Interview mit Ulay: “Identity is a fragile thing”

Erschienen in King Kong Magazine Issue 1

Since the early 1970s, Frank Uwe Laysiepen has experimented in front of the instant picture camera with self-portraits, intimate actions, and gender-crossing. In performances, he has constantly tried to explore himself and his identity using his body as a medium and confronting himself and his audience with his own limits. Frank Uwe Laysiepen, better known as Ulay, has always been radical, never steady. This fall, a first major exhibition at Schirn / Frankfurt am Main will present his hitherto unseen diverse oeuvre. Shortly after the opening of a solo show dedicated to his photographic works in Rotterdam, back in his chosen residence Ljubljana, we met on Skype. A conversation about Polaroid, pain and permanent changes.           

The Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam is currently showing your Polaroid works in a solo exhibition. Many of these images were taken in the early 1970s. What was it like to review these early works?

It is a remarkable show because it is exclusively about Polaroid works from 1970 to 2015. That means about 45 years of Polaroid. Maybe it is the most beautiful I have ever made. I am not exactly what you call ‘an exhibition artist’, but this time I opened the Pandora’s Box. When the show was mounted and I walked around it I had a feeling as if I look at the work of somebody else. 

Because of the diversity of your work?

It is very diverse. There are small, conventional Polaroid images from the 1970s, taken between 1971 and 1974, and then it jumps into the 1980s and 1990s by which I made large size Polaroids. They were 2,40 m by 1,12 m. I was the only European artist actually who had access to this gigantic Polaroid camera in Boston, in the US. At that time these were enormous jumps, not only in size but also in image-making, in motives and techniques. Many people did not know about my oeuvre before the show. I am like a hamster. I do a lot of things – always project-oriented – but I always rather stored it somewhere than showed it. 

Why Polaroid? How did your obsession with instant photography start?

I call the Polaroid a legend within the history of photography. There is a larger size color Polaroid I would call the ‘Rolls Royce’ of photography because it is immaculate, absolutely immaculate. Polaroid is an extremely social medium. In conventional analog photography you point a camera at people and it all disappears in this tiny little black box and then you walk away. When I made Polaroid photography engaging other people, I always gave the first one to the person I photographed. That closes some kind of distance, so the relation between the photographer and the photographed changes very much. And of course, there is this magic of the process of developing: The early Polaroids in black and whites were ready in 60 seconds and the colored ones in 90 seconds. Most people who get photographed have no experience of printing images of photographs in a darkroom. With Polaroid, you have a camera and a darkroom and it produces images within seconds. I always had a nomadic life. I never had a studio or an atelier, I neither had my own darkroom. I didn’t need a darkroom, because with Polaroid you don’t need one. 

In your early Polaroid images, you mostly pictured yourself and called these self-portraits Auto-Polaroids. There is for example “White Mask” from 1973-74. These Polaroids show your face, your face behind a white mask, white as a canvas, and with a white mask made-up as a woman. What was that all about?

“White Mask” was actually to white myself out. It happened to look like a woman because I also put lipstick on. I was busy with gender-crossing quite some time because I happen to have a big anima – as opposed to animus – my big anima was pounding on the door of my soul and said: “Listen, are you a man or are you a woman?” Of course, I was born with a particular sex, but still… I always had great admiration and respect for the female and I happened to be a good-looking young man. Gays and transvestites have always been attracted to me. I never went over the edge of making it commercial of course, but I was playing around with gender-crossing, making myself look like a woman. That is easy. People – especially in the 1970s – were dressing themselves up to whatever, to look like women. There were early exhibitions about this too, but for me after five years – from 1970 to 1975 – I came to the conclusion that I could go with Auto-Polaroids lifelong, and it wouldn’t deliver any answers at all. The basic idea was searching for my identity and I have a lot of reasons to quest my identity and to experiment with my auto-photographic identity.

Why is that?

I lost my parents at the age of 14 and 15 and I never met grandparents, ancestors or whatever. I even don’t know their names. I never obtained background information about my identity. Therefore I was using Polaroid cameras and myself as the object or motive to investigate. Identity through change, I said eventually. But after all – and that is the nature of photography – any photograph stays on the surface of things. Nothing else. Any photograph stays on the surface of things. You can make-up a person on the surface, but that will never give you the real answer about identity. Identity is such a fragile thing; it is like a tiny little sailing-boat on a big ocean with the anchor of the size of a tanker because that is what gives you the most of interpretations about identity. It is holding them and dragging them to one point. For me, it didn’t happen and I didn’t find a better answer either. 

Sexual identity seemed to be the central point in your search of identity, for example in the probably most famous ones of your early Polaroids: “S’He”. These images show you as a man on the right half and as a woman on the left half...

That’s true. They are public favorites. I just experienced the same thing in the Rotterdam show again. All the press, the announcements, and invitations they all picked these images. I made many of these images around sexual identity, even Super-8-films and stuff like that. We are talking now about something that is 40 years ago, but today it is again a question of great interest, gender-crossing, and trans and all these kinds of things. I just have been invited to work in Los Angeles for the University of Southern California. There was a whole performance program with great Californian artists and all turned around the same question. What can I say? I am a little estranged from it now. When I look at it today I have a different relation to it.

In what sense?

Look at me: Today I’ve got a beard. I am 72 years old and things changed. Though I still look sexy. That’s what my wife says. 

Back then you gave the whole series the title “Renais Sense”…

It is taken from the word Renaissance, but I turned it into “Renais Sense”. It was a little wordplay related to trying to make sense about something, which was unusual at that time. You must understand: when I made these works in the early seventies, many people felt very uncomfortable with them. They were rejected, as performance was rejected. I was called subversive.

How did the audience react to your works?

The works I made from 1970 to 1975 were very intimate. Not only in my own showing in the photographic images but also as I took photographic images of others, who were living on the edge of society: homeless or mentally disturbed, homosexuals, travesties, transsexuals, etc. Eventually, there was a gallery in Amsterdam called Seriaal, a conventional gallery selling mostly series of works. After three of four times urging me to show the Polaroids in this gallery, I said yes. It was the last show in the commercial gallery. They were planning to start something completely different after that – they founded the foundation De Appel. I agreed to mount a show in this commercial gallery and of course, the usual people came for the opening. They were trained to look at late-modernist art. The show was called “The artist is present”. It was a standard phrase put on invitations. So I was there and I was totally disappointed and disgusted about the response of the audience to these works. 

What happened?

It was so unconventional and not late-modernist oriented. Late-modernist is all about aesthetics and I never cared much for this. I was all straightforward, snapshotting. And then the motives: There was cutting, piercing, tattoos, transplantations, me as a transvestite, showing sexual organs and stuff like that. It was very uncomforting and that was how they reacted to it, the audience and the press as well. Of course, doing this kind of work and having such a reaction is actually a triumph.

Was it meant as a provocation?

No. I did the work without ever having the intention to mount a public exhibition. We just took it out of the hidden boxes. It was too intimate, too personal, and too private and nobody was used to this. It went over the limits of acceptance of what art audience would accept or would like. 

Do you consider yourself as radical?

Preferably yes. 

Do you still work with Polaroid today?

Last year I have been working with the big size Polaroid again, which is about 70 cm high and 50 cm wide. It is a gigantic camera. 100 kilos – a big wooden camera that looks like an early historical photography travel camera. There is one left in New York in the Polaroid studio. I have been working through the last year with the camera, but now I believe it is about to end. The images are not as magnificent anymore. 

Would you consider something like Instagram as today’s equivalent of Polaroid?

No. I give a shit for Instagram. Instagram actually derives from the original SX 70 Polaroid. It is about the same format, the same borders. But I don’t touch digital cameras at all. Also these selfies! I said once: Fuck your selfie!

But what about your Auto-Polaroids? They closely resemble selfies…

No. Some people said to me: “Actually you were the first selfie-maker.” I said: “No, fuck you.” It is a completely different thing. I am not working with selfies. I don’t work with – how is it called? – Facebook and all this kind of things. No. I stay away from it all. I still work analog, which is difficult because the digital enforcement has put many companies who made analog photography out of business. But I will endure until the end. Analog is my thing. 

How would you describe the relation between photography and performance in your work?

I made intimate actions in front of the Polaroid camera prior to my performances. It was almost always without audience, but from this acting in front of the camera I came to the term performative photography, a beautiful term, now more often used. After some time, about five years, I said to myself that I could not go on with this, because it was limitless and endless. Then I did an event in De Appel in Amsterdam in 1976 called “Fototot” (= photo death). What I did actually: I produced nine large size images black and white, non-fixed images, about one meter by 70 cm. I spread them over the walls above high head. People came in; there was a dim light, so people could find spatial orientation. When the people were in, we shot the door and switched on Halogen lights, really bright, gallery lights. They were looking at the images and the images disappeared in 15 seconds. They turned black surface. There was even a second part a little later, in which the documenting images of the “Fototot” event also disappeared. As a consequence I stepped into performance. Because, as I said earlier: Photography always, by the nature of the medium, stays on the periphery of things. I wanted to go deeper. Stepping from performative photography into performance is the ultimate step you can do, because the body is the medium par excellence. 

You keep saying this. Why?

There is no why. A medium like a photographic camera is developed from a neurophysiological moment: a brain, an eye, seeing a thing. All media derived actually from the very nature of mankind, either to enhance it, to replace it, or to make use of it. Getting into performance means you get under the skin of the spectator. When you gather a group of people, to witness a performance you involve your audience to be part of a process, which you cannot ignore. Sometimes people were fainting or lost consciousness. They couldn’t bare it. 

I can imagine that…

 (laughs). This is something that gets under the skin of people and under the skin of yourself as well. But again: The early performances from the early 70s to the 80s were all rejected by white cube galleries and the museums because they were considered to be subversive. 

How did it feel for you?

You are different when you step into your mental, physical condition of doing the performance, especially when it is not rehearsed. You change as a personality, as a character, as social medium. You change in a way that enables you to do many more things than you would actually do in daily life: stitching your mouth shut or running an hour against a wall, things like that.

How far can you go in performance?

You can go as far as your mind and body permits. Who creates limits? You create your limits; others create possibly your limits. But you get into a process, you demonstrate a process with your body, including your mind, and soul, and heart and you try to reach the limit in front of an audience. That is pretty great. 

You were able to reach the limits even just by yourself, in front of the Polaroid camera. There was for example “Diamond plane” or “Bene Agere (in her shoes)”, both from 1974 and after the breakup with Paula Françoise-Piso. In „Diamond Plane” you pinned a diamond brooch in the shape of an airplane onto your bare chest; in „Bene Agere (in her shoes)“ you cut your foot in order to make it fit in her shoe…

If you have an audience I think you can exceed your limits easier, because you have witnesses and you promised to do something. But what I did in front of the Polaroid camera with the “Diamond Plane” and „Bene Agere (in her shoes)“ had a very emotional background. I was very much in love with this woman, but she had left me for some reason. She left these shoes behind and I was suffering so much from the loss of love that I said: “Now I am getting into her shoes.” 

But what about pain? Why submit yourself to such pain?

The pain is what the audience associates. If you look at early performances or the Polaroid sequences in which I did things that presumably would be painful, you can see no pain. If you look at my face when I did these things, either on Polaroid or on film or whatever, you do not see expressions of pain in the face. There was a rule to it: If it would become painful and you would express it – by any means – stop it at once. Otherwise it becomes pathetic and that was not the message. 

So it is more about the vulnerability of the spectator than your own vulnerability? 

It is the spectator who associates certain activities and certain things or demonstrations with pain. That is why people sometimes fainted. They didn’t leave. That is interesting: if you see people in public spaces beating each other up, you have two intentions: either you jump between to make them stop, or you walk away. It never happens with performances, even when it is pretty tough. People stay. 

Which other artists have influenced you the most?

I would turn the question around. Which artists have I influenced the most? These are probably much more… (laughs). But to answer your question – when I first got aware of performance in the European region it was Valie Export, Katharina Sieverding and Ulrike Rosenbach, later on M. A. and Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Terry Fox, even postmodern dancers like Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown and Merce Cunningham. But for me maybe the biggest influence was Samuel Beckett, the absurdist writer. I have a great collection of Beckett and I read it over and over again. Beckett and some French literates, Existentialists like Sartre, and of course the early French cinematography like Nouvelle Vague. And for the rest I made it up by myself in the way of: this what I want. 

You often collaborated with other artists, with Jürgen Klauke and very intensely with Marina Abramovic – Why? Where did that desire for a partner in art come from?

I was a loner, you know. All my life I have been a loner. I am an autodidact, very autonomous, a self-made, self-taught man. I never finished any school. I was an orphan with 15 and thrown into the world. The good thing about it is: I cannot blame anybody. Only myself. In the early 1970ies, I collaborated with Klauke. I met him in Neuwied on the Rhine, was fascinated by him and we became good friends. I already lived in Amsterdam and he was based in Cologne, so we moved back and forth between Cologne and Amsterdam. In 1970 we collaborated for a book called “Ich und Ich”. He did an autoerotic diary and I made all the Polaroid photographs for the second part. In 1975 we did a performance in De Appel in Amsterdam, which was called "Keine Möglichkeit - Zwei Platzwunden". Then eventually I ran into M. A., which stands for Marina Abramovic. I found the attraction to her – also as a performance artist – really far more interesting than what I had done with Klauke until then. So it came to another collaboration. But even before that, I had collaborated with Paula Françoise Piso on Polaroid images because I had no family. I had an urge to be with somebody, not just for a social moment or for life’s matter or the confidence of life, so eventually, it developed also into work. 

In recent times performance art by a younger generation of artists has been on the rise again. What do you think about it? 

I distinguish between young performers and performance reenactment. I have been witnessing a few reenactments of performances that are originally from the 1970s for example. I can see no reason for that. If you look at the performances from the 1970s, either mine, M. A.’s, Valie Export’s or whoever’s – we had a reason to perform certain performances in that particular time in particular places. When I see a reenactment today it feels like persiflage. 

You can never have the reaction of the first audience again…

Not only is the audience different: the time, political and social circumstances, everything. I rather prefer performance artists who make performances, which are relevant for today. I believe today we may have even more reasons to make certain performances, critical performances, political performances, media-oriented performances. We have more reasons to pick on the issues of today. These kinds of performances I do like and I do tolerate very much. I like Tino Sehgal for example. I haven’t seen many of his performances or his staged performances, but I like their consequence. No recording, no this, no that. Meanwhile, he agrees with museums and other institutions about all conditions just with a handshake. I think this is the ultimate attitude and way to deal with something that must be ephemeral. Once and over. The ephemerality of performances is what I still think is crucial. And should be. 

What are your next projects? I assume you are working now on your exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt?

There is much more. And I go back to performance. I was asked many times: “Will you ever do performance again?” And my standard answer was: “I am not old enough.” 

Meaning what?

I am 72 now and I cannot do what I have done, what I am known for. For me, it is much more important now to show inability or aging in my performance. What is spectacular in being 72? You can do wonderful things with the fact that you have been aged. I have been doing a performance last year in January at the Städel Museum. And I have just performed in L.A. two weeks ago.

What kind of performance was it?

They are all pink related. The color pink. I was painting the stings of a cactus pink and then I was hugging him. Ouch. On the 5th of April in Genève at the Musée d'art et d'histoire I will do a performance with a pink two by two meter mirror on the floor. I will wrestle with myself, with the mirror image. At the same place, I did a performance with M. A. 39 years ago – also with a mirror between us. Then on the 7th of April, I have an opening at the gallery MOT international in Brussels and there are a couple of other things in Greece, workshops and then the Schirn exhibition, which will be big. It is not a retrospective exactly because it will be pretty wild hopefully. It opens on the 12th of October, during the book fair. In between, I may hop over to New York for a water project, which will be exposed during Frieze New York. So I am busy… 

… and still an urban nomad.

I am now based in Ljubljana, a beautiful place, but I am still travelling a lot and I think my suitcase from last time is still not unpacked. I am a nomadic artist. It is my nature.