Interview

LG: This is not an appropriation in a pure sense but a complete reframing of propaganda. You invert the message. In a lot of your work you reveal the way power finds form. Has this always been the case?

JM: The roots of my work can be traced to my childhood. My father always claimed that he was an anarchist and declared all politicians to be criminals, but at the same time he was friends with Gerhard Schröder [the chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005]. My mother had a brief stint as the Green Party representative in my hometown. Our vacation place on the North Sea was sometimes used as a hideout for Red Army Faction associates, because my aunt hung out with one of the leaders, Ulrike Meinhof. When I moved to Los Angeles in 1990 to study at CalArts, I started experimenting with explosives and made an installation that looked like the headquarters of a terrorist group getting ready to knock off a bank. A sheriff sealed off the exhibition space because he couldn't tell whether all the fake machine guns and explosive devices were real or not.

LG: What was the political climate like then?

JM: It was right at the time of the first Gulf War. Everything erupted. I was pretty shocked when the school was suddenly invaded by right-wing local residents swinging American flags at the pacifist Marxist students. And on the freeway, cars rushed by with kill saddam stickers. It was a mess. So I got interested in situationist strategies and collaborated on actions with other students that revolved around all techniques of turning things on their heads and adding fuel to the fire. The last happening accidentally merged with the Rodney King riots. That forced us to shift from a detached critical position and interact with reality, filming the raging fires around us.

LG: Does an art context provide something that other radical positions can't? It seems like you want to escape the limitations of radical aesthetics and get to the more complex, seductive sides of power.

JM: As a political activist you run the risk of having to settle for one compromise or another in order to achieve your goals. Artists face the obvious accusation of elitism. The fundamental principle of my work is that it critiques capitalism in very specific ways. I am not interested in generalized political rhetoric. Instead of "aestheticizing" political issues, I try to challenge ingrained perspectives. Leaf through a newspaper and you'll find horror stories from Iraq appearing side by side with underwear adverts. My work exaggerates this. I want to bring out the paradoxes inherent in manic consumption.

LG: Can you give an example?

JM: The vitrines and shelves that I make, the objects displayed can be easily exchanged. This is a key to the work-the objects are mere signs of capitalism. The reason for their existence is in anticipation of their own destruction. They are meant to trigger a resemblance to the way store windows appear just before they are smashed by demonstrators. They represent targets for potential violence.

LG: What about your films?

JM: I'm interested in dissecting the manipulative qualities that always come when you combine sound with images. We have seen this exploited to various degrees of shamelessness in recent history, and the way this works needs to be exposed.

LG: Would you say you are an American artist? So many of your reference points are connected to European modernism.

JM: Despite what I said about my childhood, art for me has always been less a mode of autobiographical expression than a way of engaging with the world. The United States of America are more of a concept than a historically evolved geographical conclusion, compared to European countries. I find this extremely interesting. Europe seems objectively more progressive and more civilized at a time when the U.S. is entering a regressive, oppressive, totalitarian era. You've got racial issues, the endurance of Puritanism, other seriously anachronistic religious fanaticisms, and it's all linked to conservatism. Despite all the unresolved deep-seated problems, the U.S. is still a country where it's less important where you come from than what you do. But after 18 years of living here, I still have a German passport, a soft spot for the avant-garde and constructivists, and a heavy accent.

LG: There is a strong element of documentary in contemporary critical practice. What brings you back to the lure of the art context?

JM: I'm not cut out to be a purely rational pragmatist or a full-blown documentary maker. I like the boundaryless potential you get when you make work for a context that is open to interpretation. Thinking about an art context is too claustrophobic, though. I always hope that at least half my audience is not directly related to the art world. I use art as a balancing act. It's a good way of avoiding everyday chores and social obligations.

LG: How do you avoid showing a dominant culture what it already knows?

JM: The least-challenging way to make art for me would be to reinforce decorative formalism or find a way to extend entertainment values. Humor can sometimes be the only way out of this intolerable dilemma. And if that doesn't work, arson.