By TODD SOLONDZ

TODD SOLONDZ: I suppose I’d begin by asking you about your background – how has it shaped you as an artist, and to what extent is your work a reflection or commentary on your memory and experience of childhood?

THOMAS DEMAND: I grew up in the not-so-remote Bavarian Alpine landscape, tuning up mopeds, milking, horseback riding in lederhosen, and dancing around a Maypole. My parents were both art teachers; I had two siblings, and a lot of time on my hands. My father passed away when I was seventeen, and that changed my bucolic idyll. It’s hard to tell to what extent the work I do is a melancholic act of re-enactment, and I don’t like that notion very much. However, lots of artistic effort goes into restaging a moment that has passed, and only through that act does it get recognized as being significant.

I like the idea of you “tuning up mopeds” and “milking [cows?].” I guess you were always good with your hands? I grew up playing the piano, so my hands took on a very different value. If my brother wanted to beat me up, my mom would cry out, “Lenny, no! The fingers! The fingers!” Of course, I was never very talented at the piano, but my mom’s delusions were always very comforting.

My mother was concerned about my glasses. I had to leave them at home when I played sports, which can be a disadvantage, especially in ball games. (I could have been a good goalie.) I do wear memorable glasses, not unlike yours, by the way. I don’t see so well, and my glasses are easy to find, even in dense fog.

Gee, what with your “Alpine landscape” and “mopeds” and “lederhosen,” and my coddled, insulated, and un-athletic childhood, we sound like the archetypal Kraut and Jew!
I agree with you. I wouldn’t put too much store in the idea of your father’s death as having the kind of preeminent impact on your work that others might think it does. You were seventeen, and by that age, your childhood is practically over anyway. The seeds have already been sown, the damage already done, the prism through which you take in and reshape your experiences already established. This doesn’t mean it’s set in stone, just that the foundation has already been cemented.
In terms of your art, what was it about your “bucolic idyll” that sticks with you most? I like that your work is anything but bucolic or idyllic. Rather, it is ironic, dry, cool, unromantic, austere – though also playful and funny. Maybe this is the strand that connects to your youth? How do you think you got from there to here? Was it a teacher? An artist? A school? When did you first even think of becoming an artist?

In fact, I never thought I would do anything else. For me it was just a matter of time until I would be doing it. And since I seemed to have some talent as a draftsman in grade school, I didn’t actually make any more efforts with it until I went to art school in Düsseldorf. I think the bucolic is still apparent in what I do, because there is defi nitively a romantic core to a project in which you rebuild a life-size cardboard grotto from a picture on a postcard.

You mean you knew you’d end up being an artist? Since childhood?

Well, not exactly. At the time, I thought that an artist paints paintings and makes drawings, maybe a watercolor here or there. How about you?

Me, I wasn’t so precocious or single-minded. I had to fail at so many things before I ended up becoming a filmmaker. I suppose if my early work hadn’t been received well, I’d have pursued some other endeavor, most likely not an artistic one.
I always find it interesting the way an artist evolves. It seems there are two types: those who pursue one subject to its very limits (call this “the hedgehog” type – à la Isaiah Berlin), and those whose curiosity spreads in all sorts of unexpected directions (“the fox” type). I’m definitely not a fox. I circle and circle, and just hope what I’ve wrought doesn’t seem warmed over or tired. That’s why it only gets harder and harder to do interesting work. When you’re young everything seems fresh; when you’re older it can all seem like a re-run. How do you think these types might apply to your work?

The fox is definitely my role model. I started out by first making flimsy, cheap, and light sculptures out of paper, which allowed for a lot of space to grow, both physically and mentally. I didn’t have to live with them since I threw them away pretty soon after making them, and I could still enjoy the happiness of finding a perfect shape. I eventually started documenting them, which was a disappointment in the beginning, as the images never conveyed the beauty that I hoped to achieve in the object. So I tried photographing them with a camera.
It never came out of one good idea; it was a process, and my findings evolved into more and more complex contexts – such as one object, then two objects, then a narrative, and so on. That intellectual challenge hasn’t worn out for me yet, and other issues have arisen as I’ve been getting better at things, and since I have a handful of previous works to refer to.
It’s true that doing things for a while makes you more aware of the differentiations, but it’s not the discovery of a new continent every Tuesday any longer. Still, I have so many things I want to look into.
Your films have made quite a strong impression on other filmmakers – and the general audience, of course. Do you consider how your work might have an impact on the work of others? I don’t necessarily mean people quoting you – more like correspondences between the works themselves.

I can’t really think about how or if my work will have an impact on others; I think about how my work engages me! I am my most important “audience.” The longer one pursues one’s art, the more that art takes on its own life, a kind of parallel life to one’s own. You never really quite understand what you’re doing, and this is what creates a tension, or suspense, without which the work would lose its charge. It’s all a process of discovery. And it’s endless. When or if people ask me what meaning it has, what “message” it contains, I’m really at a loss. The work itself is its own message.

This is really important! And in my case, it’s even worse, because people tend to minimize the possibilities of how to look at the work, and what it represents by trying to channel it through history. The event that the photograph represents is only the starting point for me; that context is temporary at best. I am constantly fighting to prevent that automatic take on my images.
In the case of your work, your film Palindromes was about a teenage girl who wanted a baby, but it was so much more than that. When I told people to watch it, this simplistic plot description seemed inadequate. I just watched the film again, and the family is quite fascinating. Now, in retrospect, it’s also a historical description of the state of mind at that time.
A friend of mine just picked up her new US passport. Have you seen what they look like now? Every page has the most kitschy and cheesy patriotic imagery: an eagle’s head, buffalos on the plains, and even a quote from the original Thanksgiving feast – “the Mohawk version!” It’s hilarious, especially if you compare it with the one from ten years earlier, which was sober and mean – a product of Nixon’s heritage, perhaps.

I read somewhere that a few years ago they designed a new American ten-dollar bill. Alexander Hamilton now resembles an action hero. Essentially he’s had some cosmetic work done: nothing old or stodgy about him now – he could vanquish all sorts of villains and evildoers!

My most recent work [see 032c #18] deals with national identity and symbols like these. I just finished a few pieces whose original references are so quirky that no one will ever find out what they are. As a fox, I am surprised sometimes that I still find things at all. They just come to me!

Grotto [see 032c #12] is exquisite – the kind of work that requires an epic-sized “canvas.” I want to hang it in my home! Above my bed! It’s a dreamscape. I still have all your office-scapes in my head, so I feel like I’ve missed a step in your development as an artist. Those office images were so weird and creepy and funny and desolate. How did you get from there to this grotto?

It was quite epic in the making, but that’s another story. I found the grotto on a postcard, and after doing some research I discovered over 800 similar postcards until I realized this wasn’t a coincidence. During the making of the piece I met an engineer who has a collection of 55,000 grotto postcards!
I also like the pre-architectural aspect of the grotto. I made my grotto with the help of a digital cutting machine, which also links it to the present. Looking at these enormously expensive, new professional digital cameras, I realized I needed digital scissors, not a digital camera. I’ve used them quite often since then.
Can you talk briefly about your new film, Life During Wartime? Or is it still too early?

I don’t see any upside to talking about my movie before someone has seen it. Marketing people, of course, like me to talk so that the public will at least be aware that there’s a new movie coming out, but I really think it’s a shame. Too much is written about movies. I can have lengthy, detailed discussions with people about movies I’ve never seen, and argue vociferously for or against them, just based on what I’ve picked up from the media. If you talk that way about books you might come across as pretentious, or as a showoff, but since movies are a pop art, you can actually come off as respectable and informed. It’s a bit tricky because all art gets ruined this way – through marketing. It prevents people from having their own unadulterated, unmediated, unique responses. Because we’re all affected by what people say.
That’s why I think it’s best to go to a museum or a gallery or a movie alone: one’s purest, most honest response will always be experienced by one’s direct engagement with the work, undistracted by the voices of others. Just like you read a book alone. Once you go to a gallery or a movie with another person, things automatically become less honest. People tend to bend their opinions to avoid conflict; or, if they like conflict, they’ll exaggerate their differences. If you go to a movie or gallery with more than one person, things get even worse.
It’s like that in general, though. The bigger we become as a group, the less human. Our behavior is no longer ours, our thoughts are no longer ours: everything belongs to the “group.” Groupthink has always been so scary to me, not just because of its threat of violence, but because it has the power to quash the power of the individual.

I’ve never had a good idea in the company of other people. But more importantly, I can’t concentrate with other people around. That’s why I still prefer to do my work by myself – only gravity makes this impossible at times. I’ve never understood how you can manage all these people involved in a film and at the same time stay focused. It’s still a miracle to me. On the other hand, once I have done my piece, I’m surrounded by folks who handle all aspects of the work, which is very similar to your situation, it seems.

Photography – especially art photography – lives in a very rarefied world. It’s the opposite of pop, where the masses flock and shout and laugh out loud and throw popcorn at the screen. John Waters said that’s what he likes about the art world – that it’s so snobby!

I am deeply fond of John Waters. I met him several times and he even fried me an egg in his kitchen. Such a good man, he must be right. I’ll let him have the last word.