fed with the Danish pastry common sense world view from kindergarten to grave, in our upbringing and education, and through the media, without even noticing it, taking it for granted. There is only one proper way to live, and that is having a job, and there are even stereotypes for how one is supposed to relax and go on holiday. I would rather die than live that way.
I don’t find western life style better or worse than eastern life style, they are both equally fucked-up. The problem is the internalized normative world view, and conditioned concept of self, which is a common problem in all cultures. It doesn’t matter what world view you internalize, whether it is Danish, Vietnamese, American, Russian or whatever. Since I am Danish, I feel freer in an eastern culture, far away from the world view that I was brought up with. But an Asian person might feel freer in another culture than their own.
When this is said, I do agree that there is an ongoing criticism of stereotypical worldviews and inherited conceptions of self running through my work, but it is against frozen world views as such, not any one in particular. It is all a personal matter of de-conditioning oneself from whatever stupidity one was brought up in.
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