Conversation between Stuart Ringholt and Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh.
Aileen Burns & Johan Lundh: Lets begin by discussing the framework of this exhibition. The allegedly simple title, Kraft, captures many of the concerns in the exhibition and your practice as a whole.
Stuart Ringholt: Kraft is a German expression for force. For me, the title partly originates from the brown Kraft paper used to cover some of the books in the show. The naming of this paper product, Kraft, acknowledges the processes by which it is created: wood being cut and paper pulp being forced into thin sheets. The short, sharp and pressurized consonants of kraft reference the unseen and bodily (Etymology of force; from fortis; strength of body) such as the relation of clothed audience in the galleries to nude dancers in Club Purple, the aerosol energy and soft drinks and reductive chairs in Low Sculpture and pairing of artworks and nude figures in the collages.
Burns & Lundh: Before you even enter the exhibition, you have to pass a small red car with vanity plates ‘CUR8OR’ which seems to have been parked in a rush. If it is indeed the curator’s car, it’s like he or she was running late for the show. What is the role of curation or the character of the curator in your work?
Ringholt: In an interview, a decade ago, the artist/curator duo Frantiska and Tim Gilman-Sevcik asked me ‘You call your work practical – how is it practical for others?’ At the time I couldn’t answer the question and it threw me. Later, I realised, my work wasn’t practical for others and out of an impulse to see if it could be I began running workshops in my studio, the first being Funny Fear Workshops 2004. Later I developed the Anger Workshops 2008-ongoing and Laughter Workshops 2012-ongoing. It has been rare that a single question has had such an impact on my practice.
Attention: What you see here is only an excerpt of a longer interview. The full text appears in printed copies of Stuart Ringholt: Kraft featuring contributions by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Robert Leonard, Amelia Barikin, Charlotte Day, Aileen Burns, Johan Lundh and Stuart Ringholt.