2 - 26 May

Matthew Lutz-Kinoy was born in Brookyln, New York. He studied at Cooper Union School of Art. Matthew currently lives and works in Berlin.

Press Release.

A conversation between Matthew Lutz-Kinoy and Matthew Ferguson

MF: What did you want to do with the show here in Norwich?

MLK: The thing that I thought mainly about doing was playing with the idea of performance documentation. I wanted to expand the idea of performance documentation through a type of behavior, playing with the anxiety that you need to have performance documentation. What is needed to create this patina on an object that gives it its special narrative, and maybe that has to do with creating a really wild event around the presentation of something that then is really dominating the viewing of the work, that helps to build a secure frame around the objects, so that the performance document can be a studio object. You can create a reading around it so that the performance that happens around the object is so strong or so dominating or so impressive, that it becomes fully integrated into it as a work. That’s the test here, seeing if maybe this is a way to talk about biography, a way to talk about storytelling and placing narrative onto objects so that there’s something inherently social in these privately made objects, something that declares them as social because they develop a collective story around themselves. I acknowledge that this has to do with developing a biography, developing a personality that shines around your work. If you’re interested in these issues of performative objects, then that’s a big part of it, and it’s a very self conscious decision I made a long time ago that I have to be alive, and I have to be present because I’m interested in these kind of indexical objects, I’m interested in the impression of a creative practice. I decided that if I was interested in the index, I needed to be interested in performing live, and developing a live persona or way of being, it really came out of a practice interest.

MF: And that affected your other work? Or the whole thing, the way you act, the way you are?

MLK: Probably, it kind of tumbles out of control, because you integrate too much. Of course things start to bleed together, just like becoming one person, but it was definitely an active decision, it was active in my mind like ok, you know now. That’s the thing, it is about being alive. I tried to go through this way of being like oh yeah, how do you script your performance so it can be re-performed and stuff, but actually…

MF: There’s no need for that

MLK: Maybe there is no need for that, for me, you know. It’s not about that. It’s about like being alive and it’s about figuring out the biggest and most dynamic, best way to be alive and being present. And then that’s what you can do. Yeah, like you were saying before, this large audience thing and that being a problem to feel like you have a over-reaching message for a huge expanded audience. And you had said that maybe it’s better to have a small more nuanced audience, but isn’t it even more deeply problematic to create these performance works that then live on beyond you, if you were thinking in that way.

MF: Yeah, to build in these elements, so that when you’re not around it has a kind of..

MLK: Identity that is never dead.

MF: You can be much more raw I suppose, because you can be there to look after it.

MLK: I think you’re right, I think it’s ultimately that there isn’t much of a difference between.. I don’t know, I couldn’t say particularly what the difference would be between the object of a script performance and the object of a painting or sculpture. Maybe those things in our world now are the same… I don’t think they’re really the same, but maybe they are the same now, in our world, in terms of categorisation. That once you can classify something then it is relatable to all other categories. Once your museum has a performance department, that acquires performance, then maybe there isn’t really a difference between them. Maybe in this universe there is no difference, but there is a difference in my world.

MF: What do you think about finished works, making work as a packaged thing, ready to go?

MLK: To me, it feels so false and it’s boring and it’s not what i’m interested in.

MF: Like a product.

MLK: If i’m going to make a product I’d want to do a line for Zara, you know, and really make a product.

MF: Not just some performance product.

MLK: Performance is a space where you can do the most crazy things, you know. Why be concerned by structuring this thing which can be so free into some refined, controlled… The more important thing is why would you choose the most liberating format to then be controlled by some outside source that you don’t have control over, that is influencing your form and pressuring you to fit into a structure, for what end? It’s not about being legible because you have an audience and they read your work. Is it about fitting into some hierarchical monetised format? What is that? The only thing I can think of is some deep erotic fetishisation to function. That you want to participate in this way that’s like seamlessly functioning. That has to do with participating then in a structure that you have no control over, that’s just about some other dominating force that you please with formatting. What’s the point? Why not just be open? If you want to function in some hierarchical structured system you can do that within some other industry, why sacrifice the space of free arts to do that within?