interview between liz conlon, ny city and sibyll kalff, 2008

Questions:

1) What is the concept behind your current series, "Tents in the Sky"?

How did you come up with that idea?

the bitter 'n' beautiful text by my friend dennis leroy sums alot up about

the background of this series - see:

http://sibyllkalff.com/texts-TentInTheSky.htm

i started that series, dreaming me back in a place i had in cologne

years ago, that i allways called my "tent in the sky" and old attic.

i rented alittle room there but it came with the whole attic space.

it was not insolated but the whole attic was covered with white linnen,

when it was windy times it moved and made this beautiful tent sounds,

i had attached to the little room, which was basically my workroom,

office, inet-cafe and guestroom, another room, built by a friend, it

was white, empty apart from my bed, a lamp and some pictures,

a window facing the sky, and alittle oldschool window in the wall,

that opened to the rest of the attic. the floor was covered with

green carpets, i had a shower out there, a simple kitchen a toilet

attached, but alltogether it was a hugs space, like in a big big tent.

i had a table there and some chairs but the rest was sheer space.

to dance, to have parties to see friends, to practzise to work on

my arts, to write... there was an old wooden ladder leading up to

another "flor" which was full of old wood, stuff and things, totally

unanythingt - i allways dreamt of haveing this really renovated and

then as a real additional living space... - i had windows -- facing

a rather big backyard - other houses in a good distance, the walls

were as thick as can be and for years i never had the feel i had

any neighbours in miles around me... it was like a total oasis -

and my "tent in the sky" for nearly 4 years. in winter i cursed it

as the biggest part was unheatable and most of the time around

zero or subzero - but nevertheless - i had all this space for me.

in summer it was blasting hot, but i love heat, so that was no

problem. i allways loved the sound of the linnen flopping in the wind.

it was rather cheap, and before the euro, as i only paid for this

one little room. it was high up, no elevators, across the street

a record store where a friend of mine then worked, full of the best

vinyls, enlish books about all rock n blues n roll - that was my

living room attached for coffee, music, good talks and hang outs.

i moved in there before the mediapark was finished - and became

quite unbarable....

but i love the image of tents - and whatassociations they evoke,

nomadism, moving, travelling, native cultures, to be on the road,

to have your tent and well of course normally you are surrounded

by nature and often nuff live with animals, you can build it up

and load up the camels and move on in less then 2 hours, it-s

is a kind of basic culture reduced to a minumum - that leaves

and gives alot of space, reduced and easy to overlook.

when i was a kid, of course i build tents in my room all the time

and spent hours in there with friends... we talked, cooked on a

little kidstove, ate - or i was reading, drawing, writing - ...

all this and many other associations led to me starting this

series of drawings.

2) How has travelling affected your artwork?

you find some good works as well in the texts of my old friend,

bandmate and collaborator kurt kreikenbom, the labelchef of

stranded records that is no label - and he was the friend, working

in the record store i mentioned above (i forgot to say, he had a

charcoal oven in his place and we made many transports to his

place - all the wood i found up in my attic, we loaded up an my

bicycle and to his place in winters ...yes, very oldschool....)

http://sibyllkalff.com/texts-outofthesuitcase.htm

you find more in the text of jürgen raap - about my little book series:

http://sibyllkalff.com/texts-littlebooks-en.htm

i allways loved to travel and i have many many travel sketchbooks

ever since - apart from travel diaries and other objects, photos

and i allways loved to work while travelling and of course in a way

i allways travelled working on my arts and music anyways. you

could be caught in a place, but are nevertheless travelling - spiritually,

mentally in memories or in daydreams - and of course travels inspired

many series of mine, for example the series "1000 opunzien" see:

http://sibyllkalff.com/texts-dieweitesuchen-en.htm that i started in

winter, endlessly listening to jimi hendrix and of course many other bands

i loved, it was winter i think and i was just missing the hot days in the

extremadura, where we spent months hoboing around and of course

there were 1000s of opunzien around...

see: http://sibyllkalff.slide.com/

you can find many artslideshows there and travelslideshows there

as well.

and of course all other cultures and music and art and places and

life was a neverending inspiration for my own art and music - and

the languages, people, i insanely love landscapes and nature and

to be one with it and to live outdoors for months - and of course all

the travels made a very good counterpart to any live in a city and to

be temporarily - or when all went wrong - not nomadic.

as well i think, nomadism was the original human lifeform, long

before people had fixed settlements and i think - nearly every

human being has a natural instinct to move, to travel, to load up

the camels - to be on the road therefor... - whether outlived or not.

and of course, you can never get bored a minute, being on the

road - as you constantly experience new situations, humans,

cultures, land and cityscapes and all inbetween, and ways of

living and handling life - apart from the allover human basics

in all their variations.

a very beautiful text illustrating this is written by my

friend abigail doan - you find it at:

http://sibyllkalff.com/texts-leaves-seeds.htm

another series thematizing the topic of travelling is my passportseries,

as well connected to my wish to abolish all imigrationlaws worldwide,

of course, you can be forced to travel, too - not being allowed to just live

where you want to (or not being able to live where you want to), too

and all borders are manmade and inventions, like the whole concept

as so many others.

i fly back between germany and ny since more then 10 years, not that

i ever wanted, i just wanted to live and work in ny in one go, as

long as i would have wanted, and to travel from there then -

as ny from many cities i love/d on the planet was allways my hometown,

feelwise - specially the blocks around thompkin sqare,

the old lower east side, - that i never wanted to leave and allways

had to due to only having 3 months tourist visa.

of course all changes and that lower east side does not exist

anylonger either, just parts of it that survived... as in many

other towns... see another very good essay by r. lutz

http://sibyllkalff.com/texts-translations-corcoran.htm

daniela mayer, a german cultural journalist made a very good

radiofeature about the topic of passports - the history, cultural meaning

and all connected to "the passport" - you can download the german version

of the radioplay and find an english translation with all my

other passportseries related links at:

http://sibyllkalff.com/texts-interviews.htm

and you can find in my body of work many many many works,

thematizing what that all means and lead to as well

in many many artworks as in my music.

aditionally i could say, i love travelling as much as i allways

loved collaborations and happily collaborated with incredible

good artists, musicians, actors, writers, poets, performers,

philossophers and artists of all genres, as collaborations,

like "the third mind" (brian gysin/w.s. burroughs) can be

a form of travelling as well, that i deeply ever since love/d.

3) Do you have an overall theme to your work?

i once said 20 years ago in an interview, yes, the love for life... and it-s beauty -

insanity, despair, bitterness - just all facettes of the dance of life till it leads to

the dance of death. and to express that in all possible artforms, as i really over the

years worked in nearly all media. drawing though was allways the basic

that i allways came back to, like an "artistic home after explorations in other fields"

and i love drawings, because you can imagine and phantasize about all, you

can can have the smalles piece of paper and create universes, huge exhibition halls

full of works and it-s fast and direct and even more in the moment then other media for me.

butmy body of work includes sculpture, paintings, computerart, design, visual poetry, photography, language, poetry, writing, performance, film, multimedia, music, theater,

curating, science, philossophy, and many other forms of artistic expression.

so i have no overall theme but that and i love to quote charles mingus allways:

" i allways love to play the truth of the moment. the reason it is so difficult is,

it is changing all the time." - in a way, my work as well allways tries to express

the truth of the moment, no matter what truth that is in any given moment.

you cannot fake with a pencil line. with a chord, a riff - ...

and of course i love to improvise and experiment, like my music, we never

wrote songs (we played some pieces maybe 3 times or very rarely played

a song) but all my music is as well, the moment, the very moment and it-s

expression of manifestation, that-s why i all my life loved zen, buddhism,

taoism - you can find a very good text by the curator of the collection"man and death"

eva schuster about my series "deathdances" at:

http://sibyllkalff.com/texts-totentaenze-en.htm

maybe you could formulate it as the manifestation and illustration of "the celebration

of life and death" and "the journey from alpha to omega" and all that you experience

on the way. in a way audiovisual diaries. and of course my art is allways politcal

as life is political, just by living.

4) I know that you also play music. Do you find art and music to be

similar mediums? Is the creative process the same for both visual art and

music?

i have the same approach to both. feelwise it-s all the same anyway for me.

of course each and every medium has it-s own specifix, but maybe i could say,

i play like i draw and i draw like i play. i spent and wasted alot of time long ago,

to ask me, is it visual art, isit music - which of course is totally stupid, as

it all inspires eachother mutually and in a way cannot be seperated at all and

is all one part of expression with different connotations and possibilites.

of course, you hear music and see visual art (of course v.v. is possible, too)

but in a way it-s all the same expression. a flower just groes... it "has to" ...

of course with the right amount of water, earth and light it grows happily

with the wrong one it dies - but it "has to grow" ... and it-s beatiful - as

animals are allways beautiful. it rains. it just rains - and that-s 1000 songs

that you can listen to and love. i allways loved to spend many hours and to

sleep in the extremadura in fields next to flocks of sheep, that had different

tuned bells around their necks. and it was like the most wonderful music

you could not compose or force into existence.

my discography at: http://sibyllkalff.com/music-publications.htm

my main musicpage: http://www.myspace.com/sibyllk

5) How has the recent influx of artist moving to Berlin from all over

the world changed things?

i think that berlin at the moment experiences a great time for all artists

(and i recommended it since long to many artist friends) which of course

was and is connected to the simple fact, that even with the euro, that

basically ruined everyones existence and made it hard to survive for nearly everyone,

that you can still afford space in berlin and that there is space left, that

one can afford, though of course a-changing, too - but nevertheless.

i think that berlin right now is the happening arttown in germany - for all those

reasons. and i must come close again to what a very old berlin was, before

the war - in many ways... still. but i am still stranded since 2 years again

in cologne... - i lived for months in berlin in the 90ies, but have not been in

berlin since that time, though it was allways an option on my mind.

6) Do you think Germany as a whole, is supportive of the arts in Berlin

or are their mixed viewpoints?

you can have more then various viewpoints on germany in the meantime being

supportive on the arts at all. there was allways countries being way more

supportive of the arts then germany, for example the netherlands had incredible

good programs, but in the meantime all cultural budgets went so downhill,

which is and was part of the general politics and due to the ecomomic desaster,

the euro brought, i can only say, 20 years ago, there was more then 20 people

working in the cultural department for the arts in cologne (as well responsible

for funding, grants etx.) in the meantime inbetween they were down to 3.

this as a metaphor for the general situation of cultural funding in germany

and being supportive of the arts. (there is the most insane things sponsored

instead....) likewise etats, likewise etats for collections whether public or

private etx - but seen for the whole germany - i am sure that all berlin related

arts get the best possible funding and support, due to it being the capital

again. though there was other arttowns for years, the good ol cologne we only

speak of in the meantime included, that had a different standing, because you

had a very good support of the arts by the state or institutions, but as well

an "artcrazy" surrounding, that collected the art, and lived with all artforms

in a complete different style on a completly different nearly daily basis.

7) (At this point you can add anything you'd like to say )

kinda good night? it-s now 3:40 in cologne time...

and i am still more then around myself and affected by many things, but in

the first place the death of a friend, that meant the world for me and many other friends.

my bandmate and collaborator, the poet robert mitchell, who died on the 27th of june,

in new york city.

r.i.p. robert mitchell. poet. singer. philosopher.

the eight year old bob mitchell arrived in ny

in 1938 and has lived and worked there ever since.

he died june 27th, 2008 in ny city.

“my story”

i came to a circle of monolithic stone

and dwelt there, in two rooms,

all the rest of my days on earth.

at times i go to explore

but i always return to the space of my own

silence, the balm of my own thought.

angels visit me.

i walk everywhere.

(c) robert mitchell 1995

http://www.myspace.com/mitchellrobert

friday, 4th of july, sibyll kalff, c-city

http://sibyllkalff.com

http://www.myspace.com/sibyllk

http://liznyc.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/interview-with-german-artist-sybill-kalff/