SANTIAGO SIERRA

I N TE RV I E WS
Pepitas de calabaza s. l.
Apartado de correos n.0 40
26080 Logroo (La Rioja, Spain)
pepitas@pepitas.net
www.pepitas.net

Santiago Sierra
Compilation Juan Albarrn and Francisco Javier San Martn
This edition Pepitas de calabaza ed./ Galera Labor, Mexico City / Lisson
Gallery, London
Translations their authors

Cover: Santiago Sierra, El Yunque,

Labor gallery, Mexico City, Mexico. February 2015.

Design: Carlos TMori

Proofreading: Suzanne Carey

isbn: 978-84-15862-56-7
dep. legal: lr-764-2016

First published, October 2016

http://santiago-sierra.com
 SANTIAGO SIERRA

INTERVIEWS
Juan Albarrn / Francisco Javier San Martn
(editors)
 CONTENTS

the weight of words: santiago sierra

and the interview as work
juan albarrn / francisco javier san martn ... 9
gabriele mackert, 2002 . 21
fietta jarque, 2002 43
pamela echeverra, 2002 .. 51
rosa martnez, 2003 . 57
mario rossi, 2005 77
carlos jimnez, 2005 91
javier daz guardiola, 2006 .. 97
guido comis, 2006 . 105
hilke wagner, 2006 . 111
minhea mircan, 2006 . 137
gerald matt, 2007 .. 163
patricia blasco, 2010 171
cuauhtmoc medina, 2010 .. 179
marco scotini, 2010 . 185
paco barragn, 2011 . 189
hans ulrich obrist, 2012a .. 197
hans ulrich obrist, 2012b .. 205
juan albarrn, 2012 . 227
fietta jarque, 2013 . 239
rotem rozental, 2014 .. 249
thomas d. trummer, 2015 . 257
 THE WEIGHT OF WORDS:
SANTIAGO SIERRA AND
THE INTERVIEW AS WORK
JUAN ALBARRN /
FRANCISCO JAVIER SAN MARTN

Having dined with him in Madrid, Po Baroja noted in his jour-

nal that Ramn de Zubiaurre was not a talkative man, citing
three reasons for this: because he was Basque, a taciturn peo-
ple; because he was a painter, and thus more accustomed to
expressing himself through images than through words; and
finally, because he was deaf and mute. Baroja was doing noth-
ing more than feeding into the old clich of the reserved artist,
framed in the myth of the creative personality, according to
which artists are uncommunicative given that everything they
have to say is expressed in their work. They are also taciturn,
solitary and temperamental Born under the sign of Saturn
because their ascent to the heights of creation has distanced
them from the lowly depths of everyday life, and their eccentric
position in the system of production and in their class affili-
ation puts them on a peculiar, anomalous level. In any case,
here we are facing myths, received wisdom, and common-
places that have never been true, but that seem all the more
ridiculous in the context of contemporary art. There are artists
who write, like Morris and Haacke, and others who write a lot,
like Art & Language and Buren; there are artists who talk, like
Joseph Beuys and Damien Hirst, and others who never stop
talking, like Santiago Sierra, because they regard talking about
art, about the context in which it is produced, as inseparable
from their work.

9
 Although writing textual descriptions of situations, actions
based on reading or writing plays a key role in his work, Sierra
does not write, he speaks. His texts are quite scarce, and it is
significant that in one of the first ones that he published if not
the very first he treats the discussion of art as a failure of the
artwork: Understand these [words] as proof of the failure of
that which was entrusted with the task of explaining itself all on
its own1 Even so, the text is extremely short and concise, since
Sierra prefers for the piece to generate spoken discussion over
written discourse: it is closer to an aesthetics of pronunciation,
in the flow of life, than to the self-conscious statement of ideas.
There are three reasons why Sierra so often makes use of inter-
views. In the first place, because this format is based on artwork
that has been carried out, on the facts, on the discussion of work.
The interview is generally motivated by an exhibition or a new
project, offering a ready escape from abstract reflection. Sier-
ras artistic thought is always tied to doing. One could say that
his work has a factographic character: the titles of his projects
describe the deeds, the facts. Sierra avoids all abstract or bookish
theoretical approaches like the plague, along with any form of
ideology that is camouflaged beneath theoretical assumptions.
Though not formalism, as very early on he discovered that there
is a political discourse implicit in formalism that he could use
for his own ends.

1 This has to do with brief references to the piece presented at the 1991
Muestra de Arte Joven: Understand these [words] as proof of the
failure of that which has been entrusted with the task of explaining
itself all on its own; for only a fundamental lack justifies putting doctrine
before the work, or, more still, that art itself be erected on Aesthetics,
thus frustrating its vocation as a language valid by itself. Santiago
Sierra, Sobre Uno y tres contenedores, in Muestra de Arte Joven
1991, Madrid, Museo Espaol de Arte Contemporneo, Instituto de la
Juventud, 1991, p. 81.

10
 Secondly, Sierra also speaks because in interviews there is
a confrontation of opinions and ideas about the economy of the
real, about stimuli and concrete situations. An interview con-
sists of two or more people thinking together, thinking by talk-
ing. Thought is produced in the mouth, wrote Tristan Tzara,
not only as dadaist provocation, to discredit the gray matter that
Duchamp would put at the center of the artistic operation, but in
order to valorize a performative attitude of thought, far away from
the dust of libraries and academic formalities, a thought that is
produced in interaction, in dialogue or discussion, as a stimulus
in the face of the violent provocation of events. Unlike the exer-
cise of writing which can be introspective speaking is always
social. Only the wretched talk to themselves. Like the ancient
Greek peripatetics, Von Kleist was also in favor of the gradual elab-
oration of thought in the act of speaking, by confronting one opin-
ion with another. The world of desire is constructed by talking, as
opposed to the planned spaces by those who silently exploit cap-
ital. Because good works of art make people talk, and through
this talking the work tends to expand, integrating elements and
nuances that the project had not anticipated. Against the onan-
ism of retinal pleasures, against the solitary pleasure of the con-
noisseur of art for arts sake, a piece carried out in confrontation
with the real, that challenges the scenes of misery in life, serves
precisely to make us talk, not only because what we discuss is
art, but because art is discussion. In the conversation with Juan
Albarrn that is included in the present volume, Sierra declares
explicitly: Arts function is to get us to talk. A good work of art
provokes discussion. We have the good fortune of being able to
talk. Art allows you to talk. To talk about art is also to talk about
many things that are not art, but toward which art directs its gaze.
The third reason that Sierra has engaged in such a high
number of interviews over the course of his career is that they
constitute a work-related obligation. After all, they are work. Any

11
artist who is even relatively well integrated into the global art sys-
tem must be attentive to the needs of critics and journalists who
acquaint themselves with his or her work through interviews.
The artist and agents close to the artist his gallerists, friendly
curators, etc. have to communicate whatever has been done;
they need to be questioned and to project themselves in the pub-
lic sphere through the media. For its part, the interview could be
seen as a successful genre in current artwriting, an ideal format
with which to keep ones finger on the pulse of the changing
kaleidoscope of projects, practices and discourses that constitute
our modern art world.2 But at the same time, in the case of an
artist as polemical as Santiago Sierra and polemic is also a part
of his work that frenzy for words can have a negative effect. For
Sierra it can be a bit tedious to respond to several interviews per
month, especially when the same questions are repeated time
and again, questions that, with greater or lesser skill, with a tone
that is at times fascinated and at others aggressive, seem to try
to unmask him, pointing to a sort of deceit in the way of he
chooses and approaches the themes of his work; interviews that
circle again and again around the same question: Why repeat
evil the exploitation, alienation, humiliation of laborers inher-
ent in capitalism in the context of art?, as if art could not be
contaminated by the mire of history, as if the artist alone could
stay clean, or be a pure soul, unassociated to the economic work-
ings of a system of production and distribution of wealth that
has colonized the entire planet. The reader of this book will be
able to find this same question formulated in different ways in
the conversations that follow this introduction. Of course, other
interviews a minority, perhaps have turned out to be very
stimulating for Sierra, in just the way we have been describing,

2 A good example of this is Hans Ulrich Obrists extensive body of work,

two of whose interviews are included in this volume.

12
becoming opportunities to construct thought dialogically, to artic-
ulate debates about art and its relationship to the world, in order
to discover, even, aspects of his artworks that he was unaware of.
In any case, if responding to interviews is work and work is dicta-
torship, if questions tend to be repeated, then maybe, from now
on exceptions notwithstanding it may be worth seeking out
more occasions on which to keep quiet. This book brings together
a selection of twenty-one interviews with Santiago Sierra, carried
out by critics, journalists, curators, and academics between 2002
and 2015. Perhaps this anthology will give Sierra more oppor-
tunities to stay quiet and thereby avoid the punishment of work
by enabling him to refer, as much as possible, to what he has
already said. A considerable number of projects, representative of
his very wide-reaching production, are discussed in the conversa-
tions presented here. This volume thus offers the reader a pano-
ramic view of the oeuvre of one of the most insightful, forceful,
and scathing artists of the last two decades.
From a formalist theoretical position, some would voice the
criticism that this dedication to verbal thought, to ideas generated
in a dialectic of confrontation, is a superficial, improvised form of
production, one lacking the strategic inspiration and the concep-
tual grounds of a text produced from the seclusion of a desktop,
with the time and disposition necessary to carry out an in-depth and
systematic critique of the real. But this criticism forgets that many
depths are just another mask of bourgeois thought and that the
skin is not only the deepest thing, as a poet once wrote, but it is
also the organ of the body most exposed to the elements. In the
late 1990s, Sierra paid a group of people to tattoo a line across
their skin. With this epidermal gesture, the artist, then resid-
ing in Mexico City, was attempting to delve into the deepest part
of the humiliations of wage labor, revealing while at the same
time assuming his responsibility in its death drive. Cioran wrote
of Michaux another loquacious artist that depth used to make

13
him furious and that he extracted a ruthless vision from lucid-
ity.3 For that very reason, because of his extreme contact with
reality and because of the forcefulness of his response, some-
times Sierras art is ruthless. This is apparent in many passages
from these interviews, where the reader will find some of the
keys to his modus operandi, his way of tackling a project, his
way of gathering and ordering information, the construction
and feedback of collaborative networks, the negotiations and
the ties of mutual understanding between people and institu-
tions that he weaves in order to carry them out, the placement of
a positive value on chance, the frequent unforeseen events in a
work with material as sensitive as the one who uses it, as well
as the mechanisms that he develops in order to circulate it or
position it always in a problematic way in the Art Institu-
tion. Meanwhile, Santiago Sierra talks about it with critics, cura-
tors and academics from around the world, not because his art
requires explanation, but rather because the reality that has gen-
erated it calls out for critical tools with which to dismantle it. Or,
as Raoul Vaneigem notes in his Trait de savoir-vivre lusage
des jeunes gnrations: We shall have to go on speaking until the
facts allow us to be silent.4
Thus Sierra does not write theoretical texts; rather, taking
on his job as an artist in the international system of art, he pre-
fers the discursive ebb and flow of a good interview. He does not
write texts about his work, but he does often write within the work.
Almost all of his pieces are accompanied by texts that, by way
of conceptual statements, describe what has transpired. More-
over, many of his works are texts, as short as they are forceful,

3 [Translated from] E. M. Cioran, Encuentros con Henri Michaux, in

Henri Michaux, Textos, Barcelona, Jos de Olaeta, 1978, pp. 11-16.
4 Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life, Oakland, ca, pm
Press, 2012, p. 87.

14
characterized by an incisive terseness: the word future (Burned
Word, 2012) made in large dimensions in order to be burned in
Valencia; the word no (NO, Global Tour, 2009-2011), put on
a truck in order to go around the world; the word Klassen-
kampf, or class struggle (Word of 350 cm Height by 1200 cm Wide,
2004), illuminated to project a ghostly shadow on the space of an
old church. Sierra also writes up lists, a maximal expression of
conciseness, without verbs, adjectives, or adverbs, just the sub-
stantive elements: lists of prohibitions (Door Plate, 2006), lists
referring to crimes or repressive situations written up so that
others may read them (1549 States Crimes, 2007; 120 Hours of
Continuous Reading of a Telephone Book, 2004). Often, his textual
sculptures take on colossal dimensions. At times, they clearly
identify the enemy (Destroyed Word, 2010-2012), in search of an
international alliance against capitalism; or they are projected
onto the ground like earthworks, being tattooed onto the skin of
the planet in order to call attention to the everyday suffering
of groups of people (Submission, 2006-2007; Worlds Largest
Graffiti, 2012). In this way, Sierra seems to want to recuperate
the weight of words, their density, their meaning, their capacity
to mobilize a response, as if the artist felt obliged to yell at us
in order to make us react in the face of the terrifying turning of
events. The work of art takes on a textual form with physical qual-
ities weight, size that provoke a wide variety of reactions on
the spectators part, who are overcome by the magnitude of the
word and challenged by the weight of the message. As Sierra
explains in the interview with Marco Scotini: We could consider
art a physical literature.

***

For years, Sierra was identified with Mexico, or more generically,

with Latin America, located in a geographical space at a remove

15
from the hegemonic modes and centers of art in the West.5 At
other times, he has been presented as an uncomfortably Spanish
artist that is, from a context that is more peripheral, if that is
possible and much more irrelevant, needless to mention: as some-
one who is very critical of the past and present of the country in
which he was born; someone who dared to brick up the entrance
to the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (Wall Enclosing
a Space, 2003), who refused the Premio Nacional de Artes Plsti-
cas (2010), and who turned the Head of State and the presidents
of democratic Spain upside-down (Los Encargados, 2012, together
with Jorge Galindo). In that sense, Sierra has had to make an
effort to detach himself from those affiliations in order finally
to become an artist who cannot be pinned down un ilocaliza-
ble a creator who has developed a fully deterritorialized work,
who no longer pays attention to the opposition between center
and periphery and much less to the uncritical conception of
national identities but who instead operates in a third space, to
use the term coined by Edward Soja, a space of diversification,
multiplication, and simultaneity of centers, a space of confron-
tation and of identity mixture, of a coupling of the real and the
imaginary, a space that abandons the binary logics of modern-
ism (of class, gender, race) in order to orient itself toward the
multiplicity of other spaces created by difference;6 definitively,

5 Little wonder, as Sierra has been included in important projects about

Mexican and Latin American art, including La era de la discrepancia.
Arte y cultura visual en Mxico / The Age of Discrepancies: Art and
Visual Culture in Mexico, 1968-1997, edited by Olivier Debroise and
Cuauhtmoc Medina, Mexico City, unam, 2006; Arte Vida: Actions by
Artists of the Americas, 1960-2000, edited by Deborah Cullen, New
York, Museo del Barrio, 1998.
6 Bertrand Westphal, Edward Soja ou la potique du dcentrement,
cited in Go-Esthtique, edited by Kantuta Quirs and Aliocha Imhoff,
Dijon, Parc Saint Lger Centre dart contemporain, 2012, p. 9.

16
a territory of mobile, changing, evasive, un-localizable work, from
which it is possible to strike out and change place or to be at dif-
ferent points simultaneously. According to his website www.
santiago-sierra.com, in 2015 he made twenty-two pieces, of
which thirteen were located in different parts of Europe, six in the
Americas, two in the Middle East, and one at the North Pole, at
90 latitude: globalization, internationalism in harmony with
his libertarian convictions and decentering, in contrast to the
mere cosmopolitanism of the Eurocentric artist. In any case, and
working with one foot in Europe, he seems to seek out that dialec-
tical equilibrium that Mario Merz inscribed in neon letters in his
nomadic architecture, but that is applied now to the artist who has
become aware that the enemy is by now definitively global: Se
lartista si concentra perde terreno, se si dispersa perde forza.7
Sierra has developed his work from an independent position
based on an experience of confrontation with the world, at the
margin of established or emerging currents or systems of thought,
far from the trendy theoretical gadgets be they liquid capital-
ism, pensiero debole or postcolonialism. Each of Sierras projects
produces an awareness of the world as a response to a fact, an
event or an unsystematizable situation; what the French anarchist
Ravachol called thinking by deeds. Theory becomes a concep-
tual reorganization of experience. Exclusively conceptual experi-
ences would give rise to a conceptual theory, while experiences
derived from a concrete situation, as is the case, lead to a material-
ist theoretical accumulation, a theory that is intelligence in action,
intelligence being understood as desire and disposition, ambition
and resolution.

7 Se il nemico si concentra perde terreno, se si dispersa perde forza. [If

the enemy masses his forces, he loses ground; if he scatters, he loses
strength.] Mario Merz took this phrase from the Vietnamese General V
Nguyn Gip in 1968, during the Vietnam War.

17
 In the interviews offered herein, Sierra speaks less of the
conceptualization of his pieces than of the contexts in which they
were produced. Verbal discourse gives us information about con-
text while the piece is formed as text. In many cases, the artist
does not feel the need to expound on the formalization of the
artwork, but rather on the political or logistical difficulties that he
had to overcome in order to carry it out. At other times, when he
finds himself with a sympathetic interlocutor, when the atmos-
phere is conducive to dialogue, the communication becomes
especially effective, even devastating: it is the language of facts
to which Lhautier referred when the judge asked him which
comrades he knew in Paris: anarchists dont need to know each
other in order to communicate.

***

The look of happiness has disappeared from contemporary art. As

J. G. Ballard did when he wrote his dystopia about the exhibition
of atrocities, Sierra shows us muck and humiliation, walls and con-
finement, rats and vultures, plaques with prohibitions and men
and women up against the wall. Capitalism has chosen death.
Art, with its face still stained black, is one of the last fronts of
resistance against annihilation. Let us speak of this, you wisest
ones, even if it is bad to do so. Keeping silent is worse; all truths
that are kept silent become poisonous.8

Translation: Christopher Fraga

8 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press, 2006, p. 90.

18
I NT E R V I E W S
Hiring and Arrangement of 30 Workers in Relation to Their Skin Color.
Project Space, Kunsthalle Wien. Vienna, Austria. September 2002.
 GABRIELE MACKERT, 2002

GABRIELE MACKERT_ Lets start with the project youre going to

be doing in Vienna: Hiring and Arrangement of 30 Workers in
Relation to their Skin Color. Thirty people in their underwear will
be arranged in the space according to the color of their skin, facing
the wall. The action is being done without an audience, and will be
presented in a video. Many of your projects are based on an assign-
ment for an institution.

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ Many of my projects are carried out with-

out any institutional support, or for an institution that hardly con-
tributes to them. Often, Ive even produced works for an institution
that actively opposes them. This occurs for a variety of reasons:
because the curator had proposed me against the institutions
will, or because the institution felt attacked by the project, or even
because they simply didnt know what they were programming.
Nevertheless, I often use this formula since, on the one hand, it
allows the piece to be related to the place where its being carried
out and, on the other, we can rely on there being a good work team.

MACKERT_ What are the conditions that the workers have to fulfill,
and according to what criteria are they being selected?

SIERRA_ The objective of the Vienna piece will be to create an

arrangement of people with the idea that, once they are lined

21
up and their skin is visible, on one end well have the person
with the darkest skin we can find, and on the other well have
the lightest. The people in between will be selected to create
a tonal gradation from one end to the other. To do this well be
hiring a casting agency from whom well request regular peo-
ple, that is, not professional models, preferably older than thirty,
regardless of gender. No other criterion will be considered, not
height, not weight, nor anything else. The people will be arranged
along the longer side of said hall and be facing the wall. During
their lineup theyll be staying in their underwear. Were going to
video record the whole process in the Kunsthalle, so the people
will be clearly advised of what were proposing to do.

MACKERT_ Youre going to transform a glass pavilion that looks like

a kind of storefront window into a black box or a closed rectangular
space. Life will definitively stay outside, the white cube installed. The
people represent a kind of physical human condition in their ordering.
Theyre defined only by their age. Is there a specific relationship to the
different parameters of the place or of the work environment, to the
building as architectural structure, to the institution as a representa-
tive of the art world, to the Karlsplatz as a social space within the city
of Vienna, to the political, national and economic frame?

SIERRA_ The Karlsplatz art space reproduces the classic three

walls of the theater, with everything that implies. We have a pub-
lic and a piece that are perfectly differentiated, and on top of
that the entire hall is open to the plaza. For me, this presents an
inconvenience, since you can only work facing outward, like in
a storefront window, or facing inward, as if we were in the mid-
dle of the street, of a beautiful street, which also lends a cheerful
tone, like art and life were being integrated. My attitude is much
less optimistic. I need a space thats more real and also more
claustrophobic, maybe coming back to the origin of this space

22
as a container. Naturally, by covering up the display glass were
denying the most obvious characteristics of the space, and what
well get is a hall that could be anywhere else. This also fits with
a project that would be feasible in plenty of locations, I dont
mean unhitched from the Austrian context, but rather that it
could be extrapolated.

MACKERT_ The tableau vivant will be presented afterward in a black

and white video. This strategy of distancing makes voyeurism difficult.
The facts are documented in black and white, and in this way the pub-
lic finds itself faced with an abstract-existential test of human mani-
festations. At first glance, the superficial categorization according to
skin color seems like an innocent juxtaposition of equivalent elements.
But, taking history and hegemonic tendencies into consideration, the
action refers inevitably to other connotations. The act of ordering is
also based on an act of selection. From there its just a small step to
separation, exclusion and the obligation to adapt. These mechanisms
postulated for an act of enculturation and integration determine
the discourses about a multicultural society. Are you comfortable
having a discussion about your work in this context?

SIERRA_ Yes, theres nothing innocent about the supposed

abstraction of hiring and arranging people with regard to their
skin color. Its being produced because theres a context that
makes it possible. Disorder is unifying. On the other hand,
theres not much distance between an arrangement of whatever
kind and an effective segregation. This is a political discourse
implicit in every formalism. Ours is a culture of order, which is
why the term globalization modifies and paints in its own inter-
ests what is really a demand to adapt or to be excluded.

MACKERT_ Are you interested in the formal details of the mise-en-

scne? How important is the identity of the place for the arrangement

23
and the subsequent projection of the video that documents the action?
What is the margin of action for the participants, for you as an artist,
for the protagonists, the documentarians, and the institution? Do you
accept the outcome of your commission as a fact, like a readymade
from reality?

SIERRA_ This project has an eminently formal character: were

gazing at the workers because of their skin color and arrang-
ing them in a line, on a tonal scale. The thing is that people
arent Pantone cards. We talk to them, we recognize them, they
remind us of well-defined situations and, faced with a new, unex-
pected situation, they will be unpredictable. Well try to impose
a working structure, well be trying to succeed at whats been
programmed, but well also have to accept whatever happens as
valid, since thats part of the program, too. With regard to my
own role, I try not to interfere. A specialized firm has been con-
tracted for the coordination of workers and, if they know before-
hand what theyre going to be doing, Ill stay on the sidelines.
Id only intervene in the event of some uncertainty, or in order
to take care of some mishap. I dont talk to the workers, either.
I tend to do so only as much as necessary and in this case theyll
already have been informed by the time they show up.

MACKERT_ Why does the title of the action refer to workers and
not men?

SIERRA_ The people who show up to the interview looking to be

hired are going to be workers. I dont see what other alternative
there could be. In any case, the two terms are almost identical in
todays society.

MACKERT_ In other works, you start off from a process by which you
delegate, making others work, making others carry out some action.

24
The action is a premise and its realization implies a technical, logisti-
cal and organizational problem.

SIERRA_ If the piece were about myself, I would be the one who
was implicated in the whole labor process, the artists touch
would be important, so would his appearing as a leading subject,
and all those narcissistic and egocentric factors related to individ-
ual mythologies or to messianic movements in art that are always
present in performances and installations. The lack of manual
identity between the author and his work is something won from
art to architecture. In the process that goes from the program to
the event, in all the problems that come out of it, or in its reinter-
pretation by those performing the action, thats where the works
major semantic contributions are to be found.

MACKERT_ How important is the place, in connection with the

installation and the projection of the video?

SIERRA_ The place isnt that important. Once the piece has
been made, the resulting documentary could be shown thou-
sands of miles away. The thing is that I see the central space that
directly faces the entrance as the best choice for the arrange-
ment and also for the projection. Its a placement that offers a lot
of visibility, leaving the access doors open, both in the recording
of the action and in the projection of the video, which thus ena-
bles us to use more people. Were predicting thirty people. And
thats the important point, to use as many people as were able
to record.

MACKERT_ You contrast the creative process with alienated labor,

self-realization with anonymity. You dont regard the people being
hired as actors. You dont try to establish a personal relationship with
them, but rather delegate the selection of people.

25
SIERRA_ We can be suspicious of the creative process since
it turns out not to be foreign to the same interests as another,
shall we say, routine process. The only recognizable motive
behind either one is economic compensation, without ignoring
the breadth of nuances that are implied by the different values
paid for the same number of working hours. A job is not acting,
although an actor is always a worker. A waiter is as much an
actor as the person who intervenes in my action. With regard to
personal relationships, theres nothing more disagreeable than
when a boss tries to be best buddies with an employee. For the
employee, the boss is by definition a hateful being. Hes the one
whos responsible for the employees lack of freedom.

MACKERT_ Do you proceed in this way because you dont want to

assume a position in the labor hierarchy?

SIERRA_ I do assume my position by trying not to confuse real-

ity and desire.

MACKERT_ Have there been protests against the working conditions

that you establish in or for your actions?

SIERRA_ Not from the workers, which in some cases has come
as a surprise to me, since in certain pieces I was trying to reach
the unacceptable and to provoke a public reaction of rejection on
the part of the worker. There have been people who werent inter-
ested in the work and simply went looking for work elsewhere.
Protests from art critics have been very abundant. The curious
thing is that they tend to base their arguments on the absurd
and unproductive aspects of the jobs Ive ordered, which they
consider to be humiliating. And the humiliation is not on the
productive end, but rather in the system of remuneration itself:
masturbating itself doesnt seem denigrating to us, but paying

26
for it does. From the point of view of the person being remuner-
ated, the production of semen or of screws is identical. There
are also complaints that my efforts arent aimed at abolishing
the wage system, which would put me in a position of dubious
morality. Theres not a lot to say about this. Maybe people expect
too much from art.

MACKERT_ Are these reactions part of the piece for you?

SIERRA_ If someone says that unproductivity makes a work

immoral, we already know which interests that person is
defending. He or she will probably see the delivery of other
peoples bodies to a productive purpose as being logical. The
workers objective is to get paid upon completing the job. Its
from that perspective that I wanted to bring the question into
focus. The action is seen as unproductive from above, but the
one being employed gets paid just the same. Anyone who gets
upset is accustomed to things staying within a certain hierar-
chical order. Im interested in that reaction. Its convenient and
something I look for, it has caused that positioning in each per-
son. In any case, I wanted to put something else to the test, the
labor mechanism.

MACKERT_ What defines your concept of labor?

SIERRA_ A laborer is someone who sells his time, body and

intelligence on the market with the aim of obtaining a part
of the profit that his work really produces for the benefit of
another. I dont believe this conception of labor to be mine
alone; its the most reasonably acceptable of the ones that have
been formulated.

MACKERT_ And what is your concept of an artwork [obra]?

27
SIERRA_ A work of art is a commodity governed by laws just like
any other. Naturally it has some particularities; its a luxury item.

MACKERT_ Your dedication to the labor process seems to be influ-

enced by Franz Erhard Walthers concept of sculpture which is
definitively oriented toward action and the works of Stanley Brouwn
which document incidents. Its also a result of the development of
your work. The rhetoric of objectifying rational, geometrical figures
and bodies and their technical production, which is normally invisi-
ble, are provoked by your mode of formalization, which is decidedly
not subjective, nor is it an individual expression. Later, you started
investigating this production or labor process. The field of questions,
characteristic of many of your pieces, about the meaning of the actions
of the people being hired, the radical alienation of their work for
example, by holding up a heavy form is related, from this perspec-
tive, to the egotism inherent in the traditional concept of art. Aesthetic
categories dont matter; the essential thing is not to submit without
bringing art too close to real life. Labor has to give an added value. For
one thing, your projects dont produce anything concrete; a lot of the
time they dont even produce a piece of art that can be sold. The labor
carried out is presented univocally. The fact that there is no relation-
ship to reality in productive terms accentuates the act of laboring.
Your work doesnt change reality and its rhetoric doesnt imply taking
a position or an emancipatory hope.

SIERRA_ My disagreement with the currents that link art and

life as an inseparable binomial is based on the fact that the one
who has more to lose here is life itself. We could accept this
position, but we would then have to substitute life with labor.
The two terms would be a perfect pairing.

MACKERT_ Sol LeWitt considered himself to be an employee at

the service of the concept, which also implies avoiding a subjectivity

28
that isnt necessary in the sense of self-realization. In her analy-
sis of Trio A from 1968,1 Yvonne Rainer substitutes, for example,
the role of the artists hand with industrial production, illusionism
with the literal aspect of an activity, of a task, complexity and detail
with the simplicity of unique actions or events, monumentality with
a human dimension. Do you feel some proximity to these ideas from
the 60s and 70s or do you refer to completely different sources, per-
haps sources outside the art context?

SIERRA_ I dont think my work has much of a relationship

to these positions. These authors are landmarks in the history
of art, since they show Western cultures moment of greatest
arrogance and complacency. If their objective was to reach the
essence of the manufactured object, I dont understand how
that path led them to the parallelepiped and not to the com-
modity. The fascinating thing about them is that their syntactic
economy coincides with industrial interests: a cube is not only
a well-made form, its also easy to stack up and less costly
to produce. So Im interested in reading their works without
paying them any mind, thinking about my own interests, given
that they illustrate the formal mechanisms of the commodity.

MACKERT_ Your roots lie in the sculptures and minimal artworks

of the 1960s. Your formal language is a language of elementary
geometrical and idealized figures: cubes, rectangular prisms, lines,
squares. Sol LeWitt affirmed that the most interesting feature of the
cube is that its interest is relative. The cube would represent a basic
entity that serves complex functions, a sort of grammatical help,

1 Yvonne Rainer, A Quasi Survey of Some Minimalist Tendencies in the

Quantitatively Minimal Dance Activity Midst the Plethora, or An Analysis
of Trio A, in Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, edited by Gregory
Battcock, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995.

29
a universally accepted norm that requires no intention on the part
of the observer. With these forms, one would avoid the need to invent
another form and its use would be reserved for invention. Its not an
accident that minimal art is considered an ideological school. It was
originally propagated as an apolitical movement.

SIERRA_ I fully agree with that analysis of the cube, but we could
speak of art in the same terms. That is, the interesting thing isnt
to discover empty jars; the interesting thing is to use them. These
affirmations are useful as studies in grammar. After that its nec-
essary to keep moving forward. Non-complex forms are very man-
ageable, they avoid noisiness and they help with the univocity of
the work. Thats why I use them. That puts me in the same posi-
tion as many others who use minimalism as a toolbox, but who
cant stand its vacuum of meanings.

MACKERT_ In addition to direct confrontation with the public in art

spaces, you frequently initiate actions that you confide to public space
without labeling them, like the action The Displacement of a Cace-
rolada. Youve invited the population from the most possible places in
the Northern Hemisphere for the moment, in addition to Vienna, the
participants will be London, Frankfurt, Geneva, Madrid and New
York, that is, art institutions in those cities to play the sounds of pro-
tests which you recorded in Buenos Aires in March of 2002 at full
volume from their windows, cars, etc. Youre not calling for them to par-
ticipate in a protest, but rather in an anonymous confrontation of the
population with an unknown sound. In that sense, the most important
thing is to produce a feeling of irritation. That seems to indicate an anar-
chist-situationist tendency in your work. Here we have an echo of the ne
travaillez jamais, a rejection of the everyday labor that disciplines us.

SIERRA_ With regard to The Displacement of a Cacerolada, at

the beginning of the year, in Buenos Aires, there were protests

30
against the decisions adopted by the Argentine government and
the bank, basically, the freezing of savings accounts. People were
demonstrating locally when those who were actually responsi-
ble were thousands of miles away, in another hemisphere. They
were pounding on the metal sheets that protected the banks from
the peoples fury, assaulting the employees who stayed inside
and who, during those days, suffered as if they were the respon-
sible ones, in lieu of their bosses. Corruption was considered
a local anomaly, when its the basis of the capitalist system. My
idea was to take the cacerolada [raucous protest] to places that
were closer to where decisions are made, to match, shall we say,
their expression of non-compliance with a more appropriate con-
text. Clearly, I used the methods that I had at hand. I dont have
the power to organize demonstrations of solidarity in 5 or 6 dif-
ferent cities. And thats not what it was about, either, since it was
the people who had been affected in Buenos Aires that needed to
be heard. With the form of operating that we used, we also had
a bunch of people for whom that noise from a distant country
was their noise, too. Im not sure that everyone who participated
was thinking about the situation in Argentina. The disc is, in
itself, a weapon, and Im still surprised at the number of peo-
ple who used it that day. With regard to the second part of your
question, the rejection of work is something that collapses under
its own weight. The education system and the mass-inculcation
media [medios de formacin de masas] deal with disabusing
us of that idea, but everyone can see that theyre damned when
theyre handing over their lives for the enrichment of someone
else, even if that someone isnt the capitalist you see in nine-
teenth-century cartoons, with a top hat, fat and with a cigar, but
rather abstract entities that are difficult to localize.

MACKERT_ Your work is perceived and interpreted, above all,

through the lens of the analysis of social contexts: the struggle to live

31
in a world of exploitation, beyond all social protection. In this world,
the body is the laborers only capital and all that matters are social
and racial hierarchies. It seems that some critics are only interested
in the spectacular dimension of your work. Are you afraid of contact
with the late capitalist society of the spectacle?

SIERRA_ Something with that name, late capitalist society of

the spectacle, cant inspire much confidence in anyone.

MACKERT_ On the other hand, in this context, your work provokes

frequent discussions about moral and ethical matters. The core prob-
lem is rooted in knowing whether we can accept the same methods
that operate in reality being translated to an artistic context, without
having filtered them through a process of analysis or abstract docu-
mentation. The question is, ultimately, whether art has a moral mis-
sion, whether everything is allowed because it happens on a meta-level,
under other signs.

SIERRA_ To ask whether the methods of reality or of the capitalist

system can be used in art is quite frankly a strange question. What
other methods do we have? What method does Gagosian Gallery
use to make a profit? For whom and by whom? Which system gov-
erns the life of the janitor at the Kunsthalle Wien? Where do the
funds for expanding collections come from? With what principles
do Jeff Koonss employees function? How nave we are! The art
world believes its own dreams of moral superiority so much that it
acts as if its art planet were the best of all possible worlds, which is
very far from the truth. The question is not whether or not to use
the capitalist system. Lets pose the question clearly: the question
is, if we are indeed using it, is it right for us to say so and thus lose
our intellectual alibi. And of course our permissibility in the art
world coincides with whats permissible in our capitalist system.
We share the same reality.

32
MACKERT_ You studied in Madrid with Dokoupil, then in Hamburg
with Walther, Blume and Brouwn. You continued your studies in Mexico
City in 1995. What are the ideas that have most influenced you?

SIERRA_ In Mexico City, I didnt really continue my studies. The

scholarship was a subterfuge in order to keep doing my work. As
a research scholarship it justified my projects, and I didnt have
a relationship with someone whom I could call my teacher. And
that was what really happened in Hamburg, basically, even though
I was interested in the positions that were being taken by the artists
teaching there, especially Stanley Brouwn and Franz Erhard. The
workshop with Dokoupil was a line to add to a somewhat empty
cv. I was with him for a month, and that was it. I never really liked
the student environment. I applied to some things, like every-
one else. There are a lot of people who have interested me: Wolf
Vostell and Kounellis, for their radicalism; Stanley Brouwn and
Isidoro Valcrcel Medina, for their integrity and coherence; peo-
ple from other disciplines like Luis Buuel and Agustn Garca
Calvo, and friends like Teresa Margolles, not because theyre
my friends although theyre that, too but because of their
impressive work on the violence that surrounds them; then, in
a different way, in an instrumental way, minimalism and aspects
of conceptualism.

MACKERT_ Why did you leave Europe?

SIERRA_ I was very interested in Mexico City, and I was no

longer interested in the art worlds of Madrid and Hamburg, the
two that I knew. Taking a chance on Mexico City wasnt about
Mexican art I knew very little about it, just the part of Mexi-
can culture that was apparent to the outside world, which wasnt
much it was because of its situation as an impossible city.
I imagined it as a city of the future. Then I just stuck around.

33
MACKERT_ Youve been living in Mexico City for more than six
years. The Triestini author Claudio Magris has remarked that its the
only city he knows in which hes afraid of getting lost forever. With
more than 20 million inhabitants in comparison to 1.4 million in
1940 Mexico City today is one of the biggest cities in the world,
a paradigm of the global phenomenon of the megacities of Asia, Latin
America and Africa. It illustrates in an exemplary way the trans-
formation of a big modern city into a global metropolis. The Federal
District (D. F.) is a good example of the ambivalent development of
globalization, an intersection of flows of international capital. As the
capital city of a country that shares a border with the United States,
its a focal point for international migration and a place where the
relationships between center and periphery are transformed, a case
study of the transformations of public space and of a society that
moves between consumerism and communication. The abandonment
of mestizaje a symbiosis of Spanish and indigenous elements that
was considered to be universal until the 1980s in favor of con-
tradictory constructions of identity signals a pluralization of society,
a post- or hyper-modernity without modernity having been realized,
as the anthropologist Nstor Garca Canclini notes. What is it that
fascinates you about this conjuncture? What perspectives are opened
to you from the periphery?

SIERRA_ Mexican society isnt plural; its monolithic. Contem-

porary social relations are not the product of a transformation, but
rather of a deviation. The changes seem to obey the simple trans-
lation of the colonial caste system from a rural society to a deliri-
ous urban atrophy. From here, and judging by what is felt in the
cultural sphere, it would seem that Mexico City is going through
a situation that is typical of cities that are focal points of inter-
national migration, because we can see it in the family names
and in the accents of the artists who live here. In reality that has
only occurred among the upper classes, who accept new foreign

34
members without any qualms, as long as theyre white. Local art-
ists tend to be trained abroad and that, too, helps fit in with the
image. The migration that comes to the city is really internal.
Thousands of people come from the countryside with nothing
in their pockets. Theres not a single positive change to be felt;
its a monster that keeps growing. The perspective that opens up
a city like that, from art and towards other non-peripheral hubs,
could be the simple discovery that there are artists there, too. It
will soon be forgotten, but there will continue to be artists there.

MACKERT_ It could be said that your works are authoritarian,

which also relates to the formal quality of your geometrical vocabulary
and the seriality proper to industrial production. In your projects you
have people dig holes, you tattoo lines on their skin, or you draw in
peoples hair. In this way you change the form of organic structures.
You confront the public directly with the bodies of the people you hire.
To what would you relate this rhetoric of brutality?

SIERRA_ If I have to talk about the use of formal elements in my

work, I must admit that Im borrowing what others have already
investigated in that direction. Whats involved in size, form, the
use of a material repertoire, the arrangement of the object, etcetera:
these are problems that others have studied better than me. Nat-
urally, a modular ordering of achromatic prisms ends up being
much more imposing that a colorful chaos of organic objects, but
my work does not consist of untangling those mechanisms. Its
boring to explain the mechanics of arts rhetoric.

MACKERT_ Two years ago (2000), in your piece Workers who Can-
not Be Paid, Remunerated to Remain inside Cardboard Boxes,
carried out at the Kunst Werke in Berlin, you investigated the forced
invisibility of (illegal) immigrants, employing six workers who had to
stay inside cardboard boxes for four hours each day. That same year,

35
you also carried out similar projects in Cuba, New York, and Limer-
ick, and a month earlier, in Guatemala City. In the description of this
project, you make explicit the fact that the asylum seekers had to be
paid under the table because, according to German immigration law,
they could not officially be remunerated. Here, in Vienna, youre seek-
ing maximum visibility by revealing naked skin to the voyeur. What
are the relationships between the structural principles of these projects?

SIERRA_ Here, in Vienna, the workers will be facing away,

since, as in the case of the pieces to which you refer, were not
just talking about the people who are implicated in the action,
but also everyone else who could have been in their place. Thats
how we understand the sought-for absence of the elements of
individualization. Of course, in the cardboard box piece what
I was underscoring was more the object-like quality of the work-
ers: they were boxed up like any other commodity. Really, were
always saying almost the same thing, but from different angles.
The boxes in Guatemala, the first ones (8 People Paid to Remain
Inside Cardboard Boxes, 1999) came in response to the daily
departures of Guatemalan immigrants who cross Mexico in ship-
ping containers on their way to the United States. When I was
commissioned to complete a version of this work in New York,
it struck me as being not bad at all since I could talk about the
final destination of many of those migrants: to live in cardboard
boxes on the streets of that country; or in Berlin, another pos-
sible destination for workers who are like stored in a box, with
no right to work, just to wait. In Ireland (Person Paid to Remain
Inside the Trunk of a Car, 2000) and Cuba (3 People Paid to Lie
Still Inside 3 Boxes During a Party, 2000) it was different. The
piece in Ireland alluded to the appearance of Aldo Moros corpse,
to an act of political violence related to the one that is exercised
against the worker. The piece wasnt publicized and took place
in front of the entrance to a gallery during an opening. In Cuba,

36
the workers were women who make their living from the informal
economy. The boxes were presented as seats at a party for workers
from the art community coming from all over to the Havana Bien-
nial. What Im trying to say is that in each case, the arrangement
of the workers, whether they were hidden or not, the amount of
information supplied and other particularities, responded to the
specific situation to which I was referring, but always without
showing the workers faces.

MACKERT_ One of my favorite projects is the one you did in 1997 in

Mexico City, where you burned a gallery with gasoline for the reopen-
ing of its new spaces (Gallery Burned with Gasoline). The photos
show a strange, fantastic image of the interior space whose destruction
lends it an extraordinary poetry. I imagine the walls have been white
again for some time now.

SIERRA_ I dont know. I believe that theyd already been repainted

by the following exhibition. The space no longer exists as a gallery,
and I havent gone back to visit it. Spaces like that didnt have
a long lifespan in Mexico.

MACKERT_ Recently, you blocked off the entrance to Lisson Gallery

for the opening of its new space (Space Closed off by Corrugated
Metal, 2002). What do you think of spaces dedicated to art?

SIERRA_ At Lisson, I blocked access to their new space with

sheets of galvanized steel. Its a place that cost a lot of money to
make and that had already heightened a lot of peoples expecta-
tions. Finally, they still havent been able to see it. Maybe it sounds
strange, but a lot of people were upset and it didnt take long for
them to vandalize it. I was telling you before about The Displace-
ment of a Cacerolada: it was the sound of people unsuccessfully
attempting to access a place, demanding the money that had

37
been taken from them. Both actions were produced only a few
days apart from each other; there was a comparison between two
moments of frustration: one pertaining to someone (the public of
the art world) who couldnt socialize on the day of the opening
of a new space, and the other to a group of people who were being
denied access to the place where their savings were being held.

MACKERT_ Otto Mhl had a commune on the Canary Islands. Is it

true that you had an exhibition there?

SIERRA_ That was in 1992 (Cement Wall Measuring 300 x 300

cm and Facing Upwards), Otto Mhl had already been locked up
and the commune didnt exist any more. All that was left was
a sort of resort center with an enormous collection of Otto Mhls
and an exhibition space visited by the Austrian art community.
The place was called Atelier del Sur and I was invited to exhibit
through B. J. Blume. So Ive never been in a Viennese Actionist
commune.

MACKERT_ The contributions of Viennese Actionism and its milieu

are being recognized more and more at an international level. Its
influence on American performers like Paul McCarthy and Mike Kel-
ley is highlighted frequently. What do you think about this recogni-
tion in relation to the artistic production of Latin America, taking
into consideration, too, the cultural parameters of Catholicism and
the baroque?

SIERRA_ I cant see how Actionism fits into a society like this,
in spite of the baroque and all that. I believe that Latin America
has developed an aesthetics of excess in a much more generalized
way, but works of this nature have only been developed recently.
The influence of the Viennese on artists like Rosemberg Sandoval
is undeniable, but his contextualization in Columbia makes his

38
work much more difficult to endure, more urgent. The semefo
group, which includes the artist Teresa Margolles, was strongly
influenced by them.

MACKERT_ You document your actions in videos and photographs.

Whats the function of those documents? Do they serve a commercial
or narrative purpose after the development of an artwork? What is the
relevance of those accessory products? Are they independent pieces,
or equivalents?

SIERRA_ The documentation of a work cant be equivalent to

the work. Its its commercial and informational moment. It is
bound to it and it enables it to be temporary, inapprehensible,
and unmarketable, since the photo and the video will fulfill
those functions. This sounds very opportunistic but I think that
its given us artists a bit more independence. We know that we
depend on the sale of objects in order to make a living, but we no
longer have to produce them. I dedicate myself to something
else and then heres a photo.

MACKERT_ On the other hand, in some cases, the documents are

the only way of knowing the work, given that your actions have been
carried out in public spaces anonymously and without advance
warning. Some projects were conceived to be documented, that is,
the relationship between the action and the public is different in
each case.

SIERRA_ No, the point of the document is to supply informa-

tion and to comply with the dictates of the market. The pieces
never last as long as their reproductions do. Sometimes they are
made to last longer in order to reproduce them. Everything has
already been done, but I prolong it a bit in order to record the
result, if there is one.

39
MACKERT_ When do you decide to use moving images, video, and
when the fixed image of photography?

SIERRA_ Ive always used photography. Video is the next step,

because you refer not only to things, but to moments. It was some-
thing I needed to do in my work. But Im neither a photographer
nor a videographer. I think your question suggests as much. I know
nothing about either of those disciplines; I deal with the problem
by taking a lot of photos, because one of them will turn out all
right, or by asking for help from a professional in the medium.

MACKERT_ For a while now youve been working with black and
white material. Is it a matter of an objectifying filter, a way of getting
some distance or an aesthetic decision?

SIERRA_ I use black and white in order to be like an artist from

the 70s.

Published in German in Santiago Sierra, Vienna, Kunsthalle Wien, 2002.

Translation: Christopher Fraga.

40
Raising of 6 Benches. Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung. Munich,
Germany. September 2001.
3000 Holes of 180 x 50 x 50 cm Each. Dehesa de Montenmedio. Vejer de
la Frontera (Cdiz), Spain. July 2002.
 FIETTA JARQUE, 2002

At the moment Santiago Sierra (Madrid, 1966) is one of the most

internationally renowned Spanish artists, although in some of the
programs for avant-garde biennials, fairs and events he is listed as
being Mexican, as a result of his living and working in that coun-
try. Sierras work consists of actions with a clear political intention.
These tend to involve a certain number of people whom he pays to
publicly perform acts that call attention to and unmask the strate-
gies and subjugations to which we are exposed by the exploitation
of our labor. His many actions include having a group of ten men
masturbate (Cuba, 2000), getting two heroin addicts to agree to
having a line shaved into the hair on their heads in exchange for
a shot of heroin (Puerto Rico, 2000), having a homeless man
spend four hours a day in a deep ditch for two weeks (Helsinki,
Finland, 2001), and having a group of immigrants pile on top of
each other in the cargo hold of a boat (Barcelona, 2000). Now he
has hired 20 immigrants from Africa to dig 3000 holes measuring
180 x 70 x 70 cm deep over the course of a month on a hill in the
Dehesa de Montenmedio (Vejer de la Frontera, Cdiz), from where
one can see the Straits of Gibraltar. Sierra has been invited to carry
out this action by the Fundacin Montenmedio de Arte Contem-
porneo and the works will be open for viewing beginning July 20.

FIETTA JARQUE_ Youve been living and working in Mexico City

for seven years. Have you found the climate there to be more favorable

43
than Spain for carrying out your works, or was it a decision related to
your private life?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ As an artist, you gain strength from being

a foreigner; it gives you perspective and less sentimental involve-
ment with your surroundings. It wasnt the first time Id left.
I had already worked in Germany before that, where I was
trying to get proper training in the contemporary art that most
interested me. The generation of artists from the 70s was
teaching courses in Hamburg and they were exactly the people
from whom I wanted to be learning. Lets not forget the absurd
anachronism of arts education in Spain in the 1980s and still
today. A serious art student was an autodidact. Still, in Ham-
burg I also felt a strong and generalized incestuous atmosphere
among the arts, a certain arrogance that we were already famil-
iar with in linguistic/tautological conceptual art, in minimal-
ists and others.

JARQUE_ One of your main interests is the set of relationships

between the economy and power. Do you formulate your actions in
order to make baldly visible a series of relationships that we dont
dare to look at?

SIERRA_ Id like to see it that way, but I formulate incidents and

thats already enough for me. All of my attention is focused on
foregrounding a situation and trying not to hide where its com-
ing from and how its produced. It takes a certain kind of public
to be able to see it as an image of the relationships between econ-
omy and power; a lot of others see it as an unhealthy pleasure on
my part. If thinking about me like that helps them to understand
certain situations, thats fine with me. An artist is a producer of
luxury objects, and from that perspective an idea of political com-
mitment is pretty unconvincing.

44
JARQUE_ Your actions require the presence of the spectator in the
process of carrying them out in order to make evident, in a more raw
way, the mechanisms of domination and subjugation. But youre often
absent while these actions are happening. At some point you men-
tioned that seeing them gives you a bad vibe. Why that ambivalence?

SIERRA_ This question has various parts to it. First, theres

the problem of the spectators presence. The public is part of the
work, like on a hidden camera show. Im not really sure where
this public is from, the one that really receives what happened
in a complete form. To cite an example, in 430 People Paid 30
Soles per Hour, carried out in Lima last summer, a hall was filled
with women, leaving a one-meter-wide passageway for specta-
tors to walk through. The piece was done with women from the
Programa Vaso de Leche, a womens association created by the
City of Lima in order to channel the distribution of basic neces-
sities to the most disadvantaged groups in Lima. In return, these
women complete public acts according to whats needed. Nat-
urally, they were mostly indigenous women, and from a social
extraction diametrically opposed to the visitors. I was trying
to make visible, with as much tension possible, the contrasts
between social groups. The public was only led to believe that it
was the public. With regard to my absences, youre referring to
a chronicle written by Cuauhtmoc Medina about my work The
Wall of a Gallery Pulled Out, Inclined 60 Degrees from the Ground
and Sustained by 5 People.1 It turns out that in a small exhibition
space and in the face of such an action, my presence destroys
the piece. I wouldve been giving explanations and displacing
attention toward myself instead of toward what was happening.

1 Cuauhtmoc Medina, Crnica del sudor ajeno: Una accin de

Santiago Sierra, Curare. Espacio crtico para las artes, vol. 16, 2000
[Ed.].

45
Afterward, Medina came to ask me about my absence and I wanted
to comfort him with a pious answer, but I dont neglect my work;
like a lot of people I manage it from a distance.

JARQUE_ The concepts of remuneration and wages are at the center

of your artistic reflection. Do we all have a price? Are we all whores?

SIERRA_ Well, I wouldnt use such a derogatory term to describe

the lives of the overwhelming majority of humankind. When you
say that we all have a price it sounds like we have it in order to do
something that goes against our principles; youre forgetting that
were very well educated and that our principles coincide with the
interests of the labor being paid for. Someone once said: work
sets you free. Everyone, absolutely every one of us is subjected
to the reproduction and circulation of capital, theres only one
planet in this.

JARQUE_ Your actions polarize art critics. Why this lack of under-
standing on the part of certain sectors of art criticism?

SIERRA_ There are many reasons. One of them is the desire to

kill the messenger for being the one who bears an uncomforta-
ble discourse that leaves no one unscathed. Another is that Im
dealing with a taboo theme, money, which I never disregard.
Obviously, every work of art has some production costs behind
it, a labor mechanism, and in the end you can find all of this very
clearly in my work, but it goes unsaid, and by not saying it they
dispel the ghost of complicity. Artists have been asked to have
a certain dose of messianism since before the avant-gardes, and
I dont believe Im capable of changing anything with my work.
Still though, my critics tend to be very accurate. They understand
what Im saying quite well, its just that then they pull out their
culpability chart and theyve even gone so far as to make me out

46
to be responsible for the creation of the wage system. It takes all
sorts, and it doesnt bother me.

JARQUE_ You formulate a lot of your actions as repetitive, absurd

routines carried out for pay. Dont you think that theres a level of
humiliation for the people you use in these acts?

SIERRA_ Notice that when you say repetitive, absurd routines

its because youre talking from a standpoint of interests that are
foreign to the worker. My guess is that a job in a screw-mak-
ing factory doesnt deserve that qualification because its utility
is clear. Its also clear for whom its useful. From the point of
view of the worker the only thing that matters is to be paid once
the labor is done; utility is always marked vertically. Its obvious
that a housecleaner contributes to making the space in which
she works more hygienic, but its clear that shes not the one who
benefits. With regard to humiliation, notice that getting a tattoo
or masturbating or being alone or having your head shaved are
not acts that we would be able to qualify as humiliating in them-
selves; theres something that makes them appear that way. The
scary thing is for these acts to be done for payment. Thats where
the brutality lies. Payment is a system that enables the workers
body and time to be purchased. I looked for an effective way of
showing it and I believe I got it right.

JARQUE_ And what, for you, is money?

SIERRA_ Its the measure of value for anything that exists or

could exist.

JARQUE_ In this new project, 3000 Holes, you pour salt on the
wound once again. The presentation of your projects tends to be a sim-
ple description of the action and its motives. You make political art,

47
but you avoid pamphleteering. Are your efforts focused on the action
itself having sufficient forcefulness?

SIERRA_ The titles are predetermined because I dont trust

the things being anything other than their measurements, their
technique or their material, and on top of that, I should know
what Im going to do beforehand, which makes sense. Deter-
mining what, how much or how, I think those are wide-rang-
ing criteria. The pamphlet is something that I dont use because
I dont have anything else to propose as a substitute for this, nor
any moral authority to make myself out to be a messiah for art.
Resorting to formal rawness is of course a rhetorical effect that
helps lend a greater forcefulness and efficacy to the discourse.
All art appeals to the senses in order to make itself understood;
making an impact or having a certain shock aesthetic turns out
to be a great help.

Published in Spanish in El Pas, July 13, 2002. Translation: Christopher Fraga.

48
The Wall of a Gallery Pulled Out, Inclined 60 Degrees from the Ground and
Sustained by 5 People. Acceso A. Mexico City, Mexico. April 2000.
Spraying of Polyurethane over 18 People. Church of San Matteo. Lucca,
Italy. March 2002.
 PAMELA ECHEVERRA, 2002

Santiago Sierra who was born in Madrid in 1966 and has

been living in Mexico City since 1995 bases his art on issues
related to work, salary, circulation of capital, economic sur-
vival, racial hierarchies, etc. From a post-utopian and particu-
larly pessimistic position on the most fundamental aspects of
social, economic and consumer practice, Sierras work leaves
its vortices completely apparent, confronting the spectator with
an unresolved situation which, from the artists perspective, is
impossible to resolve. One of the main sources of controversy
stems from his use of human beings who are asked to par-
ticipate in the art in return for monetary compensation in
his installations, in some cases confining them to relatively
small quarters for extended periods of time, and in others, hav-
ing them endure the painful process of tattooing, just to name
two examples.

PAMELA ECHEVERRA_ How does your work refer to art pro-

duced during the 1970s?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ In general, my mind tends to ground

things in American antiform sculpture, Italian arte povera, and
the radicalism of many German artists during that period. On the
other hand, I think minimalism, which I draw on as a formal
base, is the best school for syntax. Im also influenced by the direct

51
approach of artists such as Stanley Brouwn and Isidoro Valcrcel
Medina, whom, in my opinion, have shown great integrity.

ECHEVERRA_ Does the notion of "social sculpture" exist in your

work?

SIERRA_ Not only is that an optimistic concept in as much as it

presupposes a positive step forward within the social fabric, but
also its messianic in its positioning of the artist as the architect
of change. Optimism and messianism are very distant concepts
from my work.

ECHEVERRA_ One of the unresolved aspects in your work stems

from the fact that you try to denounce the despair of the urban dweller
workers, farmers, prostitutes, immigrants, drug addicts, etc. within
the context of exhibitions that legitimate your practice as both art and
commodity. Do you think that this contradiction can be overcome?

SIERRA_ I dont have a set process. Some of the actions are

adapted from the place they are conceptualized to the place where
they are realized, but always taking context into account. For
example, the piece that was just realized in Lucca, Italy [Spraying
of Polyurethane over 18 People, 2002], takes into account the enor-
mous diaspora from Eastern European and the Southern Medi-
terranean, to mention just two contexts, that has moved towards
the exclusive and elitist European Union. The captains of industry
need to fill positions that Europeans arent interested in, and the
state closes its borders making the possibility of work difficult for
these people. Prostitution is a viable option for Eastern Europeans
because they are white. So you stir up all of the issues and you let
them loose in a country with a mind-bogglingly backwards view
on the loss of laborers rights and which is itself mired in self-ab-
sorbed complacency. The action ends up fitting like a glove.

52
ECHEVARRA_ One of the fundamental characteristics of contem-
porary art is its subversive potential, which can be broadly differenti-
ated into two discourses: transgression and irony. However, assuming
these discourses have been exhausted, what keeps your practice from
being circumscribed by them?

SIERRA_ The system. There is no alternative to this system, or

way to dodge it, change it, or question it; this is something I am
always aware of and it helps me to overcome these contemporary
predicaments.

ECHEVERRA_ Aesthetically speaking, do your performers enable

or transcend a certain artistic discourse that seeks to turn them into
political or ethical subjects? In short, what do these individuals mean
to you?

SIERRA_ A remunerated person in one who sells his or her time,

his or her body, and his or her labor to fulfill someone elses inter-
ests. I treat the laborer almost exclusively as an object, but also
politically and ethically.

ECHEVERRA_ Do these spectator/actor performances denounce social

injustices or do they merely reproduce them? In short, does catharsis
play a role in your work?

SIERRA_ The fact that my work involves human beings does

not create actors/spectators since I am treating them as objects.
The public becomes part of the performance. For example, in 465
Paid People (1999), the piece consisted not merely of what was
described in the announcement, but it also became contrasted
and defined socially by the people who attended the exhibition.
In response to the second part of your question, violence is not
something that functions exclusively outside of art and that we

53
can or cannot approach through reproduction or representation.
Art is contained by society and its mechanisms, and it can also
generate violence.

ECHEVERRA_ In many of your pieces, for instance 600 x 57 x

52 cm Constructed to Be Held Horizontally to a Wall (2001) or
The Wall of a Gallery Pulled Out, Inclined 60 Degrees from the
Ground and Sustained by 5 People (2000), the individuals are
remunerated for performing a useless act. This may be a stupid anal-
ogy, but they might as well be asked to rip the pages out of 500 books
or to be asked to open and close a door 500 times. However, the sort
of task that you ask of individuals in large part involves a certain
amount of grueling physical labor. What is the reason for this?

SIERRA_ The only part of an action from the perspective of the

workers is that his or her efforts will be monetarily compensated
in exchange for grueling physical labor and loss of the free use
of their bodies.

ECHEVERRA_ One of James Lee Byars (us, 1932-1997) efforts

centered on his desire to have museums acquire the rights to reproduce
his actions. In every case he wanted to avoid having to simply show
objects or documentation that referred to the actual event. Why does
your work only appear on the art market in the form of photographic
documentation? Why havent you proposed the action or the labor
transaction as the commodity to be purchased?

SIERRA_ Since the popularization of various means of docu-

mentation, a work of art can be thought of as being comprised
of separate but equal parts. In my case, the work of art is the
event or performance. The documentation of the action cannot
be regarded as the same work of art but rather as an example of
it that allows us to have a detached yet intimate relationship with

54
it as art and as commodity. On the other hand, the ephemeral
nature of an action means that we can only have a direct rela-
tionship with it in certain cases and at particular moments. The
work of art should be as much the performance as its documen-
tation is a visual and economic index. This is the basis of many
movements of the last century. What would be the point of a land
artist going to the desert without being able to offer some sort of
virtual proof? Of course there are those who deny the relevance of
documenting, the ephemeral as well as the commodified object,
which I believe is commendable but very unrealistic. As I said
earlier, this is the only system we can operate in. The ability to
document widens the range of possibilities for artists in terms
of our materials and our capacity to create; this should be taken
advantage of.

ECHEVERRA_ What relationship exists between your work and the

concept of life and death?

SIERRA_ Death is the fundamental theme of my work this is

what fuels capital.

Published in Italian and English in Flash Art, vol. 225, 2002.

55
Wall Enclosing a Space. Spanish Pavilion. Venice Biennial. Venice, Italy.
June 2003.
 ROSA MARTNEZ, 2003

ROSA MARTNEZ_ Youve prepared three projects for the Span-

ish Pavilion at the 2003 Venice Biennial: Wall Enclosing a Space,
Covered Word and Hooded Woman Seated Facing the Wall. Lets
begin with the wall, which blocks access to the pavilion interior. How
does this obstruction action differ from your others? I have in mind
the truck blocking the motorway ringing Mexico City, the barricade
in the street in Limerick, the human barrier in the Metropolitan
Museum of Pusan, the ps1 brick wall in New York or the corrugated
metal enclosure at the Lisson Gallery in London. What does obstruc-
tion mean to you?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ Obstruction prevents interchange between

the positions of the elements on either side of it. It can be the
physical materialisation of a prohibition, in which case it has
a repressive function, or it can prevent a coercive force from
entering our territory, which would give it an emancipating func-
tion. In the first situation that of prohibition only parallel
movements can take place on either side of the line of obstruc-
tion; that is, only those that accept and reproduce the line. But
oblique or perpendicular movements always come up against the
line of obstruction and cannot go beyond it, or they might be
clamouring for the obstacle to be removed. Each movement is
therefore defined by its relation to the obstruction as it is physi-
cally or ideologically placed. The second instance of obstruction,

57
which has as I said an emancipating function, is similar to
a barricade. Here, the flow of traffic goes one way and interrupting
it is decided subjectively in order to preserve our space. In the trailer
blocking the ring road in Mexico City, and in the Pusan museum,
we have very similar situations because a one-way flow of traffic
was held up or filtered. In Limerick, it was a fictitious barricade set
up with official permission, and it had a quasi-metalinguistic func-
tion [Obstruction of a Road with Different Objects, 2000]. At the ps1,
not only did we have a worker confined to one side of the wall for 15
days [A Person Paid for 360 Continuous Working Hours, 2000], we
also had those who were not confined to the other side, stressing
the opposition in the relationship on either side. This wall, which
was originally imaginary and less prominent, already regulated
their relationships. Walls, whether visible or not, set on either side
of a social relationship like blocks of human backs, ships holds
or closed rooms, are an allusion to vertically arranged imposi-
tions, to compartments of order. The instance that comes closest to
what concerns us here was the one in London: a large group from
the art scene was trying to gain access to a closed space. Why were
they doing this? If it was to see an artwork, the piece was smack in
front of them and, whats more, if they intended to socialise, they
could have done it on that side of the obstruction, in the middle
of the street. Here, we might well be seeing an obstruction of the
second type, as we only perceive one direction in the intended flow
of traffic. However, that is not the case because, as with borders, or
in the case of our pavilion, we are prevented from gaining access to
a hierarchically superior reality.

MARTNEZ_ How do you choose your materials? Why did you use
concrete blocks for this wall?

SIERRA_ It depends what we want to put across. Bricks are laid

one by one and point tellingly to the laboriousness in their making,

58
which has an almost macabre effect if our aim is to accentuate
imposed order. I should add that it is also more expensive than
other materials, which is why I have used it less than I would have
liked. In London, I wanted to stage a re-take by using galvanized
sheet metal that most closely resembled what was used to seal off
the access to the Argentinian banks, to set up for those capa-
ble of seeing it a comparison between frustrations. I made
the sound piece, The Displacement of a Cacerolada, just a few days
before that. In the wall of the Spanish Pavilion, the use of concrete
blocks cheap, coarse brick made of cement, commonly used
in temporary farm enclosures or to stop up windows and doors
in vacant buildings is the most suitable material. This form of
enclosure will likely last out the duration of the Biennial and will
then have to be removed. Its the right material for this function.

MARTNEZ_ In 1976, the architect Scarpa built a concrete block

wall to cover the Fascist front of the Italian Pavilion. What are the
differences and the parallels between his gesture and yours?

SIERRA_ I never got to see that wall of Scarpas, except in a photo.

I know it was a fine, smooth-faced concrete block wall, used to create
a decent facade covering up the other one but, above all, covering
up the word Italia. It didnt look temporary, although it was.
I suppose they still didnt know what to do with their past, and
post-modernity pointed the way out. Now we look at the original
Fascist facade without being shocked, and it stands to reason:
fifty Biennials is a lot of history and, as far as Spain is concerned,
too much history. Of course, all the walls enclosing pavilions,
whether covered or with changes to the facades or the national
emblems are history, and milestones in history, as when the
heads were changed on the busts of the Caesars updating with
power, and negating the past. In the case of just Spain, this pavil-
ion has had four facades: one in 1922, one in 1938, the 1952 one

59
and the current one, while it was closed down during two periods
from 1942 to 1950, and from 1972 to 1978. Almost all national
pavilions also closed during the black Italian triennial. Enclosing
facades or giving them a facelift seems to be a common politi-
cal stance in this Biennial. I cant help thinking of references to
our long-standing autarky, to our walled Spain or to the well-
known walls of my homeland [a sonnet by Quevedo], just like
more specific and more manageable references in the interna-
tional arena, such as controlling waves of migration, or the idea
of a nation.

MARTNEZ_ Exactly ten years ago, in 1993, Hans Haacke did an

installation about the historico-political symbology in the German
Pavilion. Where would you place your project in terms of that referent?

SIERRA_ In effect, Hans Haacke treated the pavilion as a seman-

tically pre-ordained object, and not as an empty white box for
stuffing things into. That stance, like mine, might seem highly
deterministic but, on the contrary, it allows for greater versatil-
ity. It brings to mind the recent case of my friend and colleague,
Javier Tllez, whose work focuses on mental pathologies. When
he was invited to work in the Venezuelan Pavilion, the enor-
mous political charge implicit in such an involvement led him to
turn down the offer. The only possible way out would have been
to accept the imposition of the subject matter on his work and
talk about the division in the country. This would have entailed
renouncing his own discourse. In my case, which is neither bet-
ter nor worse, the impositions are a stimulus. Working in the
United States, Cuba, Switzerland or China does not mean
accepting their political conditioning; in any event they help
form my work. In my view, Hans Haacke has thrived on tense
situations and the national representation of his country goes
a long way to that. In that respect we have everything in common.

60
MARTNEZ_ Your aesthetic and linguistic referents link up with the
syntactic tradition of minimalism, but you subvert industrial serial-
ity and the would-be purity of those by now historical works by
replacing their limpid materials with coarser ones, or even with peo-
ple, which are also used as constructive elements and thus objectivised.
At times, your work connects up with the aesthetics of Povera and
becomes a denial of the autonomy of the art object, because you asso-
ciate your production with the systems for the movement of goods and
capitalist exploitation. I recall, for example, the action 30 Loaves of
Bread Lined Up, staged in Ftbol and Ciclista streets in Mexico City
in 1996. I take it to be a slap in the face from the Third World for the
pretentious works of Carl Andre.

SIERRA_ The minimalists borrowed heavily from scientific

disciplines in the hope of acceding to the irrefutability of what
has been clearly demonstrated. They adapted their creative
methodology to formulating entities lacking any representative
charge, devoid of anecdote, to things real in themselves; some-
thing independent of meaning; something essential. But, what
they achieved was not the invention of the cube, or of seriality,
or spot colours, which were already around elsewhere and in
other guises. What they achieved was that they became aloof to
everything else, supremely haughty, which no artist could aspire
to, by setting immanence above necessity. Im surprised that the
search for the essence of a manufactured object does not lead us
to merchandise, the prism, with its economy of storage, or the
concrete materialisation of a smooth plane with a moment in
industry. I am also surprised by my own fascination for the min-
imalist object. At heart, I am a minimalist with a guilt complex.
Seldom have I seen more beautiful works than those of Judd, Le
Witt or the first Robert Morris. I subscribe to their maxim of less
is more, and their constructive methods are never far from my
own. But I only use it as a toolbox Im talking about something

61
else. You mention my affinity for Povera: the fact is that I am far
more interested in American antiform art, in which minimalism
is engrossed by the physical aspects of the work: the weight, soft-
ness, state of the matter, size. I doubt very much that antiform
sought to overcome minimalism; rather, it seems to be a second
phase. I think it is still a good school, but of masters blinded by
arrogance.

MARTNEZ_ Coming back to the Pavilion project there is a par-

adox in blocking the entrance with a wall and always leaving the
door open. You have also removed the doors of the bathroom and the
storeroom, leaving these rooms open to view. What are you trying
to stress?

SIERRA_ Its a huge, prominent wall which wouldnt be there

if we just locked the door. It is something we can take in, even if
only with our eyes; like a second facade which, unlike this one,
has no natural, architectural alibi, but an acutely political one.
The current facade is a facing over the original neo-Baroque
one from 1922 which is still there, behind the current one, in
turn a last-moment change to what would have been a Moorish
facade. The ever-open door, then, emphasizes the inner wall,
as it reminds us that sealing it off would have been sufficient
to prevent entry, but we have amplified the action in an almost
boastful manner. It is a rhetorical effect that reinforces the
strength of the wall. An example of this is the electronic sur-
veillance system that has recently been installed to cover the
Strait of Gibraltar. By removing the bathroom and storeroom
doors, we are impoverishing what little is left to see. This is not
something we would expect to see in the white cube, the toilet
and everything else, like the control panel or the rickety metal
staircases. These things take us elsewhere. But there they were,
covered up.

62
MARTNEZ_ At the back of the pavilion, two security guards monitor
access to the interior, which is only permitted to Spanish visitors who
show documentary proof of their legally belonging to this specific iden-
tity class. Like policemen or soldiers, or any other worker, they are ful-
filling mandates or conventions in this case, artistic ones that they
might not understand or share. When you give your actors orders,
you adopt a position of power. How do you feel acting this way?

SIERRA_ It doesnt matter how I feel; thats just the way it is. Art
is part of the cultural apparatus, which has a coercive function, not
an emancipatory one. An artist is a mega-worker who has overcome
anonymity and whose products are redolent with surplus value.
Its useless to ask what side s/he is on. However, all s/he is asked
for in return is an exemplifying attitude, a higher morality capable
of distinguishing his/her wares from luxury jewellery, to put it one
way. Of course, that morality usually manifests as highly neces-
sary blindness or escapism. If we leave all the elements present in
an art object open to view, or heighten them for better viewing, it
always begs that question. We presume that an artist exhibiting on
the second floor of the Guggenheim, for example, has nothing to
do with controlling access to the museum, or with the work condi-
tions of its security guards; that there is a gulf between an exhibit in
the Tates permanent collection and the gentleman who sits eight
hours a day next to the artwork, etc. Thats not the way I see it. Very
costly mechanisms of legitimation are involved in artistic creation,
and there is no such thing as clean money.

MARTNEZ_ In what way is the subject of capitalist exploitation

of the worker and the division of society into classes involved in the
Pavilion project?

SIERRA_ On the level of evocation. The accentuation of hierar-

chies imposed by the wall cannot fail to remind us that the States

63
represented at the Biennial strive to be impervious to the lumpen
beyond their borders. You will also see remains of the process of
dismantling the last exhibition, which I have left intact in order
to show the traces of work which are usually wiped out when an
art gallery is about to open its doors. These traces, in the form
of dirt and marks, is evidence that this space, like any other, is
a place of work.

MARTNEZ_ Entering the bare space of the Pavilion through the

only door available (the back door) is like penetrating into an old,
emaciated, maternal womb, full of marks and wounds, and traces of
absence. You play with the traces of memory and oblivion; you also
play with an aesthetics of ruin and abandonment. Which is the expe-
rience you want to put across to spectators by their passing through
that phantasmatic space?

SIERRA_ I want them to see the Spanish Pavilion from inside.

The image is so potent that any explanation is superfluous, and you
have almost put it into words. I am not going to touch anything that
is already there; I feel that an omission is sometimes much more
powerful than an action, as Isidoro Valcrcel Medina put it.

MARTNEZ_ Apart from the invisible walls of the Biennial itself,

the concrete division you have set up turns your visitors into part of
the performance because it places them on either side of the wall. This
recalls the invisible wall in Buuels The Exterminating Angel.

SIERRA_ As I mentioned earlier, that is the function of a wall

to organise the movements of whoever happens to be on either
side of it. On one side, Spaniards; but not on the other side, or, at
least, not necessarily. Both were already of this nationality, or
otherwise; this fact is now emphasized and displayed, to prompt
one to think of ones belonging. The spectator does not obviously

64
belong wholeheartedly, and not because s/he is expected to take
part as in the times of the optimistic happening but because
his/her chances of access have been segregated along subjective
lines. The only way of not becoming part of the piece is to stay out
of the pavilion altogether. There are immaterial walls that render
the other brick walls unnecessary, or those of which the bricks are
only the visual materialisation, and redundantly so. I have long
been concerned with the idea of Buuels Exterminating Angel,
a fascinating film which I regard as part of the core of my work.
It was an Exterminating Angel that prevented the workers from
Guatemala from getting up and out of the boxes, or that held the
black forms as coffins against the wall in New York and Zurich.
That Exterminating Angel is always the same, and I think I have
pinpointed it.

MARTNEZ_ In the only action you carry out inside the Pavilion, you
use an old woman wearing a hood who remains seated facing the wall
for an hour. This work links up directly with the critical, expressionistic
tradition of Goyas black paintings and the theme of witches, the Inqui-
sition and punishment. What does it actually mean to carry out this
action in the physical and, above all, symbolic context of the Spanish
Pavilion? Do you set up connections with the idea of the homeland
as the body that defines law and which, through its protection and
punishment, establishes identity?

SIERRA_ The work in the Spanish Pavilion in Venice is not

much different from any other place, in the sense that one adapts
a moment of ones discourse to a specific location. One of my last
pieces, done in London, was Group of Persons Facing the Wall, and
Person Facing into a Corner, a part collaboration with a proselytis-
ing Christian organisation. It was incredible because I could talk
to those people, recruited by the organisation from among the
urban working classes of the city, in a language common to all

65
monotheists. I talked to them about Genesis, about how God,
after expelling us from Paradise, formulated our punishment as
you will earn your bread by the sweat of your brow. Their pun-
ishment was to remain facing the wall for weeks, in conscious
fulfilment of the biblical mandate. They wanted to be saved! That
is work: a kind of punishment by which you sell your time, your
body and your will to your masters vested interests. The Span-
ish Pavilion is, in legal terms, Spain, as is the embassy in Rome
consular territory dependent on the Spanish Ministry of For-
eign Affairs. I was thinking about the same thing as in London,
but now in Spain too, and it couldnt be otherwise about the
Catholic national tradition. But, as I was saying, worming my
way out of your specific question, let the piece speak for itself.
I trust completely in the language of the visual arts. Forgive me
for not wanting to talk about that and other works more than lat-
erally. I hope you will settle for extrapolations.

MARTNEZ_ Some of your works broach the subject of punishment.

What is your relationship to authority? Do you experience the guilt of
infringing norms as a liberation?

SIERRA_ I dont infringe any norms. No natural norm, because

I dont fly and I dont breathe under water, and, no human one
either, as my limits are those of the capitalist system. The guilt
complex is our way of communicating with the norm lodged in
our own head, when it demands our compliance. Its an internal-
ised form of punishment. The law relates to us through the impo-
sition of punishment or work, which comes to the same thing, and
that is all there is between the norm and us. The law is there to be
observed and it is fulfilled without any chance of infringement.

MARTNEZ_ But a lot of your actions are a shakeup with a clearly

cathartic function. You stage the anguish of death and the void,

66
loneliness and loss, and the waste of energy that goes into both eco-
nomic production and libidinal production, for which you created an
extraordinary metaphor with your Spraying of Polyurethane over
18 People in the church of San Matteo in Lucca. Where would you
place your sorrow and your feeling of abandonment?

SIERRA_ In psychoanalysis, catharsis is taken to mean the lib-

eration of unconscious affects, and it is curious because I do
indeed aspire to the ideological placement of the political uncon-
scious, if you will excuse this outlandish expression. I feel that
the moments of tension set up by some works spawn minimal
political animals, by which the individuals mindset is laid bare.
Passions are the medium for this catharsis, which demands great
intensity when I disclose the facts that constitute the artwork. So
I dont think the term is inappropriate for defining the responses
or reactions my work elicits. As for your specific question, I dont
know what to say I suppose sorrow is part of our relationships
with our environment and ourselves. It is comparatively accept-
able because pain alerts us to the existence of some unsolved
problem. In this sense, I admit that my work may seem sad; but
that wasnt intended, it is just another reaction. The references to
masturbation in the Lucca piece and in others are not related to
uselessness but to egoism in the production of capital or libido.
A return to minimalism would remind us of the essence of the
manufactured object.

MARTNEZ_ How do you relate your own social background to the

meaning of your work?

SIERRA_ Im a white, Caucasian male, which places me on a level

of privilege. This is obvious across almost the whole world. To say
that men and women are equal, that whites and the rest of the
races are the same, or that the opinion of a non-Westerner carries

67
the same weight as ours is the expression of a desire, not a real-
ity. So, when I produce a piece, theres another element I have
to include: myself. Whether I like it or not, my presence condi-
tions the credibility and feasibility of a project. This is still true
today, when the white males guilt complex prompts him to play
down his status with an after you to the other. This merely
confirms the rule. My presence also has a semantic charge for
many. Once singled out as an author, I am often blamed for
a labour situation derived from the setting, and in many places
this makes a lot of sense. To give an example, maybe I didnt cre-
ate the Mexican caste system, but others like me did and theyre
still at the top. Im not scared by this situation because I must be
someone, and works are not produced by immaterial beings but
by people who have some genetically inherited and socially sanc-
tioned advantage or disadvantage. I include all those elements in
the piece, without hiding them at all; its the only way of dealing
with situations posed by my background.

MARTNEZ_ In this performance in particular, like the one with

prostitutes in Havana and the Tzotzil Indians in Zinacantn, you
have used women. What are the sexual and gender implications in
your work?

SIERRA_ Im fairly interested in gender. Its only in my pieces

relating to the sex business that I specifically targeted men or
women, because its a highly specialised market. In general,
I usually focus on the people that are at the bottom; extreme
labour situations admirably account for all the rest. In that respect,
women are usually at the bottom; that is why they often appear in
my work. When I paid dollars for some Tzotzil Indians to utter
a sentence, what I was looking for was Tzotzil Indians, regardless
of their sex, but ones who didnt know a word of Spanish. The
men are the ones that go out to sell their wares or whatever, so

68
they usually speak Spanish to get around, while the women stay
on the land or at home where they work, without knowing a word
in the external language. Thats why I got them to do it. Thats
precisely what I wanted to talk about, about how language is
used to dominate. There, if you dont speak Spanish, you cant
leave the home or change your role in society. Evidently, it was
the women who showed this most. Thats what has happened
with many works I didnt ask for women but, when I came
close to the lowest rung of the ladder, I came across women. We
First-Worlders and, above all, the world of culture, have no idea
how grim and deep this issue is. We usually think it has been
settled or mitigated.

MARTNEZ_ The work Covered Word is an ephemeral sculpture

made of poor, industrial materials bin bags and masking tape.
Being vulnerable to the elements and, possibly, vandalism which
some of your past works have suffered, like the project at the Lisson
Gallery means workers at the Pavilion have to restore it. The poli-
tics of obedience and labour subjugation are again present here. The
ceaseless exercise in destruction and reconstruction is a clear metaphor
of the futility of human effort and the meaningless of work. What
other overtones does this action have for you?

SIERRA_ Being of poor fabric, the cover keeps revealing the

word, so we need someone there to cover it up. This stresses
the act of covering and the circumstances it takes place in, being
staged serially, like the raising of the flag, although the other way
around. The covered word is Spain, and the whole issue lies
there. Covering that word, which everyone knows is there, sig-
nalling the property of the Pavilion, is like stressing it or illumi-
nating it. All theses acts warrant reflection on the meaning and
function of words, and this is significant in a country like Spain
which has a national anthem with no official lyrics, where a large

69
part of the population identify with a different national flag the
Tricolour, or with more or less centrifugal local flags, or other
national fantasies and symbols. We cant forget that, in Venice,
Ill be representing Spain. We might well conclude that this sub-
ject had already been given. Its a way of thinking of Spain, just as
covering up that word with a new facade was a way of thinking of
Italy. In fact, what were doing is quite natural in the history of this
biennial and responds to not knowing what to do with so much
wordiness. That accounts for the existence of the Aperto, for exam-
ple, and for the multinational use of the Italian Pavilion. We could
also assume that the creeper growing on the facade of the Spanish
Pavilion is intended to at least play the word down or mute it, if not
cover it up. The very word Spain was a last-minute addition one
afternoon, at consular request, when the facade was having its last
refurbishment for the purpose of removing the pre-constitutional
eagle, without planning to replace it with anything else.

MARTNEZ_ Do you have any particular misgivings, complex or

enthusiasm about representing Spain at this Biennial?

SIERRA_ No. Im Spanish, and Im not reneging on that. But,

neither do I like pride, whether sexual or national, and, even less
so racial pride, as it always implies intimidating whoever does
not fit in, or an almost tautological kind of sentimentalism which
involves feeling proud about being what in any case one cant
help being. I think that, the way the Biennial is developing, these
issues are being addressed in a more organic, less starchy way.
Some years ago it was proposed to include foreign artists resi-
dent in the country owning each pavilion and, in many pavilions,
like the Dutch one, that is almost the norm. Of course, this cre-
ates a certain air of World Cup football, but countries now sub-
contract their conscience to renowned curators, and so this effect
has been mitigated.

70
MARTNEZ_ Your work mirrors the violence in power relationships.
It reproduces the technologies of dominion that Foucault talked about. It
highlights the mercantilisation and debasement of bodies and souls. Fou-
cault says that the exercise of power is reserved for elites, and that hurting
others confers feelings of superiority. When you put yourself in the place of
the dominator, you manage to lay bare its mechanisms of exploitation,
but, do you think there is a way out of the dialectics of master and slave?

SIERRA_ From Barcelona or Helsinki, we might conclude that

mankind has evolved favourably from its infirmity. But, all you
need to do is take a flight to Manila or Medelln to see the collat-
eral damage of our optimism. When you migrate the other way
around, the feeling of being a dominator as you put it never
leaves your mind, and thats because its completely true. Thats
what Francis Alys once said. In my case, Ive tried to make that
point very clearly, and I would add that we could roundly qualify
the inhabitants of developed nations in the same terms, as we
could the pockets of First-Worlders besieged by the class strug-
gle in less fortunate countries. To talk of a feeling of superiority
in the exercise of power is like saying that white conveys a feel-
ing of whiteness. Granted, the West enjoys; it enjoys immensely.
Posing the dialectics of master and slave is escapism in itself. At
least, if it is posed in these erroneous terms.

MARTNEZ_ In Pasolinis film Sal, there are three categories of

characters: the executioners, subjects with the power to decide and
destroy; a kind of aristocracy of crime, the civil servants, collabora-
tors and accomplices who convey and execute orders, and the afflicted
bodies, subdued and powerless to rebel. His visions now appear to have
more currency than ever. Is life not yet life?

SIERRA_ These categories very often appear intermixed. A world

in those terms would be highly vulnerable. Subjugating all human

71
activity to the circulation and reproduction of capital holds out
the exploiterslave model as a perfect way of creating atom-like
individuals. It weaves cross-class complicities like structures of
national, racial, sexual or whatever convenient genome the cul-
tural apparatus helps us create. The difficulty in getting rid of an
opposite is as big as separating the id from the Freudian super-
ego. In this context, its not that life is postponed, but that we take
part in the mechanisms for administering our own death. In this
respect, rather than a driving force of history, the class struggle
is a sign of life.

MARTNEZ_ The function of art is to represent; that is, to speak

the crime, but not to carry it out. You turn your actors into symbolic
victims. You make them obey orders; you tattoo them, make them
remain silent and immobilise them, thus reproducing situations of
everyday, universal punishment and exploitation. For many specta-
tors these actions are too disturbing and immoral, overstepping the
permissible. Do the contractual agreements you draw up allow you to
believe that what you are doing is mere representation? Where do you
set the borderline between reality and representation?

SIERRA_ I dont set limits because they are always established

by others, but its true I dont know the meaning of the word
representation. As hard as I try, I cant find any meaning to the
word. As for the first part of your question, where you return to
the idea of crime and the immoral, Ill attempt to explain. As an
artist, I have tried not to confuse reality with desire. Above all,
because Im sure nobody is interested in my desires. If, to give an
example, in the old port of San Juan de Puerto Rico, I see people
working extremely long hours, not only to eat but to pay for their
doses of heroin, I proceed as follows: I think up a simple gesture
as a pretext for triggering a work situation representative of them,
and I pay them the way they would like to be paid with a dose.

72
Paying more than what they expect, or in a way that suits my con-
science, is useless, because Im not talking of my conscience but
of them and their Exterminating Angels. That would suggest Im
a good guy and that I did my bit towards saving those souls. Ridic-
ulous! If I can find someone prepared to hold up a wall for five
days for 65 euros, Id be showing you a true fact. If I pay double
that, Id be showing my generosity. Thats what I do and then
I make it known. I dont document real events, I become involved
in them. I feel uncomfortable with the stance of the omnisci-
ent reporter and, although its not a question of talking about
myself, I cant hide behind formulas for the sake of impartial-
ity and detachment. I said earlier that Im part of the semantic
charge of my work. I have to accept that this action, as opposed to
merely collecting data, makes me look to many like the ultimate
cause of unpleasant events. But I cant detach myself from the
action and not become involved. Ive thought about it because
nobody likes producing works that make them look bad publicly,
and I feel that the reasons for my differences with the public lie
elsewhere. The work done is useless, it is said, and that would
be really gloating over their exploitation. The question is who
is it useless for? If a worker gets paid for standing still, or for
making screws, it is only important for the person that employs
them. And, if someone employs them, its because they stand to
gain something from it. This would set spectators in an abyss
of meaninglessness, because the proposition is clear: it doesnt
matter what you do if youre paid for it; it doesnt matter what
you force someone to do if you get rich on it. After being paid, you
dont even have the right to be resentful.

MARTNEZ_ That assertion would fit the framework of the new con-
servative revolution as it implies that the market capital legitimises
all types of behaviour. However, for many years you have produced
your work totally on the fringes, driven by the need to articulate your

73
ideas rather than to get rich. I am specifically interested in the intel-
lectual and existential tension that has kept you in the art world. In
this respect, Id like to cite a seminal and fascinating work in your
production Cleaning of a Floor to Obtain Different Distributions
of Water, done in December 1998 in your home on Regina street in
Mexico City. In art, isnt there a gratuitous sense of waste, a liberal
waste of gesture, a certain pleasure in the unproductive?

SIERRA_ The new conservative revolution is as old as the emer-

gence of capitalism and modern colonialism during the renais-
sance. What I was saying refers to the moral base of capitalism
and its actual savage effects. The conditions I work in do not in
any way affect the system as a whole. Neither do they escape from
it in any way. I am not an example of anything, and any attempt
at articulating my ideas, if I have them, does not set me outside
the rules of the game, neither now nor in the past. A position
of marginality within the art world should not be understood as
heroic but as highlighting the failure of a certain moment in pro-
duction, in its intrinsic aspirations to become merchandise. An
unpublished book was never written and the way it is publicised
entails accepting the norms of the market it will have to move in.
The piece on Regina street leaves no quarter for hope in creativity
and generosity. It expresses the exact opposite. If we decide that
that is the solution to economic determinism, then clearly our
way to it is via addiction. The patterns I distractedly drew with the
water were intended to liven up the cleaning task, as they drew
my attention away from the compulsory nature of the action and
focused it on constructing a drawing. They were an intentional,
manifest form of self-deception, like the singing of a builder or
the brandy drunk by a worker in his free time.

Published in Spanish and English in Santiago Sierra, Madrid, Biennale di

Venezia, Turner, 2003.

74
Cleaning of a Floor to Obtain Different Distributions of Water. 51 Calle
Regina. Mexico City, Mexico. December 1998.
111 Constructions Made with 10 Modules and 10 Workers. Galerie Peter
Kilchmann. Zurich, Switzerland. March 2004.
 MARIO ROSSI, 2005

MARIO ROSSI_ Your works tend to criticize either the art system or
the entire social system. Which of these two structures is more inter-
esting for you?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ In the first place, and with respect to the

introduction to your question, I dont believe that I start from
a critical position. Criticizing implies that ungovernable problem,
i.e. we assume that the position of those who formulate it is stain-
less, and where there is none, a hypocritical position. Although the
latter is altogether more likely, the theme of art criticism is the crit-
ical artist who realizes it, establishing a model that is commonly
known as a complex personality. The distance between classes
has widened at a global level, in favor of those who are lucky
enough to have a good income or the possibility of having a good
income, because of race, sex and a reasonable background. These
people not others are the purchasers and the spectators of
my work. We all know how privileges are acquired, and that
art is not sold in alleys or street markets. Therefore I dont see
myself giving a lesson to anyone; my livelihood depends on the
strength of a certain social group and as a result, on the weakness
of many, therefore we are talking more about complicity than
criticism. Moreover, this absence of the moral of the story is
one of the sources of my work. Far from any sort of happy end-
ing that would clarify the position of the author, the work has

77
a stronger impact precisely because it doesnt resolve anything
and obliges the spectator to adopt their own position, without
models. Some see a critic in me, others see an exploitative cynic;
this really doesnt interest me at all since I am not talking about
myself. Instead, the spectators interests are tested because they
are turning to art looking to be committed and cool at the same
time. They are looking for models.
In reference to your question on whether I prefer the art struc-
ture or the social structure tout court, it is evident that I move in the
world of art, which is, in itself, an element of a system. Although
we must remember that art isnt any regular element. Art is devel-
oped among the creative classes of society, who occupy themselves
with imposing the planned rhythm of obsolescence, the constant
renewal of the form and the substance of the product on the rest of
the population. For this reason, when you talk within the art world,
you talk to the people in charge, the crme de la crme. Art isnt in
Never-Neverland either, even though we often behave as if thats
where we were. The money that pays for art is minted in the real
world and almost always it is more shady than you would think.

ROSSI_ Your first works were clearly references to a strictly artistic

circle, to the minimalist sculpture of Morris, LeWitt and companions.
But those cubes, those parallelepipeds were brought back to an earthly
dimension, from a mechanics shop in the Third World, realized with
salvaged materials: pieces of metal plates used to form cubes, cylindri-
cal rolls of posters taken from walls, various materials found on the
streets. But in the end, everything began from a reference within art.
Do you agree?

SIERRA_ Yes, certainly. The strategies of art are sublimations of

political order. We cant think about the module, about the good
form, about the scientific arguments or the search for non-refer-
entiality without touching on the political praxis. Each political

78
program has its aesthetical complement, and for this reason ref-
erences are interchangeable. Otherwise I dont know what fun
there would be. Suppose you dont have the slightest idea who
Robert Morris, Sol LeWitt and the others are, you would only see
the containers, the industry regulations, the asa or the din, the
necessity to distance the object produced from the methods of
production or from the market strategies. Probably you would
see the rhetoric of the Anglo-Saxon conservatism of that age and
its immaculate corporate towers. Naturally every artist knows this
game and knows whose house theyre decorating. At times, part
of these strategies is to deny the evidence and understand that it
is part of the game. There are artists who are enlightened, pop-
ulists, relativists, apocalyptics, scientificists, technologicists, reli-
gious, nationalists, solipsists, and whatever you like. They all use
the form and they all have their own repertoires and key names.
Each one seems to speak about art and nothing else.
With respect to the examples that you propose, we believe
that the syntactic economy is as suitable in the saving and the
normalization of the product as in the architectural construction
of subsistence. Therefore ABC art and minimalism also depend
on perspective: tracking them through the streets of Mexico City
will never be the same as on Manhattan Island. A speech given
by a Republican politician in the United States cannot be under-
stood in the same way if it is given by a Mexican Panista. When
a Republican says area of free trade, in reality it means Ill buy
it, and when a Mexican Panista says area of free trade, really it
signifies for sale. The context is fundamental, but so is estab-
lishing a minimum shared content in order to facilitate an under-
standing of the work. Contents that we will use to a greater or
lesser extent depending on how much we want to be understood
at a global level. We all know the implications of the LeWittian
cube, and for this reason it is very easy to use on a rhythmic basis,
giving it another perspective. It is quicker and more efficient than

79
creating your own one and setting new rules at each step. Also,
not using what is already known in art in order to communicate
can only lead to us pursuing innovation relentlessly or creating
personal indecipherable vocabularies. Im not saying that this
would be negative, but you have to know what happens when
you choose not to use a common language. We cant forget that
my references are also the spectators references and that it will
be the spectator who will ultimately give meaning to my work.

ROSSI_ One of the fundamental aspects of your work is without a

doubt an investigation of the system of economic relationships: to pay
people for useless and anti-economic performances highlights a series
of negative aspects in the exchange system applied by our society: the
power of who pays, the rigidity of the system of organizations. But
at the same time it shows the flaws, the loopholes through which it is
possible to enter legally, putting the institutions in crisis from within,
using their same procedures. What are you really interested in demon-
strating: the deprived conditions in which a part of the worlds pop-
ulation lives, the cynicism of law that allow actions to be carried out
that are disturbing to the psychology of an individual provided they are
within formal normal parameters?

SIERRA_ First of all, I have to say that everyone is paid for their
work. How much and in what circumstances is not the result of
a thorough investigation. I simply find out by asking the worker
next to me about the most important thing in their life, how
much they get paid. When one reads art criticism, we encounter
researchers of all types. One researches the limits of the form
via an incisive look, another researches ethnocentrism through
the use of pharmaceuticals, or who knows what else will be
researched. In reality, art is not the place where this research is
done, but where the results are discussed with decorative, sym-
bolic or representative aims. It is for this reason that when we talk

80
about the foundations of art, we often forget that art is many things,
but it is also part of the capitalist system. We overlook the fact that
the artist produces luxury objects and that the works dont magi-
cally turn up in museums, but rather by the intercession of divine
manpower a power that must conserve, guard and transport the
art, and add value to them though its work. In appearance only
in appearance clearly they are useless; they are poor decoration,
debase the models and represent only themselves. So, when you
talk about anti-economic and useless actions, without realizing it
you are referring to those fundamental objectives, and therefore to
the interests of the group that consumes art, the group that coin-
cides, moreover, with the one that offers jobs. From the workers
perspective, the meaning of their work comes when they get paid
I know that for at least 1% of people work also gives meaning
to their lives, and from my perspective what happens acquires
economic significance when I sell my work, therefore meaning-
lessness isnt an issue for them or me. If you analyze the latent
message in your words, in reality what you want to say is that the
only thing that some of my actions transmit I suppose youre
not referring to all of them is that monetary exchange renders
them possible, and that this is not useful unless I am referring
to the criticism of that exchange. What would happen if it wasnt
like this, if there wasnt a moral of the story, if the fact that there
is abundant human material available, at a low cost, with hardly
any specialized skills, who would never dream of unions or polit-
ical parties justified their use? What would happen if it was done
simply because it could be done without anything stopping it?
Evidently McDonalds, Nike or the Chinese Communist Party
employs as far as we can see this workforce with the praise-
worthy purpose of producing hamburgers, sneakers and whatever
else. Therefore you cant think that the objective of these groups is
to point out negative aspects of the system. And nonetheless they
do it. With regard to causing crisis in institutions from within,

81
I dont believe that this is the case. They seem very healthy and
from what I can see theyre not even aware that I am around.
Well, art as an institution does notice me, and I dont get on badly
with that institution at all. On the contrary, they contract my ser-
vices quite frequently, and they wouldnt do it if what I offered
wasnt anything other than services. On the other hand, where did
you get the idea about me that I pursue certain objectives or that
that it might have crossed my mind to be a Keanu Reeves of art?
We are too used to reading that an artist deconstructs something
or that another artist destroys the concept of something else, and
by now we are certain that the ultimate purpose of art is, at least,
revolution. In Mexico, the theme of one of the sitac Interna-
tional Symposium of the Theory of Contemporary Art had the
resounding motto Resistances, and it was a sight to see how
resistant we all were to leaving the Taco Inn owners home, where
the symposium party was on. The historic resistance to fascism
merits a certain respect, I dont think its relevant to get it mixed it
up with a multinational fast-food company. But contemporary art
is like that; everyone involved likes to think that they bite the hand
that feeds them. There isnt any objective element that connects
contemporary art to a fight against the system. If you think about
it, its totally the opposite. However, if someone were considering
the idea of starting the march, first theyd have to determine if
the production of luxury objects would be effective. I dont under-
stand why it is so diabolically complicated to accept that the theme
of the art can also be what happens around the corner, without the
need to declare our military commitment to the defense of that
corner or to pretend that by doing so weve all turned into Che
Guevara. I am only an artist and I only make art, and no matter
how much I am asked to do so, I dont want to be an accomplice
to the monumental collective self-deception that we are changing
the world.

82
ROSSI_ Which decisive encounters with artists or artworks have rep-
resented moments of development for your artistic path? How do you
place your work in the current art system? Do you feel like an isolated
figure?

SIERRA_ There have been many encounters and by no means

do I feel alone or isolated. I feel very clearly that I belong to
a community with which I share almost everything time, lan-
guage, aspirations and problems. Its true that the percentage
of exhibitions that mean something to me is very small, but
this also happens with cinema or with literature. Of ten cds
you listen to, you may only be interested in one track. Of the
shows that have meant most to me, I could mention one that
I saw twenty years ago now at the National Library of Madrid.
It was an exhibition of Hermann Nitsch and I didnt even know
that this Austrian existed, so I was even more surprised. To
think art like that existed, there had to have been a lot below
that tip of iceberg. The exhibition of the Panza Collection at the
Museo Reina Sofia a few lustra ago [1988], and my friendship
with Teresa Margolles, mark a before and after. But there are
many more and this is the subject matter of my work from the
last year, 111 Constructions Made with 10 Modules and 10 Workers,
which is intended to be a declaration of my artistic influences:
the payment of a debt. So Ill leave the job of taking a look at
this work up to whoever is interested. What remains to be seen
is if the most significant part of my training or of the content
of my work comes from art itself. A walk in the street counts
more for me than a visit to the MoMA. That isnt arrogance, its
a question of method.

ROSSI_ What is your vision of work? Is your criticism turned against

the Western capitalist economic system, or does it refer to the fatigue
implicit in each work? Are you satisfied with your work?

83
SIERRA_ Work is the selling of time, intelligence and the strength
of the worker in exchange for remuneration and in the interests of
the contracting party. This isnt my thing; thats work. Socially it is
conceived of in this way and my particular vision of the question
is of little importance. The vision that must always prevail is the
one that ties us to the rest, in such a way that the spectator knows
what you are talking about and is not left not knowing what to
think because the vision is a personal one.
Dont ask me again about revolt, and well no, I am not happy,
I did not really like your last question. I think what I am not
expressing myself clearly enough, but that is what I am trying to
do. I must continue to develop strategies that allow me to speak
loud and clear, and to conceal any trace of sophistication what-
soever in my work. On the other hand, the work never ends.
A finished work is never independent, you have to refer it to the rest
of the work and there are usually things to be added or removed,
ambiguities and noises. What I like least about my work is its
relationship to the opening: its like getting married every month,
and in the Catholic Church. It makes me nervous and I dont
understand why it has to happen; its like as if a journalist threw
a social celebration, starring themselves, every time they finished
a report. Its really nothing to celebrate, most of all, when youre
talking about the themes I focus on. But unfortunately nearly no
one understands this position and to suggest it would almost be an
insult to the people who have worked with you, who have invested
all their hopes and efforts. Using the word art is uncomfortable
enough too, and very often I am ashamed to say that I am an art-
ist. Its as if youre saying that you are more and better than the
others, that you are a poor devil and I am an artist. Art is com-
monly understood as a work that becomes sublime by the mastery
of the worker who thus is now called an artist, at a higher level
and superlative to the common worker. That is how a film-maker
becomes an artist when he does something like La Dolce Vita, but

84
in the meantime he is a simple film-maker. We burden ourselves
with the pretentious label of artist from the moment we carry out
our first stupid stunt and it seems excessive to me, but above all
not very practical because our work becomes incomprehensible
for society. What is sublime about a can of soup or a square piece
of stone with lettuce tied to it? A well-known writer, his name isnt
important, condemned the work of Joseph Beuys on the pages of
the most widely read Spanish language newspaper. They werent
going to fool him. His question was that he didnt understand
why one needed to kneel down in front of a chair with fat on it.
Since there was no reason to genuflect, there was no reason either
for defining that object as art. So in addition to the problem of the
word for conceited brats, we also have the difficulty of express-
ing ideas that are not looking for the spectators adoration. There
must be another word we can use without these difficulties. It is
very embarrassing.

ROSSI_ Which sentiments are you testing with the marginalized peo-
ple you recruit for your operations? Do you feel involved in their des-
tiny, or feel the need to intervene in order to change their conditions?

SIERRA_ Marginalized people are like integrated people. They

are exactly the same, only that they make the rest a little uncom-
fortable. The line that separates one from the other is very thin.
They can move from high to low class, but rarely the opposite.
Those who descend into those awful depths rarely return. We
all know it. Hence zombie films I suggest watching them
where the fundamental danger is from a multitude of destitute
people with an urgent need that can only be satisfied by earthly
means and where and what is most terrifying they want us
to become one of them, irremediably and forever. Social panic
towards marginalized people is described brilliantly in this cin-
ema genre. We are at a party, at an ongoing party where we

85
havent invited the neighbor, though weve stolen his beer and
his girlfriend. If you cant see this, watch television and read the
magazines and see which themes interest the people once
their basic needs have been met, and if you dont believe what
I said about stealing his girlfriend, take a look at the small ads
in the local newspaper. A few days ago there was a curious arti-
cle in the newspaper according to which a Civil Guard coast-
guard patrol found a boat filled with sub-Saharan Africans who
greeted the patrol with shouts of Qu pasa Neng. In Spain
this is the war cry of the drug and club culture, of nights of
partying three days a week and endless summers. What type
of information do they get in distant, black Africa? How much
a Manchester United soccer player earns? Or the ninety min-
ute television programs with personalities who live to recount
who theyre banging? Where is this dream country, and why
not me? We know that its a cry for vengeance and not permis-
sion for integration, when the new sans-culottes of the world
dont go around waving the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
In our guilty conscience we fear that the next revolution will
be Taylorist, and I am not referring to the thinker but to the
infamous Charles Taylor, who led a bloody revolt in Liberia in
the nineties and at the start of the millennium from his car,
blasting out heavy metal music, drunk and drugged up like all
his men and child soldiers. Dressed in a cross between Rambo
and Ozzy Osbourne, they raped, amputated, killed, robbed and
destroyed. Their only political ideal was a party of blood. This
man and his apocalyptic army live in our guilty conscience, and
we know that we deserve Taylorism as a response to the scan-
dalous goings-on at our private party. I dont know if I have
answered your question.

ROSSI_ Whats your background? Have you had difficulties surviv-

ing or have you had a comfortable life?

86
SIERRA_ That is the same question as before put in another
way. Before your question asked: is it true that you do this work
to do away with the system?, now youre asking me: is it true
that due to difficulties in your life you feel empathy for others;
is it true that you are authentic, that in reality you are one of
them? I dont believe that work must sustain itself on individual
mythologies. Biographical information does not make an artwork
better; they only wave it about to satisfy the needs for archetypes.
Again and again your question is: is it true that you are good?
As I said before, calling yourself an artist involves this extra
aspect of making yourself an example. Like the old joke: there
was a Frenchman, an Englishman and an Italian, then a Mexican
turns up and says Many careers are built on this logic, and
whether it bothers me or not, I must also, in my own way, be
a representative of something, something that would justify this
interview. If I make an effort and watch from the outside, I can
understand which archetypes I correspond to. The other day
a curator introduced me to another curator saying: This is Santiago
Sierra, he is a Spanish artist. And, then after a thoughtful pause
and considering the effects of his words, added: but he lives in
Mexico. At this point, the other seemed to understand something
that escaped him before. The fact of my being Spanish didnt seem
sufficient. For some years now, Spain has been part of Europe,
and its no fun anymore. But, living in Mexico adds authentic-
ity because a European has crossed over deep into Comanche
territory like Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves. Nine Oscars
is no mean feat. And so every article on my work begins like
this: Santiago Sierra is a Spanish artist who lives in Mexico.
This biographical information, far from going unnoticed, is the
favorite introductory tag line of every artist. Seriously. Entire
exhibitions are organized on this information alone. However,
I dont blame the curators completely; as I said, careers are
built this way too, from the inside. Many times, for example,

87
a bad Filipino video artist is tolerated, given the general surprise
that video cameras exist in the Philippines and people know how
to use them. You always have to bring something more, because
there are many artists and they will ask you for more. That can
determine your entire career; being a Milan supporter doesnt
count. Artists play hard with this archetypical function of art.
A performance artist is a perfect example of it you couldnt
imagine a performance without the artist in person to interpret
it, enriching their work with their own life baggage, most of the
time with so many details that performance as a genre seems to
move towards the preventive recovery of lost decency. Although
my aim is not to become the center of my work and it requires
me to continually clarify that its not me that I am talking about,
that its not me in the photos, I still get the question: And you? In
the end, I went to Mexico for a reason and its reasonable to think
that it was in search of a stand-out biography with its elusive first
line that is so difficult to write in art criticism. Maybe it is why.
I believe that after having searched for years for the fascist in all
of us and gotten rid of it, it is now time to settle the score with
our inner Manu Chao.

ROSSI_ Many of your works seems to be about invisibility, absence,

death. What do you think?

SIERRA_ There are no vertical forms in my work; they are all

heavy, dark and horizontal, parallel to the floor or dug under-
ground. All the material repertories, whether they be cars, benches
or slabs, are always used for their function as containers of the
human body or the goods that that produces. There are numer-
ous references to the objectified body, to the body that belongs
only to someone else, to those who benefit from it. There is nei-
ther will nor value of its own merit, nor wasted time in my works.
Black as a strong, energetic color that absorbs all other colors,

88
the color of mourning in Catholic culture is the only color
used, together with a white that is aseptic and that ends at itself.
Energy and physical force always appear to be associated with the
negation of life and its transformation into work. How much
you live and how much benefit you can make from it. Energy
appears to be associated with destruction in Gallery Burned with
Gasoline. The vital organs appear sick, as in Paintings Made by
a Fire Breather, blocked. Workers dig holes in which they could be
contained, as in 3000 Holes of 180 x 50 x 50 cm Each, or enter and
stay inside, as in Person in a Ditch Measuring 300 x 500 x 300 cm.
The signs of individualization dont appear, and if they do, its
in the context of an endless litany, as in 120 Hours of Continuous
Reading of a Telephone Book. The worker is hidden and encased,
his or her absence and acts of determination are signaled, he or
she is deprived of any trace of will, blurred or serving a sentence.
So, tell me sir what you think Im talking about.

Published in Spanish, Italian and English in Santiago Sierra. Una persona,

Trento, Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, 2005.

89
Person in a Ditch Measuring 300 x 500 x 300 cm. Space between Kiasma
Museum and the Parliament Building. Helsinki, Finland. September 2001.
 CARLOS JIMNEZ, 2005

Santiago Sierra is a Madrilenian artist born in 1966 who went

to Mexico City over a decade ago. There his work matured and
he was able to reach the difficult status of a truly international
artist who is exhibiting at the Moscow Biennial today, tomorrow
in India, and soon in the Korean demilitarized zone. Some peo-
ple attribute his international success to the polemical character
of his art work, which has involved illegal immigrants, detain-
ees, people in precarious living situations, drug addicts, and sex
workers, using a strategy that aims to make visible the situations
that these populations are enduring. Santiago Sierra was the
invited artist at the Spanish pavilion in the 2003 edition of the
Venice Biennale.

CARLOS JIMNEZ_ Why did you go to Mexico?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ For a bunch of reasons, and for none at

all, really. Fundamentally, it was out of being fed up with what
was happening in the art scene in Madrid. It was more about
a desire to leave than to get somewhere in particular. I tried going
to Germany and there I was too far down, in a really bad position
to work. At first Mexico City was a test, but it got hold of me. And
today its no longer a decision, now its my place.

JIMNEZ_ So youre not planning on returning to Madrid?

91
SIERRA_ I dont know. In Madrid Im still not seeing an adequate
environment for doing work, and on top of that, it doesnt matter
much any more where you live. The work Im doing is more here
and there, in Europe, in the us, in Latin America, and the place
isnt too important.

JIMNEZ_ What has impressed you most about Mexico City?

SIERRA_ Its an amazing place. You could be living as if you were

in Europe or in Mogadishu. And all that generates a violence that
you see on the streets, that you see in labor situations, and its a tre-
mendous source of work. And when I say violence Im not referring
to there being gunshots. Im referring to the fact that when you show
up at a gas station, there are ten desperate people waiting there, wav-
ing a rag at you just to see if they can get a tip and meanwhile, next
door, youve got the best Malay restaurant in the Americas.

JIMNEZ_ Dont you get accused of exploiting the situation with the
type of work you do?

SIERRA_ That seems like a very simple-minded accusation

because its impossible to live in a situation like that and not ben-
efit from it, if your position isnt among the underclass, obvi-
ously. And what Im trying to make evident is precisely that the
art system is in no way foreign to the situation. Youd have to ask
yourself how much the museum guard earns, the cleaning lady,
what the working conditions in the galleries are, and how the col-
lectors get their money.

JIMNEZ_ Is Mexico City a megalopolis?

SIERRA_ I dont agree with that. No, I think that Mexico City has
the features of a tumor-city. If theres an international area, like

92
Polanco or some of the other neighborhoods, its simply because,
since theyre in better condition than the rest, theyre a magnet
for white Latin Americans or for Europeans. But really, it doesnt
produce a multicultural situation like in New York. Mexico City
is a city that grew out of internal immigration generated by the
terrible conditions that the countryside is in.

JIMNEZ_ What does the art scene in Mexico City look like to you?

SIERRA_ Most of the exhibitions are done as if they were in

Zurich. And the ones who do them are trained abroad and there
are only a few artists who are taking into account the circum-
stances that surround Mexico City. What there is as the critic
Cuauhtmoc Medina says is a generation of us Mexicans or
European Mexicans who are working here as if it were a waiting
room to the United States.

JIMNEZ_ Deep down, are you the most Mexican of the current
artists in Mexico?

SIERRA_ No, the thing is that Im from somewhere else. I can

distance myself and I can be a much better narrator of whats hap-
pening all around than an actual Mexican person, who a lot of the
time wants to forget something that is painful or not gratifying.

JIMNEZ_ Are you a multicultural artist?

SIERRA_ No, absolutely not. Im what my id card says, and thats

something you carry within you. And, even though it doesnt do
me any good at all to go around Spaniarding through life, Ive
used my Spanishness strategically in Mexico and Latin America,
where its very easy to identify my accent with exploitation, sim-
ply for historical reasons. I use it to put the spotlight on issues

93
like white privilege, the color of the employer, the difference with
the color of the employee.

JIMNEZ_ Are you in the middle of a clash of civilizations?

SIERRA_ Yes, I think so; I think thats what were living through.
And more so in Latin America, where the clash of civilizations is
overwhelming. If you pay attention to the cultural and linguistic
diversity in Mexico and you translate it into what it must mean in
terms of school curricula or support for the different languages,
youd laugh your ass off at the problem Spain has with barely
four languages.

JIMNEZ_ Do you consider yourself to be a proletarian artist?

SIERRA_ My fundamental themes are the working class and the

worker, and in that sense I might be. The thing is that its very
difficult for an artist, as a producer of luxury goods, to hold that
title. You can make a fuss, bust peoples balls. But I think any
leftist activist would punch me in the face if I were overheard
saying something like that.

Published in Spanish in El Pas, February 5, 2005.

Translation: Christopher Fraga.

94
Removal of a Car. Galera BF 15. Monterrey, Mexico. July 1998.
245 m3. Stommeln Synagogue. Pulheim, Germany. March 2006.
 JAVIER DAZ-GUARDIOLA, 2006

In Santiago Sierras view, the commotion that was stirred up in

Germany by his project for the Stommeln synagogue has only
affected him positively, but his responses also reveal a need to
explain himself. That sensation is also conveyed by his show at
the cac Mlaga, the first to be held in a Spanish museum by this
Spaniard exiled to Mexico some ten years ago. This documen-
tary exhibition puts his most recent works in Europe, Bucharest,
Frankfurt and, of course, Stommeln in the crosshairs: Now they
know what my work consists of, indicates the Madrilenian, who
has also intervened in the faade of the Center with a subtle piece
of lighting that very much has our most recent history in mind.
Sierra promises to keep pouring salt on the wound.

JAVIER DAZ-GUARDIOLA_ Given that you see your actions as

being your true work as an artist, is this a fully operational Santiago
Sierra exhibition?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ After an action the only thing thats left

is the documentation. And by documentation we mustnt just
understand the photograph, but also whatever writings have
come out of the action. Secondly, its also the artworks saleable
moment, which gives something to society so youll be allowed
to keep working. Ive done a lot of documentary exhibitions; its
just that this is the first time that I deal with the dead in Europe.

97
Some of these projects have riled up a lot of people. Thats why
Ive decided to explain myself clearly with this show, because, on
top of that, by doing so I think Im making a lot of things clear.
People no doubt already know what Im talking about.

DAZ-GUARDIOLA_ Is that what unites such recent projects?

SIERRA_ In Mlaga Im reprising actions from recent months,

even though its not everything, or even close. What Ive been
interested in showing here are my works on Europe, which talk
about the advantages and disadvantages of belonging to this beau-
tiful society, being a white person. Theres something thats often
forgotten on the Old Continent, and its that the upper classes hav-
ent disappeared. Just because we dont talk about the bourgeoisie
or the nobility doesnt mean that they dont appear on the tv news
every day, spouting bullshit. Theres misery in Europe, too, and
I wanted to pay homage to the people who live with it, to the Atlases
in this system that only pays homage to duchesses and baronesses.

DAZ-GUARDIOLA_ People say that your point of departure is very

minimalist, but that leads us to talking about a movement from over
forty years ago.

SIERRA_ Of course theres a lot more than that. I leave clues,

because I always think that whoever is going to analyze my work is
the biggest kind of asshole in the world. I use minimalism for a very
simple reason, which is that it was the movement that invented the
great swindle. Art has always been accused of immorality because
of its falsity and its imitative character. Minimalism coincided with
a moment when art wanted to start doing right by power and pro-
claimed urbi et orbe, which doesnt represent anything and which
is self-referential. Thats the moment of greatest hypocrisy and
shamelessness in contemporary art. I climb that magic mountain

98
in order to accentuate the contradiction: everything is representa-
tion. What we say and how the title gets written is the great corner-
stone that minimalism denied. When I bring it aboveboard what
Im saying is Hey, prove this piece of information!

DAZ-GUARDIOLA_ It seems that now youre focusing more on

concepts like memory or guilt.

SIERRA_ Yes and no. Im always talking about God. I understand

God as the apex of a pyramid linked above all to money. But Im
talking about a Pythagorean and almost Aztec God that requires
constant blood sacrifices in order to fill the coffers. Thats the
fundamental theme. Guilt is something that they heap on top of
us. You can see it here perfectly: the German people are told that
theyve been the bad guys. In truth, the barbarities that were com-
mitted in their name went toward filling the coffers, and never
toward their benefit. The Romanians as a people are blamed for
something else. We the multitudes are made to act as if we were
bad actors in a play. They want to make us into accomplices of
things in which we dont want to have any part. Since I dont want
to be an accomplice of certain questions, what I do is speak up.

DAZ-GUARDIOLA_ And what are you speaking up about? What

makes you raise your voice?

SIERRA_ I used to work alone, without invitation, in a tone of

occupying space. The street has always interested me a lot, and it
seems insane to me that its been turned exclusively into a field of
manufacturing and urban planning operations in order to produce
capital. Starting six or seven years ago, Ive being going beyond
the underground scene in which I was moving around, and peo-
ple have started calling me up. Right now Im in a situation where
I can choose from among different offers, the ones that interest

99
me, like the ones in Bucharest or Germany. The curators in these
projects could say, Weve got this situation, but were staying
quiet. In the Stommeln synagogue, every year they do something
to remember the dead. Thats admirable and it forces you to be
with them. I already knew that there was going to be an uproar if
I got involved there, but what can you do? In Mlaga, Ive included
a lot of things that might seem to be mere documentation, but the
central piece of the show is in the faade, a lighting piece that was
meant to be subtle in order to demonstrate that I know how to
handle volume, that I can speak loudly or softly [Illumination of the
Space Between Two Planes, 2006]. And thats something to which
Ill return when Im invited to Spain again.

DAZ-GUARDIOLA_ Is Spanish fascism comparable to the Holo-

caust? Do you set up levels in your tone of voice?

SIERRA_ What I set up are connections. I could talk about the

Battle of Waterloo if I saw that it had implications for whats hap-
pening today. What I focus on is connecting one reality to another.
In this country there was a civil war, which means that there were
people who got an advantage over other people, an advantage
that hasnt disappeared and that is maintained. Pointing out that
theres a symbol on this museum that hasnt been taken down,
but only covered over, what that indicates to me is that maybe
theyre waiting for a time when they can uncover it with pride. In
short, lets not talk about something thats in the past.

DAZ-GUARDIOLA_ And what role is left for the artist? You

acknowledge that youre not an activist, but an artist, that is, an agent
who is part of the system.

SIERRA_ Activists are very admirable people who throw a lot of

eggs at life. Im someone who decorates houses. I make luxury

100
objects, but each one of us has to try to say what we can from
within our profession, as long as were allowed to. Its more about
being consistent with oneself. Of course Im not going to dedicate
myself to sitting in the stands and applauding the representation
that theyve put together of us. If were seen to look like a bunch
of nobodies, we have some responsibility in that.

DAZ-GUARDIOLA_ The polemic that has surrounded some of your

projects, is it because youre a provocative artist, or because youre a vis-
ceral artist?

SIERRA_ The heart and the brain have to go together. Both the
intellect and the viscera are disgusted that there are people above
and below one in such a vertical society in which relationships
are power relations. Im not looking to provoke; I lay out themes.
People bring the provocation with them in their own heads. We
all know who the provocateurs are, and where they are: theyre
the ones who say, Go for this one. Theres none of this with
me. Its quite widespread that every time I introduce myself peo-
ple say, Here comes the radical. Fine. As a radical I understand
the kale borroka folks, something thats related to intransigence,
to revanchism, to things that arent on my agenda. Its their way
of defending themselves. I say things they dont like, and they
label me. I work with very respectable institutions. To call me
radical is to call them radical, too. Is the Banco de Espaa radical
because it collects my work? I think Im pretty sensible and that
I dont say anything that stupid.

DAZ-GUARDIOLA_ Perhaps the intervention in Mlaga will be

a bit provocative for your detractors.

SIERRA_ It depends on how you look at it. Ive wanted to draw

out some comparisons, even though theyre loathsome. Here Im

101
establishing nexuses between our History and some of the crue-
lest histories. Im not provoking. Im being gentle. And I also
want to point out that Im capable of controlling the volume of
my discourse.

DAZ-GUARDIOLA_ Earlier we were talking about your current inter-

ests. Are you also interested in approaching the spectator individually?

SIERRA_ The spectator is the center of the work and the one
for whom Im doing everything. I take a lot from the cinema, in
the sense that, instead of sitting down and watching a film, what
I have to achieve is for you to put yourself in the film. And Ive
realized that its more effective if you go through the situations
that I lay out on your own, especially because otherwise, tension,
expectations get shared; you can socialize, which diminishes the
intensity. As an artist I cant use a three-hundred-page treatise to
explain myself. Instead, what I say has to hit you like a punch, and
then afterward all the reflection can happen. I cant renounce the
aesthetics of the shock, which is inherent to art because it appeals
to the senses. The intellectual realm is situated more in the ways
of constructing all this. The only thing I dont do is answer the
question. Theres no happy ending. The ball is in the spectators
court because my work is neither vertical nor imposing.

DAZ-GUARDIOLA_ How does someone who works so closely with

symbols understand them? Is anything sacred?

SIERRA_ Symbols are used to hit you with symbullets because

theyre always reflections of a power that bleeds. Ive focused more
on anti-symbols. Thats been my tiny contribution to the art world.

DAZ-GUARDIOLA_ What happened in Germany, has it created

a before and after for you?

102
SIERRA_ Its marked me, but in a very positive way, because you
realize how many people are behind you. Its incredible how much
support you get. For my work its been great because its made
clear what Im talking about. Im very happy with the work. I think
its made some noise, and, maybe, if thereve been some barbs
thrown my way, they havent been against me as a person, because
Ive acted as a catalyst for a lot of things. Im not offended.

DAZ-GUARDIOLA_ What was it that people didnt understand?

SIERRA_ People understood everything perfectly, because Im

quite clear. What happened is that some of the media wanted
to teach a lesson. Even before I had presented anything, I was
being insulted, and that prejudices the attention you get. And
then I dont know who called the most sensitive members of
the Jewish community, because this isnt a film that was being
shown in a movie theater. This was something that was hap-
pening on a Sunday. There are the images, a real act of civility.
Why did they want to shut those people up? Im not saying that
theres no freedom of expression in Europe. Im just proving it.
You know what the problem is? That we all have to work know-
ing that weve got an advertisement for cars on one side and an
advertisement for a property developer on the other. That affects
journalists and it affects me, because who the fuck is going to
sponsor my work if Im shitting all over them. Censorship has
been internalized.

Published in Spanish in abc, June 3, 2006. Translation: Christopher Fraga.

103
One Person. Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea. Trento, Italy.
October 2005.
 GUIDO COMIS, 2006

GUIDO COMIS_ The work you presented at the Galleria Civica

dArte Contemporanea in Trento, One Person, consists of a long ser-
pentine corridor without an exit. Could you tell us about the formal
structure of the work, its mechanism?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ I tried to create a mimetic, almost naturalistic

structure. There is never anything original in my work, I am always
looking for elements that everybody is familiar with. Thats the only
way to communicate. In Trento the viewer accepts some rules: you
can only enter the work alone. The public believes that the visit can
be ended whenever they desire and that the only thing they have
given up upon entering is companionship. The viewer enters alone
and then discovers that he cant abandon the work when he wants
to, because, at the end, hes got to turn back. Its a 600-meter long
walk; when the spectator has gone 300, and gets to the end of the
corridor, the game isnt over, there is no way of getting out once
youre inside without retracing your steps. Its impossible to break
the rules once accepted; society is a constriction in which we believe
that we are sharing our solitude when we are confronted by the rules.
In this work we are only faced with a few rules that we cant change.
The public is obliged to participate, they have no other choice.

COMIS_ This work is reminiscent of 300 Tons, a work shown at the

Kunsthaus Bregenz, where you filled the exhibition hall with bricks

105
right up to the buildings weight limit, so that an excessive number of
visitors could make it collapse. Both works heighten the awareness
of ones own body. What significance does this situation adopt?

SIERRA_ I think the comparison between One Person and 300

Tons is appropriate, because in both works the public is the pro-
tagonist. The public represents a social group whose characteris-
tics are put in the forefront, a group who must not share the stage
with others. In the works where social groups appear that are out-
side the art world, there Im trying to confront those groups with
the art-going public. For example in 465 Paid People a crowd of
laborers was put face-to-face with their bosses, people of different
social extraction. Thus the actual work was the confrontation of
two groups with radically opposed interests and motivations. Its
easy to exhibit groups that belong to more humble economic
backgrounds. The fact that they are so profoundly unknown to
the art world, almost as though they are from another planet,
facilitates their presentation and their immediate conversion into
objects. Its easier to tempt the more well-to-do classes into a gal-
lery because its a place that they would usually frequent. The
problem, however, lies in their objectification, in simultaneously
making them both subject and object. For that reason I had to
create a system of self-estrangement that allowed the public to
look at itself as an object. It isnt easy, because the public insists
that the proper conditions of spectatorship be respected.

COMIS_ What problems do you encounter in rendering the public

an object? What reactions did you arouse in the viewers?

SIERRA_ In Trento the public expected something but, once the

passageway in the corridor finished, there was no way out. At that
point it became evident that the visitor was observing him or herself
in a structure because there wasnt anything else to do other than

106
to turn back toward the entrance and, during the return, undoubt-
edly the spectator felt that he himself was a person (One Person).
That is how I achieved my objective. In 300 Tons I was asked where
the social theme was. Naturally the question came from the real-
ization that the work didnt include racial minorities or people of
the lower social classes. Although the building could have fallen
in from the presence of visitors, the public had difficulty in rec-
ognizing itself as an object, because it always insists that reality is
presented to it in a sweetened form. One Person, 300 Tons and also
other works are made with the intent of overcoming the publics
obstinate resistance to seeing itself as the problem. The problem
is always other people, criticized from within the very society that
they belong to. The others, in the eyes of the heroic society of art
consumers, are responsible for inequality, wars and loss of vaca-
tion paradises. The art world is happy as long as it recognizes itself
and, consequently, it doesnt consider itself part of the problem.

COMIS_ A lot of your works reveal the mechanisms of the labor mar-
ket, unveiling social and political injustices like, for example, Loud-
speakers, presented at the last Venice Biennale, which consisted of the
diffusion of information about the Biennale itself through loudspeak-
ers: national participants, absences, costs, etc. Other works have a very
strong formal structure.

SIERRA_ Loudspeakers also had a strong formal structure gleaned

from the context of institutional norms, one of the contexts in
which form has an essential importance. Things are expressed
according to the norms, with respect for the official date and the
so-called administrative procedure: form cannot be followed any
more closely than this. I subdivide the topics and in some works
I say what I was unable to say in others, for clarity and effective-
ness. My work respects the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic
levels. One of the criticisms made about Loudspeakers was that

107
in the work I declare how much everybody earned at the Bien-
nale, but that I was silent regarding my own earnings, so that the
complete comprehension of the facts was undermined. The pub-
lic looks for works that represent a system, in which everything
is explained in one go, as though it were The Critique of Pure
Reason, or something. It seems as though the artist has to work
with stylistic ciphers that make him recognizable in the market,
without which the diffusion of his product is compromised. Its
because of this that I see myself as continually obliged to give
explanations. In one of my works the telephone directory is read
out loud, in another 100 people are hidden, in another a hole is
dug in a field, and in the piece in Trento there is only a corridor,
and this variety explains the varying modulations between the
levels of the works that Im talking about: syntactic, semantic,
and pragmatic. I have no intention of taking the time to produce
the same object more than once. I am also a spectator of art and
I dont go into a gallery to verify something Ive seen already in
a magazine, but rather to see what an artist still has to say. Lets
not confuse methodology with repetition ad nauseam.

Published in Italian and English in Tema Celeste, vol. 113, 2006.

108
300 Tons. Kunsthaus Bregenz. Bregenz, Austria. April 2004.
133 Persons Paid to Have Their Hair Dyed Blond. Arsenale. Venice, Italy.
June 2001.
 HILKE WAGNER, 2006

HILKE WAGNER_ Santiago, can you briefly sum up your project

for the Stommeln Synagogue? How did you come up with the idea?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ I shall start by telling you that at the

moment, this synagogue is a building which doesnt have a reli-
gious use, simply because the Jewish population in the area was
exterminated. Once the war was over the building was used as
a barn. Later on, and for a short time, a small group of Jewish
people used it to celebrate Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah, but
the lack of people attending the rite kept this use from thriv-
ing. It never had a religious use again. The temple doesnt have
a Mezuzah. Finally, the town decided to use the hall as a memo-
rial and for the last ten years they have been inviting artists to
work here, so this isnt the first intervention. All those things con-
dition the work, because it is made in the temple of a group that
has been exterminated, and the visitors belong to the group in
whose name the massacre took place. It is not a synagogue like
those we see in other places, and the audience is closely related to
this fact, since they are the ones who supposedly benefited from
the Holocaust. By being asked to work here, Im being asked to
deal with one of the largest disasters in history, with something
that is very painful for everyone. I wanted to retain the historic
brutality, to highlight the current state of affairs, and to put mem-
ory to use. I had to do it without budging an inch when it came

111
to using a maximum of intensity, because no matter what I did,
it still wouldnt be enough. I had to reach the limit and make
death stand just before the audience: the only death that can
be called upon, ones own. I also had to somehow measure the
state of the Holocausts memory. My first impression is that
this memory has been strongly banalized, and that I had to do
something which was not only related to the past, but also to the
present, since I believe that remembering the past is simply not
enough, that memory has to be useful. Were also aware of the
impact of the Holocaust in those people who have been made
to belong to the idea of the German people, but we dont know
what impact it has had on other European peoples, or on me.
All those things are in the work.
I have given shape to all this by positioning some cars, six,
around the synagogue. Six is a number with no connotations.
The cars are normal vehicles that people lent us, and are parked
on the street. A black tube, which collects the carbon monoxide
fumes produced by combustion in the engine, is attached to each
car, and the fumes are pumped directly into the synagogue. The
tubes covering the space that goes from the cars to the synagogue
are not hidden, as they would be in standard civil engineering
works. Rather, they try to mark the space aggressively by empha-
sizing their points of departure and destination. Art projects in
the synagogue usually open in September when the surround-
ings are perhaps prettier and more pleasant, however, I asked
them to open this one in March, so the weather would help ren-
der the piece visually harsher. The end of winter is in March,
and we always relate it to the end, also for the religions involved.
Once this situation was devised, we began to consider how to
best organize the visits from the audience. Security measures
were fundamental, as staying inside the building could prove
fatal. Theres enough carbon monoxide inside the synagogue to
kill an ordinary person within half an hour if he or she is not

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wearing a mask. Therefore, it was decided that the visits would be
made using artificial breathing apparatus. I was also very inter-
ested in making the visitors enter the piece one by one, and not
in groups. I have asserted that, when the visitor is alone, he or
she loses the social support that minimizes whatever is seen in
exhibition halls. The visit is rendered much harder when it is
made individually. There is no one to share the tension with, and
the visitor is left like that, alone, with the idea of his or her own
death. Before entering there is a checkpoint where all the security
measures taken will be explained to them. They will also be made
aware of the fundamental fact: that they must obey all the rules,
that they will be in the hands of my security team and that they
will have to trust them. Since the cars cannot be parked perma-
nently in the zone, and we cant leave them running all the time
either they have been borrowed from people who helped us
the project will only be held on six Sundays. We chose Sunday
because more people may come at the weekend.

WAGNER_ going to an empty synagogue where there is nothing to

see. The title also talks about that emptiness: it is just 245 m 3. That
void which cannot be filled symbolizes the extermination of six mil-
lion Jews. The feelings of the audience, an existential irritation, are
placed at the heart of your work. But, in this case, trying to create
a feeling that resembles what was felt by millions of Jews before they
died is impossible. The idea of creating empathy seems inadequate
and arrogant, and besides it is simply impossible.

SIERRA_ Yes, of course, but there is no human way of attaining

that. Certainly not in the symbolic realm of art. But other things
might be achieved instead. It is more about dealing with a fun-
damental subject that, in my opinion, is not being accounted for
in the memorials, and that fundamental subject is death. It is
always other people who die. It is always something that happens

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to someone else, and I think it is important to place people in
a situation in which death could also be their fate. You can be
the possible victim for an instant. There are certain rules of the
game, and disobeying those rules will cause death. This is some-
thing I have done in other pieces, but not with such precision.
In Trento there was a 300-meter-long corridor that you entered
alone. The corridor was white and very narrow. The visitors did
not know how long it was, and once the 300 meters were over
and they arrived at the end, there was nothing there no exit or
anything, so they had to go back, they could not leave the rules
of the game. Once inside there was nothing else you could do. In
that project I really insisted on the situation of the person given
the rules of the game. But with this one Ive taken this point even
further, and that is what I find most noteworthy about it. How
rules must be rigorously followed because not doing so will bring
about death. Or, was it the other way round? Of course, I guess
that no one will enter a synagogue filled with lethal carbon mon-
oxide gas. Eliciting death, ones own death, not the idea we have
of someone elses death, but the real possibility of dying, seemed
to me the point of departure for understanding anything. I think
that creating a feeling of empathy is utterly pretentious, since
we may not possibly grasp the suffering of any of those people.
I have given up any hope or attempt to make the audience feel
empathy; the only thing that might be achieved is making them
think of their own bodies, or making them feel, for an instant,
what their fate is. I dont believe that anyone feels he or she is
different in this way.

WAGNER_ Creating anguish and irritation among the audience is

one of the central topics of your work. Your pieces are very demanding
with the audience in a physical and psychological sense. You have
already mentioned One Person, the Trento piece. In it you made a ref-
erence to Bruce Naumans Corridors of the 1960s, and made each visitor

114
face a claustrophobic situation on his or her own. Since the emergency
exits were not visible, the visitor had to go through the whole thing till
the end. But in your works of the 1990s, by which time art had been
forced to be politically correct, you put the audience in a position
where it was forced to witness some injustice that generated anguish.
In the works of those years the audience felt very confused when it had
to face some social injustice in this context of a politically correct art.
For instance, in the Venice Biennale of 2001 you had 133 immigrants
dye their hair blonde in order to illustrate the marginalization and
instrumentalization of human beings. Your work always entails mak-
ing art audiences face moral and economic oppression and in doing
so you use the methods you criticize. In the same Biennale, but in
2003, you closed the door of the Spanish Pavilion. Only those who had
a Spanish passport could enter through a back door. In Bregenz, in
300 Tons, there was physical stress coupled with psychological stress,
since visitors knew that their own weight added, dangerously, to the
load you had already placed on the building. You also have the piece
that you did in Guatemala, where the audience was driven, in a bus
with blocked windows, to a place where they looked for a piece that
never really existed. Or the work you did in Brtigny, where the visitors
were locked all alone in a room. Your work gets to the core of morality
and politics.

SIERRA_ For me the audience is always the main body of the

artwork. In Las Meninas we find the clue that would be frequently
used by contemporary art: the viewer activates the artwork. It is
always so, but in this painting it is the core of the piece, all of the
other contents flow through it. By standing in front of the mirror
that reflects the King and the Queen of Spain, the visitor usurps
their place, because theyre looking at the painting though theyre
not the King or Queen. He or she is another person. This paint-
ing forges an extraordinary union between private property and
perception, because the viewer is usurping a space that doesnt

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belong to him or her and, mostly, because it places the viewer
as the artwork itself, as the person who carries the whole series
of components or circumstances that activate the work. That is
always present in my work. When you conceive a contextual work
it is not so much about considering the things that surround it,
such as the architectural features of the space or any other kind
of peripheral elements, but about who will see it, who will be in
the audience. It is very important to say this because, obviously,
the work is not made in a synagogue in Tel Aviv or in Moscow,
but it is made in a synagogue where there is not a Jewish popu-
lation that uses it, and therefore we have an audience with very
special characteristics. Logic tells us that they are not the ones
who should be in this temple, but logic failed and crime took
its place. The audience, in general, is not something undefined.
The art audience is made up of well-educated people, people
who belong, at least, to a cultural elite. Not to mention a more
active audience, that is the collectors or the people who decide
what things are to be placed where, such as curators or museum
directors. They are the real guardians of the access key to those
other temples where commodities are worshipped: art exhibition
spaces. The audience is a well-defined social group in each coun-
try, because it is made up of highly qualified people and those
are the ones who are usually close to decision-makers. As I was
saying, art audiences come with specific characteristics. For me
it is always very clear that the contemporary art audience is the
social group that is on top. On top globally, and on top locally.
That fact is extremely obvious in the Guatemala piece you were
talking about, and especially in my Latin American experiences.
The people who can go to an exhibition in Guatemala are the
ones who would have never thought of visiting the poorest areas
in their own city. This doesnt happen precisely because they are
the ones who live in the well-off areas, in the best areas. Not only
have they not missed anything in the poor areas, going there is

116
simply not good for their security and their physical integrity. We
are showing what people dont want to see. I am not an excep-
tion, I belong to that group. In the Stommeln Synagogue we are
speaking to people who belong to the German people. People
who have a bad conscience and feel guilty. I dont want to intro-
duce you to yourselves. You have already met. Here, there are
many references to German art. Each German knows how he or
she feels, and I envy that, because I would like other countries to
be capable of assuming themselves as a problem. I have some-
thing to say at this point: other Europeans are not innocent. I am
Spanish, and as such I acknowledge the fact that my culture is
part of the problem. And another thing: were not talking about
the past. A few days ago, the German authorities estimated that
around 40,000 women will come here to be forced into prostitu-
tion during the World Cup. In my country, there is an estimated
300,000 women in slavery. Isnt all this a massive Joy Division?
This is just a small example.

WAGNER_ You can tell that right away. The origin of the poison is
in everyday life. It is produced by ordinary cars that are in the center
of the city. The image couldnt be clearer. For me, the external instal-
lation which is also the only visible part of the piece is a clear
reference to our current political reality, about the fact that it is also
marked by genocide and ethnic cleansing, and not only in the Third
World. The image of people wearing masks also seems familiar; it
reminds me of the images of the latest catastrophes. How do you see it?

SIERRA_ Those images that you are referring to, you have to take
into account that they are taken from the collective imagination.
I dont belong to another culture. I dont come from Mars. I have
the same cultural background and the same things in mind as the
audience. I am a part of an art audience. So we recognize the arti-
ficial breathing apparatus that we will use in Stommeln. We see

117
them every time there is a disaster. Since you havent seen this
piece yet, but youve seen other works Ive made, I will remind you
of the piece I did in London, the one with Iraqi immigrants. The
people who were spraying polyurethane on the backs of these
workers were dressed in such a way that they looked very much
like the ones who were removing tar on the coasts of Galicia.
There were tubes and pressure valves like the ones weve seen in
Galicia or in the plants in Kuwait. The forms or attitudes adopted
by the immigrants when they were sprayed made them look pas-
sive, almost victim-like. When they received the polyurethane on
their backs, they reminded us of the scenes we see while having
breakfast every morning, the ones of the latest acts of brutality
committed by the occupation armies in Iraq. I try to use images
that are very familiar for the audience. I want them to suddenly
realize that their lives have something to do with the destruction
it generates, and my way of doing it is by using images which
everyone has seen on tv, images of disasters and images of death.
The Holocaust is not just a casual fact or, much less, an anecdote.
And the Jewish Holocaust hasnt been the only one, but it has
been the critical point in our culture, and it proves how far were
capable of going for a fistful of euros. I want to remind you that
the fortune of the West comes from the systematic plundering
of foreign peoples. In Australia they speak English, a language
that has nothing to do with its aboriginal population there. This
language emerged on the other side of the planet. This is the
kind of fact that the West takes as proof of how important their
cultural identity is. Linguistic areas are something to be proud
of. There is there is a Ministry for French-speaking Communi-
ties and a Cervantes Institute. But the fact that millions of people
speak my language, Spanish, is the outcome of sustained crimi-
nal activity. It doesnt matter if this activity has happened under
a Spanish or under an Argentinean flag, because it was the same
people. Latin American Republics turned out to be very dutiful

118
children of the fatherland. Meanwhile, the West is very happy
about it, and I wonder if Westerners believe that all these people
would have been silent without these peculiar language lessons.
There is no oil in Switzerland, or gas. The only wealth is in mead-
ows, cows, a beautiful landscape and the happiness of its people,
and yet it is the richest country in the world. This wealth comes
from somewhere, and we have to stop placing these things in the
past. We have not advanced. Auschwitz is the highest point of
a criminal strategy extended in time that, of course, is not over.
The fact that I enjoy the possibility of traveling from one country
to another, showing art, is a product of the existence of cheap
flights, of something as silly as the possibility of flying at a low
price. Those are the advantages of being able to get from any
European capital to any other in no more than half a day. In order
to do this you need to maintain hegemony over the Middle East,
the place where oil is produced. So I will be able to do this only as
long as there is a sufficient supply of this energy resource, and it
is available at a low price. This means that the war being fought
in Iraq is being fought, among other things, so that I can be here
holding an exhibition. I think that things are not set in the past.
We have plundered Africa and then we have abandoned it to its
fate, and I dont know if anyone has heard about paying interest
or if that idea only works when we talk with the darkest sense
of humor of the so-called Third World debt. And they are the
ones who owe us money! If the West wants to wants to settle
up with the Third World, firstly it should stop stealing, then it
should return what was stolen and finally compensate the vic-
tims of the horror. Then, they could say that we are all equal.
Enough is enough. What is surprising about the burning cars
in France is that people were surprised about it, what were they
thinking? How lost they are. Hitler said that no one would make
them accountable for what they did once they won. They didnt
win, but European colonialism did and, of course, it is not being

119
made accountable. This is now. If we go on thinking that this is
something exceptional that happened between Jews and Germans,
we will repeat the Holocaust at any moment. It is not something we
can totally put behind us. The Holocaust is the prime example of
how far the voracity of capital can go, and it makes sense to bring
that topic back to the discussion. We have to dust off the memory
of the Holocaust and say, loud and clear, that the State and Cap-
ital are capable of killing, and of killing massively; and we also
have to say that doing so is their main business. The State guar-
antees the hegemony of geographically located power groups
and capital, which doesnt have a specific geographical location;
it simply takes care of itself. We know perfectly well that the secu-
rity of a corporation comes before the security of human collec-
tives, that the security of companies is respected and tolerated
all around the world. But apart from generating profits it doesnt
share, it also brings about death and destruction. The ones that
are guilty are still in the job. Lets not forget that the wealth of the
Jewish people was stolen with thorough and vicious accounting.
Lets not forget either that this money was used to pay for the
advantages that made Nazism so attractive, that money and that
which came from plundering the unfortunate neighboring coun-
tries. Pirate behavior has been our cultural behavior all over the
world, and it still is. We should acknowledge that all the social
advantages we have are like those from Nazi times, because we
have acquired them through crushing other peoples and making
them our slaves. And in other countries it is other social classes,
other genres or whatever.

WAGNER_ In 1998, the so-called Walser-Bubis debate had already

raised the question of how todays and tomorrows Germans should
deal with the Shoah in a different, but likewise public context. The
Walser-Bubis debate was sparked by statements made by the author,
Martin Walser, in his acceptance speech for the German Peace Prize,

120
given at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt. In 1998, Walser already
pointed out the danger of banalizing memory. In his opinion, through
extended representation of shame, collective memory ran the risk of
becoming a forced exercise and its banalization, of becoming mere,
trivialized lip-service. This problem was also reflected in the public
debate on the Memorial by Peter Eisenman to the Victims of the Hol-
ocaust, which was inaugurated on 10th May 2004. In discussions on
this memorial in memory of the Jews murdered in Europe, the issue
came to the fore of whether there can be an artistic/architectural ges-
ture at all that could represent the depths of the crime, the suffering
and infinitely abominable death of the millions of Jews murdered. In
the case of the Berlin memorial, a pure art form was chosen, a stone
that has become the idea of memory in and of itself, though it seems
that there was never complete confidence in it, and so they added
a documentation center.

SIERRA_ You asked about monuments and how I have worked

with them. I wanted to go a little further on the issue of the banal-
ization of memory, so I will give you an example that is easy to
understand. Recently we were working in Delhi on Republic
day. They were celebrating their independence, and there you
had this group of quite bloody Asian dictators putting flowers on
Gandhis grave. No one blushed or said anything about it. This
is considered normal, and that is what I mean by banalization of
memory. When we see great criminals such as the spokesman
of large American corporations, also called the President of the
United States or George W. Bush, laying flowers in memory of
the dead, then there is banalization. That man is a mass killer and
he should not humiliate the Jewish victims with his interested
favoritism. I cant find another word. I dont think that filling
downtown Berlin with cement is the best option. But well, lucky
you, because you see someone who is regretting something. In
my country there is not one single monument to the victims of

121
Francoism and yet there are lots to Franco. This is not a differ-
ent topic, Im not drifting off. Franco got there supported by the
German and Italian governments, against the will of the people
and against the very legal Spanish Republic. We had no D-Day
or Nuremberg trials. Its strange that the allies forgot about us.
It is curious because it shows the barefaced continuity of what
happened in the supposedly well-enough documented postwar
period. You have a monument in Berlin, and thats better than
nothing. I think its all quite ok. But I dont think that the final
outcome is ok. A monolith didnt seem enough, so we put two
hundred thousand monoliths. It seems a fairly mediocre idea,
and the only thing it conveys to me is that some people have
spent a lot of money because they want to tell the whole world
theyre sorry. That is what the piece in Berlin has to say, and it is
not so bad. Its really ugly but the intention is what counts. Like
I say, it seems to me that memory is banal, because nowadays it
has no function, it has no effect. Laying flowers does not mean
that the people who are laying the flowers are committed to any-
thing. They lay them there because protocol says so; it is just an
empty ritual.

WAGNER_ I have known your work for a long time now, and yet,
when I first heard of this project, I thought, You cant do that. Thats
going too far. Ever since then, I have been plagued with the question
of why this seemed so impossible to me. At the end of the day isnt it
rather cynical to confront such a real event with self-referential art
without taking the opportunity of using the past to interpret our pres-
ent through direct confrontation? Of what use to us are exhibitions of
poetic abstract art that you visit with your canap and glass in hand
and then leave with a clear conscience? How can art even begin to
approach an issue like the Holocaust? The pressure of political cor-
rectness is enormous precisely in relation to the Shoah, and often it is
the absolute criterion that exerts such pressure that it is difficult for art

122
to come anywhere near the topic and still remain independent. When
remorse and guilt are to the fore, art runs the risk of falling into the
pathetic in the sense of becoming diverted so that it becomes devout
suffering, or a mere clich of mourning and shame, or escapes into
hermeticism. I know from your previous works that you are neverthe-
less quite skeptical towards the political correctness that is expected of
art and that the viewer or recipient always presupposes in a work of art.

SIERRA_ On how politically correct art has to be, well, what art
is and always has been is a simple celebration of the existing state
of affairs, and political correctness comes from that. It is another
way Power uses to relieve itself of blame. Political correctness
mostly tries to confuse other cultures and the less favored groups,
because it is an exercise in the denial of evidence. European pop-
ulations around the world are the most harmful. A European is
not punished for exploiting black people, he is only punished
if he uses the word black, if he lets the obvious be seen. Every-
body knows this. When they talk about integration and they ask
culture to be politically correct, what they are trying to do is to
integrate other peoples, to integrate other countries into our own
system. This integration basically means deactivation. What hap-
pens in your own countries of origin is your problem. As you can
see, we are very polite here. That is, when they come as workers
to our countries they should behave well and not give us trouble.
Since the function of culture is generalized applause a con-
stant endorsement of the current state of affairs then, logically,
artworks which work well for culture are those which celebrate
the cultural and racial diversity of the metropolis, and exhibitions
which constantly applaud the advantages and achievements of
our world. Criticism is welcome, since it is innocuous, but only
if it ends with the idea of hope: an old trick. In my work the audi-
ence is put in a situation in which it doesnt want to be. The vis-
itor always wants to get to an exhibition hall and do nothing but

123
contemplate, but in my works it is hard to do so. Naturally, peo-
ple want to be in a place where nothing affects them, and where
their judgment is not being altered. I want to remind you that
art, even if there have been persistent attempts towards its intel-
lectualization, always addresses sensibilities, and artworks have
to be read with the senses because you dont have 300 pages
or 20 chapters to explain them. You just have an instant, so
you have to be conclusive and emphatic. You have to be strong
enough in order to arouse a feeling that will then be followed
by any sort of reflection. Thats the reason for sticking to the
aesthetics of shock, because bringing contradictory feelings to
the fore seems to me the ideal way to move the audience. Intel-
lectualization has to be in the means and in the mechanisms.
In the craft. You must be very aware of what is in the mind
of the audience, and the only thing that the work does is tell
them in which direction I want them to look. Every work is
already in peoples heads. I am not trying to convince anyone of
anything, I just propose a topic. My relation to the audience is
similar to the one in a hidden camera program, where there is an
alteration of reality of statistical reality or normality and
you observe peoples reactions. Then, unlike what happens in
those programs, you speak about it. Establishing a dialogue is
fundamental for me and I create works that are a response to
the criticism I receive, I dont know if critics are aware of this.
As an artist I have no other choice but to appeal to the senses
rather than to rationality, but I try to keep this from becoming
some kind of Messianic call for good souls to follow me. My
tricks have that limit. That is very important for me. I want to
see what people have in their heads; its not about looking at
myself in the mirror surrounded by my followers.

WAGNER_ Have you been in contact with the Jewish community

in Germany?

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SIERRA_ No. I feel that the Jewish people who have come back
to Germany have done so to make sure that everything that hap-
pened is not forgotten. I think that attitude is quite logical and
brave; because I dont think they feel exactly in Disneyland. The
suspicions they have towards any idea that even names them
are absolutely logical and understandable. They have the right
to make sure that their dead are respected, and I hope Im con-
veying that respect. I believe that any person who was born in
the second half of the 20th century has to keep the Holocaust
in mind no matter what they might think or do. Any action
within the cultural sphere has to take into account that there
was a moment in history when millions of people were killed,
and that it all made sense for the executioners, that there was
a reason for them. Therefore, talking about those reasons and
that sense, what are the reasons and the sense of capital, is also
my work, and the work of many other artists. I have a duty to this
issue and thats why I speak about it. I believe that getting in con-
tact with the Jewish community of Germany would have meant
seeking their approval, and whether my work is accepted or
rejected is fine by me. I wouldnt like to have a personal influence
on that. On the other hand, I believe that reducing the problem to
religious terms is quite dangerous, because it means bringing it
to non-negotiable terms, and the genocide was precisely based on
those terms. If the Grand Capital wants to rob a part of the pop-
ulation, it is going to find a way in which this is non-negotiable.
The form that it found then was killing the favorite culprit of the
West. The favorite culprit of the West has always been the Jewish
people. And it has been so because of religious reasons. Suppos-
edly, they murdered the Son of God. All these arguments are
stupid, simply because there is no God. Religion has been very
harmful. Reducing things to religious terms is reducing them
to non-negotiable terms. As an atheist I have not much to say to
a man of faith.

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WAGNER_ To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric, The-
odor W. Adorno wrote in 1951 in the magazine Kulturkritik und
Gesellschaft. Nonetheless, Adorno relativized this statement on lit-
erature after Auschwitz in later essays, as in his Negative Dialectics,
admitting that perennial suffering has as much right to expression as
a tortured man has to scream; hence, it may have been wrong to say
that after Auschwitz you could no longer write poems. Or in Notes to
Literature, where he writes, The statement that poetry cannot be writ-
ten after Auschwitz is not an absolute statement, but what is certain
is that, after this, as it was possible and remains endlessly possible, no
blithe art can be exhibited. However, Adornos statement is still rele-
vant now, because it indirectly raises the question of the methods and
legitimacy with which forms of artistic expression can manage to deal
with a phenomenon like the Shoah.

SIERRA_ The sentence is really well known; it is constantly quoted.

I have the suspicion, only the suspicion, that after Auschwitz there
is not much we can do but write poetry. Really, there is a feeling of
defeat, a deep mistrust in science, a deep mistrust in the human
being. That lovely child might grow up and kill me. The feelings
of empathy, of belonging to a group or a tribe have been totally
destroyed. Currently, there is no other collective project than ones
own survival and a desire to prosper. The people who in other cir-
cumstances might have engaged in political activism take refuge
in art. Art is a place where, for the time being, we are allowed to
speak. Of course, after passing through all kinds of controls which
verify that what you are saying is innocuous, thats true, but we
may still say something. I say for the time being because the topic
of freedom of speech seems to be back on the table. So I suspect
that there is little more we can do but write poetry. Well, no. Forget
it. I can already see the whole planet chopping trees in order to the
West can compose dodecasyllable verses. No, not even that, after
Auschwitz you can only throw tomatoes.

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WAGNER_ In his essay on an ethic of memory appearing in a pub-
lication on art projects at the Stommeln Synagogue, the Director
of the Jewish Museum of Berlin, W. Michael Blumenthal, spoke of
the Shoah as a phenomenon that is so deeply rooted in the collective
memory that even without memorials, there would hardly be any
danger of it falling into oblivion. Blumenthal also warned of the
danger of reducing memory to clichs and empty ritual and describes
the attitude towards our history as forced, artificial, reserved and
not particularly honest. Blumenthal advocated an uninhibited
debate on the Holocaust, which would provide the opportunity to
discuss the past without repressing, distorting or rationalizing.
Many Germans seemed, according to Blumenthal, to be fettered
by a shameful image of themselves, in which they can be nothing
other than members of a nation of murderers. In his opinion, the
Germans could be divided into two groups: on the one hand, those
who cannot free themselves from their sense of guilt and the urge to
constantly demonstrate regret and penance, and a growing number
of others who are tired of the subject and are seeking grounds to jus-
tify bringing this to a close. Whereby Blumenthal states that ways
would have to be found to remember with an aim and for the right
reasons remembering, not as a form of pathetic self-reproach or
mechanical regret, and not only from memorials or during rituals,
but considering what can be learned by it on the rights of minor-
ities, fair conduct and the courage to stand up for ones beliefs in
a democratic society. Is your project to be understood as a comment
on the way Germans handle guilt? After all, guilt has been a theme
in many of your past projects. Moreover, the aspect of punishment
often plays a significant role. This aspect was particularly obvious in
the performance Hooded Woman Seated Facing the Wall, at the
Spanish Pavilion of the 2003 Venice Biennial, in which a woman
was paid to don a conical penitents hood and sit in a corner with
her face to the wall. At the London Lisson Gallery in 2002, you like-
wise paid seven women and men to remain in a penitent stance with

127
their faces to the wall for an hour a day over the course of three weeks.
And you are planning a similar project for Frankfurt?

SIERRA_ German guilt is healthy to a certain extent, and some-

thing to be envied. But we cannot lay all the blame on people
who saw their neighbors die, had their homes blown away, were
dragged to the trenches, or that, as children, couldnt have known
what all those sirens and explosions were about. We must be rea-
sonable. In general in my projects there is an association between
work and punishment, and law and guilt, which is nothing new.
It is a relation that is finally translated into punishment through
work or other means. It is simply that you are under the weight of
the law and you have to admit that this is the basis of the everyday
social relations of power, which are almost all existing relations.
Vertical power is achieved through a simple mechanism: if you
dont do what I tell you, you will be punished and, of course,
one of the most common punishments is work. In India, the
Untouchables bear guilt for sinning in another life, and they
have to pay for it in this one. Obviously, those who are born in
superior castes are very happy because they feel they are being
rewarded for their past. Amongst us, a bourgeois from London
knows that he is far more intelligent than a fly-ridden Afghan.
He has a glorious past. Its the same thing: justifying the state of
affairs as well as the part that we have been given in it. My work
does nothing about it. It doesnt fix anything. The rest of the art
world does not either.

WAGNER_ At the beginning of our conversation, you emphasized

that the concept of obedience to rules is of the essence in your current
work. Disregarding the rules of conduct could be deadly here.

SIERRA_ If we talk about the first part of your question, the

answer is yes, the audience obeys rules. That is something that

128
you not only have in art spaces, but art spaces have many more
regulations than any other kind of public space, there are hun-
dreds of things you cant do there, and hundreds of things
which are more severely punished if theyre done in there. This
is what we were talking about in the Venice piece; the space of
art is a space of power and of labor.

WAGNER_ You constantly emphasize that, in the sphere of art, the

same rules are valid as in society, that it is not a morally sacrosanct
sphere. At the 2005 Biennial, you explicitly showed up the problems
and unfair aspects of the Biennial structure itself, by announcing all
of the internal details, as well as the rules and sanctions for breaking
them over the loudspeakers at the Arsenale entrance. Likewise with
your interventions you have always taken into account the social,
aesthetic and economic aspects of the institutional framework, your
interventions causing institutions and art viewers to engage in self-re-
flection. This is also true of your work in the 90s, when you paid people
to carry out meaningless actions or to allow themselves to be humil-
iated as part of a performance. You do not construct reality through
conventional means such as painting, sculpture, video or photogra-
phy. You create realities. In this regard, you also once said that your
work is always horizontal and never vertical. In 245 m3, you go one
step further. The threat is real. Why was it so important to you that
the concentration of carbon monoxide really be deadly?

SIERRA_ Very real and very everyday too. Everyday like our
tendency to ignore the suffering of others as long as we benefit
from it. No one is going to pay more euros for coffee. Fuck cof-
fee growers and fuck them not because we hate them but sim-
ply because of pure and simple apathy. We dont care about the
coffee growers. They are not going to spoil our coffee. On the
possible reality of the situation, well I really believe that art is
always using rhetorical tricks and effects, like in the Baroque

129
mirror. Living always surrounded by the possibility of death is
in our nature. It goes without saying that we will die if were
driving at 80 miles per hour on a highway and we turn right
when the curve turns left. The maneuver could end with our
life. The possibility of dying is as ordinary as waiting for a traf-
fic light to change and stepping forward at the wrong moment,
it appears when we disobey the law. We live with that because,
even though it is instrumentalized, in reality no one activates
it. It is in our nature. Ones own death will come and we see
that through the death of others. The rhetorical trick here is
making the ordinary appear poisonous. That is how we identify
harm in our way of life, through a smoke that is not innocent
because it is ordinary. Every element of security and protection
creates a stronger sense of danger. But it has to be said that all
this is made as art, which means that risk is being stressed while
everything is actually under control. We havent left our symbolic
space. Everything is still innocuous, it is art. On the other hand,
we didnt want to abandon the idea of the deadly impact of every-
day life, the real roots of death. This project could have been made
in a much gentler way, with the intention of making the audi-
ence feel comfortable about it. With the intention of pleasing
the audience so they would think favorably of me and end up
thinking as I do because their status as neutral onlookers was
respected. I never have that intention. I dont proselytize. I have
an appalling opinion of any kind of proselytism. Not only about
religious proselytism, but particularly about ideological proselyt-
ism, which is the one that could affect me most, in which people
have tried to include me the most. The works that I create always
try to trigger the audiences own point of view, to awaken the min-
imum political animal that they might have inside. Therefore, in
this case I took the minimum conditions of danger and terror
to an extreme. For instance, one of the things that brings on the
fear of flying is that people have to put their lives in the hands

130
of the pilot. These people often fear situations in which some-
one else is made responsible for their lives. This point has been
a good source of inspiration for me. The person leaves the adequate
performance of the breathing apparatus or the correct concentra-
tion of fumes in the hands of someone else. Carbon monoxide
is lethal. It is really harmful, and nevertheless it is very ordinary.
I have chosen something ordinary because the only death that
can be spoken of and to which we will pay attention is our own.
The audience is usually not comfortable with my work and I have
the feeling that I am carrying out some kind of poetic revenge. For
my 300 Tons work, in Bregenz, I thought that political artworks usu-
ally include the name of the person who is causing the problem.
They do so, and a lot, because it is a way of gaining a sympathetic
audience, since blaming someone else for the problem makes all
the other actors innocent. In Bregenz, on the other hand, the peo-
ple in the audience were the problem. Their own weight could
bring about the destruction of the building, so I wanted to create
a feeling, as I have always tried to do, of not talking about someone
else, of not talking about what we imagine, that our own behavior
has certain consequences, our own body has certain limitations.
I believe that you cant talk about this unless there is a very strong
feeling of distress involved. Recently I presented a piece with
a jewelry maker in Madrid, the jewels made of gold read Gold
Traffic Kills, and the ones with diamonds read Diamond Traffic
Kills. Gold and diamonds are something which everyone wears,
which a worker might give to his or her partner for their anniver-
sary, or they are considered simply innocent and beautiful. Nev-
ertheless, we know very well how this market works, and how the
market, in its move to obtain a material that is almost non-exist-
ent, is reaching brutal extremes, very serious extremes of exploita-
tion and death. Relating the object with its means of production is
something that has interested me in many of my pieces. Situating
the object as the source of guilt.

131
WAGNER_ You are constantly hitting a raw nerve. The images that
you create in your projects are direct, uncompromising and clear.
Many critics accuse you of creating radical works.

SIERRA_ No, my work is not activism at all, and it is definitely

not radical. Lets not forget that I dont do my projects alone, in
every project I work with curators and teams that are not radi-
cal at all, and who work in well-established institutions. Every
collector of my work is also what keeps me talking. There are
no radical collectors; how can we believe that there are radical
artists? There are some people who simply share some of my
points of view. I say very little, I just show a little astonishment
before the general indifference to certain topics. In other ways,
I am perfectly integrated. Contemporary art usually doesnt care
about work and guilt because, if any of its members were ever
working class, they have forgotten it already, and the rest dont
even know what am I talking about. They think it is something
related to sadism, I dont know, to tell the truth.

WAGNER_ Insofar as you work with the same methods that you
criticize, you do not only raise the question of human dignity, but
you also consciously appear as part of the problem. You rob art of its
apparent innocence and also make the art scene look itself in the mir-
ror by bringing political, social or sexual repression into the otherwise
sacrosanct (from a moral point of view) and supposedly politically
correct sphere of art. Yet critics also accuse you of being cynical, as you
use the same methods that you denounce.

SIERRA_ Its true, the most common question I am asked, and

it still reveals a lot, is: Isnt criticizing capitalism by reproduc-
ing its methods contradictory? It is revealing for the following
reasons: 1. The person who raises the question is situating him-
self or herself beyond the system, in a limbo where such misery

132
doesnt exist. They make it clear that they dont belong to the
system. Does the interviewer live in a libertarian commune? No,
they have benefited from the system and are annoyed with what
I say. 2. If they ask me why am I doing this within the system it is
because they assume that there are other possibilities. What pos-
sibilities? Are there other methods? Because if they know how
our culture can survive without exploitation, they should share
the secret. They know they dont, but they wont say anything
because they are doing great. When the line was drawn they hap-
pened to be on the good side. They are beneficiaries of the system
and they dont care where their wealth is coming from, or are
just too lazy to find out. 3. Is it because working in the way I do
seems like exploitation to you? Leaving aside the unhappy lives
of the working class, or the lives of those on the margins who
have been totally robbed and are already disposable, for whom
getting a tattoo is no more than a teenage hobby, well, maybe he
or she believes that when they see a battle between French and
Prussia on tv the people that appear lying on the ground playing
dead are not in the capitalist system. Maybe they are French and
Prussian! Do people ask these questions to Mr. Spielberg? Or
are they asking me to shut up? It is only that he or she is a bene-
ficiary of the system and has left all dealings with the exploited
and the disposable to the foreman. 4. That is precisely what Im
talking about. There is no contradiction, that is what Im saying.
There is nothing outside the system and the system is exploitation,
therefore the people in the system are roughly divided between the
exploited and the exploiters. I can say it louder, but I cant say it
clearer: us, the world of culture, are on the winning team, we are,
surprise, surprise, the exploiters. That all this generates some
feeling of guilt seems too little. Nothing. We know that the jailer
never enjoys complete freedom, and that the exploiter is also
exploited in a pyramid that has money at its apex. The citizens of
the usa, in whose name so many barbarities have been committed,

133
have better social security than the one in Paraguay, and thats
it. Thats all they benefit. They are being cheated. So I am trying
to move the audience to have that tiny feeling of guilt, without
excluding myself from the task. Because I am also a beneficiary
of the current state of affairs, and therefore I am guilty. And I am
guilty but I have also been cheated, because I have not decided
anything. No one really decides anything. I am not situating
myself outside of the scene, like the omniscient narrator in 19th
century bourgeois novels. I know Im implicated and I know the
extent of my benefits, because I know how much money I have
in my wallet. I am stating clearly that we know we are exploiters,
that I am also one of them and that we are not going to do any-
thing really serious about it. Any attempt to analyze the situation
which doesnt have saving the face of the analyst as its goal, will
prove that this is obvious. Our only collective project is to place
ourselves as individuals as high as possible. No avant-garde, no
critical conscience, no nothing, run for your lives. The misery
of others is a good stimulus for keeping our privileges, so look
at the part Im playing in all this. Because no matter how clearly
I say things in my work, the interviewers question comes back
again and again, because its easier to pretend not to hear. Not
to me, what we dont want to hear are the noises that come from
beyond the grave.

Hannover, March 4, 2006

Published in Spanish and English in Santiago Sierra, vol. 1, Mlaga, cac, 2006.

134
Jewels Collection. Designed by Chus Burs. Madrid, Spain. February 2006.
The Corridor of Peoples House. The House of the People. Bucharest,
Romania. October 2005.
 MINHEA MIRCAN, 2006

MIHNEA MIRCAN_ I propose that we start from the subject matter

of the piece you made in Bucharest which, as opposed to most of your
previous projects, was not labor; it was not about what people would do
for a certain amount of money, under certain circumstances, not about
portraying or holding up a mirror to economic or social disparity.
While incorporating that, The Corridor of Peoples House involved
the broader idea of the nation, in this case the Romanian nation: its
relation to itself in recent history, its self-perception, as well as the trans-
national representation of that particular reality and social context.

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ I believe that, in order to make this pro-

ject comprehensible, this conversation should try to reproduce the
process that was actually followed in making this piece. The pro-
cess started by considering the curators concerns regarding the
place where the piece was to be made. If we take that into account,
as well as my own stereotyped image of Romania, the work that
evolved from it was something almost unavoidable. If we also con-
sider the circumstances and the conditions which I found there,
we could say it was the only possible piece that could have been
made. What I mean is that, often I work in spaces with white
walls, which are identical to each other and to every other space
of that kind; while at other times I deal with exceptional spaces
a Baroque building, a church, or something like that. How-
ever, there is yet another kind of exhibition space, where curators

137
call me because they want to deal with difficult conceptual and
political situations, under conditions that saddle the work with
an enormous burden. This burden goes beyond the artistic and,
in those situations, I am being used as an artistic means for some
other end. I believe that this conversation should start there,
focusing on the general first, then the specific, so we can accu-
rately arrive at the piece by merely describing the circumstances
of the place in which it was produced. What I mean is that there
are several different kinds of spaces: there are neutral spaces
which give you more room for maneuver, because they are not
so loaded with contingencies, and where you can just place what-
ever you want; and there are also spaces which have particular
formal features. But there is yet another kind of space, where the
space as such doesnt matter anymore; its connotations are so
strong that you just have to ignore it. I would even say that work-
ing in certain countries is a handicap because doing so means
that you must deal with the country itself. You dont have the
option of not working with that country because its nationality is
very heavy. It has such a heavy presence that it becomes unavoid-
able. But when you arrive in a country like Cuba or Colombia, or
in a country like this one, the context is so heavy that the people
in the art world cannot avoid being Cuban or being Romanian.
And the artist that comes from abroad cannot avoid working with
very radical components, which involve acknowledging his or her
place of origin, acknowledging where he or she is coming from
and where he or she is. In those cases, the curator is passing on
a problem to me that conditions the piece to such an extent that
the amount of overdetermination only leaves one possibility for
action, and there is only one possible piece.

MIRCAN_ So your strategy in such contexts is to immerse yourself in

a sea of problems, to accumulate or register the particular determina-
tions of the place and channel them into the work

138
SIERRA_ There are places that lead you to the one and only pos-
sible piece. For instance you have a place with as many conno-
tations as the Spanish Pavilion in the Venice Biennale: it was so
over-determined that only one piece could be made there. Spaces
of this kind are often the outcome of supreme historical brutal-
ity, but the House of the People in Bucharest holds the Guinness
Record. Building it meant that a third of the city was destroyed
to obtain a useless and gigantic thing, which worked as a symbol
of power, a symbol of bleeding power, a place that stands for the
entire generation that was coerced into producing it. It is some
sort of totem of evil, of terror in the city; it is very heavy, very
politically loaded. This goes so far that people have hallucinations
of the soldiers that died during its construction, and everything
that happens around it is interpreted in terms of the negativity
of the building. It is so huge, and you have to walk so much,
that you get tired when you go to pee. Then, the X-Files kind of
interpretation arises: they say the building drains your energy
because there is some sort of paranormal evil locked within its
walls. The building is a great monument to the exploitation of the
masses, to the defeat of the left, to its transformation into fascism
with social inclinations We had to work with this building, and
there wasnt any other way. We also worked with a city that has
a general feeling of sadness about it, of fear, or even an immensely
bad vibe. We are talking about the ruin of Romania, about the
attempts made by this country to enter an international context
where its role is not yet clear, and where its greatest expectation is
to become an Adidas sweatshop for the rest of Europe, a provider
of cheap and obedient labor. The people know that, that their
options are to emigrate or to endure the storm, which means they
have to fix a country that has no hope of ever being fixed. Lets
not forget that Romania has been an exemplary country when
it comes to European barbarity. When it assimilated fascism, it
was the most fascist of all; when it assimilated communism,

139
it was the most communist; and we shall expect that, when it
becomes neoliberal, it will be the most neoliberal of all. Of course,
that burden will be carried on the back of the Romanian people,
the people that has its House in Bucharest.
New sacrifices are to be expected, and you can see that on
the street. The people, as a mass or as a nation, know that they
are obeying orders, performing a role in a theater play written for
the masses. Western Europe perceives Romania as a country of
beggars. Certainly, the Romanian immigrant can be seen on the
streets of Europe asking for work or for charity, I dont see a differ-
ence. There, in the West, is where the immigrant discovers his
or her new potential nationality as a wetback or his or her role
as a simple pedestrian of history. Europe has a relationship with
Romania: it says that theyre just the poor relations, the losers in
European history. The European Union is nothing but a pirates
club with a monument in a public square where there is no room
for landlubbers. There, you will only be respected if you have
been a really mean bastard. Just look at its members, they are all
the saints in pirate heaven: the English, the French, the Dutch,
the Germans, the Portuguese, the Spanish, etc. Romanians have
a very strong feeling of defeat; they have only been mean bas-
tards to their own people and to some gypsies that happened to
be passing by. On the one hand they do not recognize themselves
when they have to play that role, but on the other they are forced
to do it; they stand on the edge of a cliff and are forced to do
it. When an entire nation is willing to become a sweatshop and
start making jeans, branded clothes or tvs, it is a nation that has
been forced into begging. I dont see a big difference between
large-scale unqualified labor and begging. There isnt a big dif-
ference between working for a few coins and outstretching your
empty hand. Then, if we bring all these elements together, we
have the piece. I know this situation, I recognize it. I was born in
a Third World country. Spain was under Francos dictatorship,

140
in the Europe of the 1970s a country was run by a General. The
brutality it is hard for the new generations to grasp something
so absurd, how something like that, something so brutal, could
happen. But it happened. Spain was a bleak place with not much
of a future before it became a country of cheerful summer wait-
ers and real estate agents. It was a gray country of double-jobbing
pen-pushers, of people that could not see a future, and that fed on
the collective projection of an American paradise or a French para-
dise where people could even watch porn films. Therefore, I know
the feeling, I recognize myself in it. I even recognize myself more
than I do in other countries, maybe because of the racial similar-
ity or maybe because of the significant similarities between one
dictator and another, though its not a competition.
I dont know, there are many things that make you see
close cultural ties. Then, I was also projecting my own historical
milieu. Spain is not the country of Pedro Almodvar and Joaqun
Corts, or not only that. It is a place that has welcomed cheap
labor after it got tired of exporting losers throughout the world.
In Mexico there are many Spanish people from those times, ask
them how fond they are of a country that condemned them either
to death or to exile. All these elements, of course, are incorpo-
rated into the piece.

MIRCAN_ I remember now your reaction in a conversation we had

earlier. It struck me when you said that you did not come here to save
Romania, you came here to film it, to present an image that would
incorporate all the strands of your research, without pointing to the
possibility of change. This is consistent with the fact that you establish
a very clear difference between the activist and artist, even though
currently this difference tends to be blurred, with many people describ-
ing themselves as activists and artists. You say that art is a profession
like any other, so to that extent a part of the system, and positioning it
against the system, as activism does, is Utopian and powerless.

141
SIERRA_ It is quite obvious that the artist makes art, it is a tru-
ism, but it still should be stated because, supposedly, the artist
only makes models. But the artists main activity is producing art,
and art is a luxury object, it is an object that is associated with the
representation of a particular social group that has to do with
the supply of archetypes, with the production of other objects
that are needed and demanded by society. That society is not the
whole of society, but only its higher body lets call them the
most favored classes, the ones that offer employment. What they
are buying are jewels, luxury articles. Art is like a pretentious fur-
niture store or a complicated jewel. It might be a complex jewel,
but first and foremost it is a luxury object. Therefore, it is quite
hard to see how someone who sells Cartier or Mercedes Benz
can be an activist. This creates a very strange situation, because
when the artist speaks about his or her political commitment,
people might find the idea of trying to save the universe through
fine jewelry branded Me preposterous. It doesnt seem logical
or right. We may regard this as hypocrisy, or assume that the
ultimate purpose of the activist artist is just talking about him-
self or herself, setting forth his or her own model. If I said, as
Hans Haacke did, that Mercedes Benz was doing business with
Apartheid South Africa and he said it when that South Africa
still existed it would seem that, at the same time, I also mean
that Im this really cool guy who wouldnt do such a thing, that
if I had the chance I wouldnt do business in that context. Finally,
a model has been set forth, the model of the artist that shows us
how to be left-wing, how to make money and still be cool. I really
dont have that much interest in positioning myself as a model,
even if I understand that I am one. I am a model because of many
things, because I am an eccentric Spaniard who lives in Mexico,
and Mexico still sounds like a country of bandits and revolutions,
filled with angry Indians and nutcases with guns there-
fore it sounds like one of us has managed to be integrated into

142
an authentic environment, which is something the rest havent.
The authentic, whatever that might be, has been the Holy Grail
ever since the time of the hippies. In fact, there are always ways
to be a model. The truth is, however, that I dont really like that
part of the art world, of my job, and I do it unwillingly. So I make
luxury goods, but I feel guilty for doing so. I am often generous
in sharing this guilt with my audience. You never buy just an
artwork, you buy other things at the same time. In my case it is
clear that what is being sold is a vision of the cancer-ridden Lat-
in-American societies and the clear trail left by the international
class struggle. Nothing new there. Then, what the collector is buy-
ing is like the divine touch, as in diva and not as in divinity.
The relic retains some of the sanctity of the person who made it or
touched it; it might even be a part of the saints body. Art retains
something of the artists biography, like in the exemplary lives of
the Catholic doctrine, and I must transmit something in that direc-
tion. If I didnt do it, there would be no interview and no exhi-
bition. But basically I find that role very uncomfortable because
I am not speaking about that. I do not want to build an individual
mythology, I dont want to put myself forward as an example of
anything, because, by myself, I am not an example of anything, it
is the art that speaks. As a person, as Santiago Sierra the person,
I am a reactionary, as what interests me me, myself and I is liv-
ing comfortably, enjoying my possessions and having an easy-go-
ing and stable future. I just want to be left to watch tv quietly for
a while I mean, individual or reflexive thoughts are always con-
servative. I deeply respect activists, but Im not one of them.

MIRCAN_ You distrust the subversive capabilities of art, yet you real-
ize that I invited you here to create a subversive situation or a critical
mass, to destabilize the building in its real and symbolic architecture.
Is there any meaning to what we are doing, or are we just contenting
ourselves with staging a minor incident, which in fact leaves things

143
the building, the old and new powers that inhabit it, the questions
that resonate here so insistently untouched?

SIERRA_ The only thing I take from here is, again, a confir-
mation of how things stand. I dont know what could be sub-
versive for the audience or for the people who took part in the
performance. We had around 390 women I think there were
more but we were unable to register all of them who didnt
think it was so bad to beg for a couple of hours and get six
euros in exchange. What we have here is the confirmation of
what Ive found in other places and in other countries. I would
say that, instead of creating subversion, we are confirming,
yet again, the falsity of all liberatory maximalisms, of all the
maximalisms of human emancipation. We are confirming how
fucked up the planet is. I repeat that I deeply respect the people
who respond to an unfavorable situation in a radical way, those
who face it with political weapons and those who try to fight
their way out of it with violence. I dont want to include myself
in that, I couldnt. I make art. Truly I am nothing but a snob,
and that is how any worker would see me, as a snob, because
thats what they call someone who makes art, as well as some-
one who shows off on a catwalk. I dont think that there is any
more to it, but I thank you for your expectations.

MARIANA DAVID_ What did you think art could change or in

what way?

MIRCAN_ Under Destruction is a long-term bone of contention

with the House of the People and the trauma inbuilt here. I imagined
it as a strategy of repossession, of vindication, that could in time lead
to a change in the collective perception of the place. The project tries to
open up holes and breaches in the walls of the House, it tries to look
at its history differently, contest the assumptions on which it was

144
built and contaminate it with other meanings. It is a perfect observa-
tory for recent political life and recent history in general. But coming
back to the piece, you generally create an image where evil is isolated
and highlighted. It is clear what is wrong in the picture, who is doing
what and for how much, but the visitor is always aside, always looking.
Even if you create a situation that is uncomfortable for the visitors, it
generally isnt aggressively so. In the piece you did in Bucharest, the
visitors were incredibly uncomfortable. There was a strong theatrical
element to the piece because the visitors were inside the performance
and an integral part of it, which in a way created and dispersed
guilt, be it the guilt of not being able to give money to all those women
asking for it, or the guilt of being Romanian. So I sense a relation
between the One Person piece you made in Trento and the one you
did in Bucharest, because the visitor seems to be more drawn into
the piece, physically and morally engulfed in it. The visitor used to be
isolated, asking his or her questions at a safe distance from the person
paid to do a useless and demeaning job. In Bucharest the geography of
evil, the way of staging it was more complicated.

SIERRA_ Well, I have always considered the audience as a part

of the piece, because it is a material on which you work, very
much as a sculptor might work with clay. Yes, there are some
reactions you can foresee, you know the spectators circum-
stances, you know how the art world works and through what
means they approach it. You know the rules of the game, the
opening hours, and so on. I have always been interested in play-
ing with that medium, in altering it. When I think of the possi-
bilities for filling a sculptural space with objects, I am aware that
there is a specific cost, cost x. But filling the same space with
people costs x divided by two. Filling it with people is cheaper
than filling it with containers for instance, and so I start filling
spaces with people who are cheap and plentiful. Then you have
the question of how you display people to other people and that

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is very simple: to display a person to another person, they have
to be different; there must be a substantial difference between
the one who is in the audience and the one who is being shown;
one is there for work and the other for leisure. And there are also
thousands of factors involved that make it even more powerful.
In the New York piece you had one person that worked for 15
days on one side, and on the other, you had persons that looked
at that work but didnt see it, because they only had a wall in front
of them. In this case we cannot claim that there was only one
person behind the wall, because there were others: the audience,
that is, there was a confrontation between two particular realities,
and that is what makes the piece for me. In the case at hand, the
parallel you see between Trento and Bucharest is something that
I did consider indeed. I had been doing pieces where the problem
was that you could not get into the places, in Lisson Gallery for
instance, the access was blocked. Then I realized that the funda-
mental problem of the masses nowadays, contemporary masses,
is not so much about access although its a problem too but
that once we have accepted the rules and are in the game, we
cannot forget about the rules. That is what happened in Trento,
when you were in the middle of the corridor you could not say:
I dont want to do this anymore, Im leaving, because there
were no exit doors, so you had to keep on walking and follow the
game all the way. The same thing happens here, once you were
in the tunnel, there was no turning back; you couldnt get out
the back, you could only get out once you had gone through the
whole thing. I believe that this explains circumstances in Roma-
nia really well, but also situations like the one that was happening
on the border between Morocco and Spain when we were work-
ing on this piece, where the problem of the sub-Saharan people
at the border, trying to jump the fence, was to get out of their
tunnel, to abandon the rules of a game that someone else had
made and then had imposed upon them. At one point someone

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decided that colonialism was too expensive, and that it would be
much better to support violent governments and plunder the
entire wealth of Africa while investing nothing. So the sub-Saha-
ran people affected found themselves incapable of abandoning
the rules of the game: you cannot get out of the corridor and that
is where I am trying to take the audience. Of course, you have
touched upon an issue that is fundamental in my work, the feel-
ing of guilt. That is where the photographs of the women come
in. In the pictures we took, the women have their back to us,
theyre not facing us; because this idea of guilt is clear with this
image, of hiding their identity, that youre better off not showing
your face, not getting caught or being located all that is very
clear with this image and it is strongly associated with the images
that we took of the women with their backs turned, taken like
in an id photo. They are like an id photo because that is when
identity is at the service of bureaucracy. They are seen from the
back because that identity is collective, it is a common identity,
and there is shame in it, shameful behavior within society the
behavior that a beggar might have, or a worker or even an artist
who works for the greater glory of capital.

MIRCAN_ You mentioned other projects that you have done in other
contexts where nationalities are very strong, places like Cuba or Colom-
bia. Could you elaborate on how you integrate the idea of a nation in
your work?

SIERRA_ Yes, of course. Nationalities well, they are ideological

constructions that should normally be innocuous; I have no idea
of what the flag of Luxembourg looks like. However, there are
places where they are not innocuous at all, in which they have
force and spectacular weight. An Austrian artist might entertain
himself or herself with very vague subjects. He or she could, for
instance as some actually do, build their entire work on the

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difference between the private and the public, and arrive at sit-
uations based on solipsism and endogamous assumptions. But
there are situations and countries where there is no way out,
every Cuban artist is Cuban-like and every Colombian artist is
Colombian-like, it is even very difficult for the Mexicans not to do
this. There is a group of Mexicans that doesnt do it, but they had
to adopt other nationalities. A well-known art critic even said that
there was a whole generation of Americans born in Mexico. Im
talking about nationalities that are really heavy and that are brutally
defined. How have I dealt with this? Well, for instance, we have
a whole country like Cuba where the legal salary is 30 euros per
month at most. A lot, isnt it? And where the population knows
that the best they can do is to follow the tourists and give them
everything they want. In those latitudes and with that heat they
usually want sex. I offered 30 euros, or maybe less, I cant remem-
ber now yes, Im sure it was less to some Cubans for mas-
turbating in front of me, for offering me sex. That 30 euros was
more than they could expect to earn in a month; the piece was
clearly tied to the context of Cuba, it was not possible to ignore
that fact, or separate out the piece from it. Another example: Cali
is a city in the north of Colombia that is surrounded by guerril-
las. It has atrocious problems. Until recently it was dangerous to
leave the city because of miraculous fishing, which is the name
given to hostages who are taken captive by guerrillas, by paramil-
itaries, by common delinquents or, to the despair of Colombi-
ans, by different combinations of those groups. In this context,
I hung a us flag, 20 meters long and 15 meters wide, on the
faade of the museum [Tarpaulin Suspended from the Faade of
a Building, 2002]. Obviously that flag was meant to generate a situ-
ation where the local nationality clashed with the imperial nation-
ality, and thats what happened. Someone tried to burn the flag.
I knew that was going to happen simply because the local popula-
tion could not see that flag as something abstract, in a Jasper Johns

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kind of way. If I had put that flag in Finland, a certain intellectual
separation from the symbol could have been expected, leading to
some sort of quiet analysis. But in a situation like the one in Cali
there is no possible peace, there is no possible tranquility, the flag
is an element that will be enthusiastically applauded by one part
of the population, and most transparently loathed by the rest. The
only possible outcome of that piece was that someone tried to burn
the flag, as they did. These are examples of projects where nation-
ality has been like a wake of vultures circling over the project.
The project in Bucharest has also been made to speak about
this place. There are certain elements that have been fundamen-
tal for me. For example: I arrive in the museum, and I notice
that the curator hates the place where he works, transmitting
to me this feeling of utter aversion; they want to work with the
place but they dream of destroying it. The most obvious solution
is to go through the place without seeing it and thats what we
have done. We have built a tunnel from the access gate to the
exit. You go through the place but you dont see it. If we sim-
ply wanted to deny it, we would have made the piece in some
remote square in Bucharest, far enough away from this context.
However, we wanted to make it here and make our profound
dislike for the place palpable enough. That is where the corridor
is coming from. Also theres the security at the door because we
are in the seat of government, a building shared by the museum
with the two chambers of congress. So there is a strict security
check at the door. This was the key element of the building for
me. It is not just any building, any museum, and the security
is not like the one you would normally have in museums. It is
a political kind of security, with constant changes of guards to
prevent them from forging friendships with the people working
inside, that is, an absolute control that shows how bureaucratic
the building is and makes it even more powerful, like something
heavy. It followed that this bureaucracy also had to be included

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in the project: the security at the gate was marking a rhythm for
us, the rhythm of the entrance defined by the magnetic bands
and the scanning of all the material that goes into the museum.
That rhythm had to be preserved, as well as the one created by the
fact that only one person can enter at a time because of the metal
detector. The atmosphere that surrounds the museum, including
all those stories I mentioned before, was also acknowledged. The
more or less gloomy stories had to be also included, therefore the
piece has shades of a horror movie. I have been thinking about
this idea and trying to put social terror into the art world, the ter-
ror of being infected by the poverty of others and ending up like
them. This is what classism feeds upon, and it is also what we
find in zombie films: a mass of desperate people who want us to
become like them. That was also included in the piece, which is
like a zombie film. All those stories were told to me in a shame-
ful tone: these are our circumstances, this is our country, now
work with it. That is why we had to talk about the building, with
all its elaborate stories of ghostly apparitions. The people that
work here project their own knowledge of the history of the place
onto the space, thinking that they are able to see those who died
during the construction of the building. Everything is interpreted
negatively, as evil, as something from a horror movie. We even
had the mass apparition of worms at the entrance of the building.
It actually happened. All these elements came together in a piece
that could not have been different; I cannot imagine any other
piece here. I would say that Mihnea has also made the piece, and
that he should tell his part of the story.

MIRCAN_ The House is a good place for discussing the question of

nationality. The statistical Romanian oscillates between the idea that
the House is big and resplendent on the one hand and, on the other
hand, the shame of its history, of dictatorship and submission, as rapidly
as he or she alternates in their perception of the nation, between a severe

150
inferiority complex and spates of superiority. There is a combination of
pride and shame in both, and the fact that they colluded in the project
is very significant. The women in the tunnel were proud because I told
them that they were participating in a piece made by the greatest artist
alive. But they were also ashamed because that artist was making them
ask for money. They created a choir in which all those things were side by
side, simultaneously present. Another difference to your previous work is
that they took advantage of the freedom you gave them, a freedom that
your performers normally do not have. You had less control than ever
over this project, you couldnt supervise them constantly, so some of them
took advantage of that freedom and didnt do their job very strictly.

SIERRA_ Of course, in building the pyramids of Egypt a few gen-

erations of workers died too, and no one is losing sleep over that.
The people who cant conceive such a collective effort just turn
to aliens. It seems that aliens work for free and very well, they
are the Chinese of the universe. The Egyptians are very proud
of the pyramids, and it is just a matter of time before the Roma-
nians will be proud of their pathetic masterpiece. You say that it
is already happening. Historical amnesia or boredom There is
still a lot more to say on the historical role of the masses, and on
how they played their part. This idea is derived mostly from my
experience in Mexico, where the acarreado is a politically active
figure. It is what they call the people that go to political rallies
just to fill them up. It is something I knew about before; I knew it
existed in Spain although I hadnt experienced it. They gave these
people a sandwich, got them on a bus and took them to the Pala-
cio de Oriente to cheer: Franco, Franco, Franco. It was always
like that, always three times. I think this figure of the acarreado is
behind my first projects with multitudes, since it explains what
things are like and how they work. It is a multitude that is forced
to act under the orders of its superiors: now we will act, we will
fill the Office of us Economic Interests in Havana with flags,

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or we will fill the Zcalo in Mexico City with other flags, with
another leader, whatever they say. Who will give us something?
This is mass begging, in a movement induced politically from the
top. This play is rehearsed everywhere in different ways and with
different actors. But how is the role played? Of course, no matter
how hard those in power try, the crowd is not made up of profes-
sional actors acting for them is just about extra income, a lunch
for free. Even if society at large or the politicians try to make them
act like a multitude of actors, they are not really actors. For me, the
advantage of bad actors is that they let their opinions show when
following the text. Bad actors are transparent. They cannot play
the role well because they give away who they are. If the text reads
Give me a piece of bread, or Give me some change, they also
state what their opinion is on giving that change. The bad actor is
perfect. We had a situation in which we forced a multitude to play
a role, and where, insofar as that role was not played properly, we
had elements of dissension with the established script.
Those moments were perhaps the most interesting. There
was a group that would not accept the rules even if they needed
the money and they were going to charge for doing the job they
would not accept that role. Of course those attitudes were mini-
mal, and even if the women didnt play their part properly, or did
it in a relaxed way, they stayed. They stayed, they would not leave,
and therefore we cannot delude ourselves about that kind of dis-
sent. They stayed in the tunnel even if they didnt agree with the
role. I guess that would be the most noteworthy part of this piece:
nobody left. Acting has been very important and taking theater
as a starting point is derived not only from history, but from the
place itself. What we have here is actually a gigantic set. The build-
ing seems to be built from solid rock and is a vague imitation
of a Versailles style, but it is made of nothing but concrete, it is only
a faade. When a stone falls you see that the inner structure has
nothing solid about it, it is just plaster, loose bricks, rubble, iron

152
bars, etc.; like any historic building it is not what it seems. Then all
this theatricality of the building, with its enormous and unneces-
sary spaces, was also included in the piece. As a matter of fact the
piece began with a curtain, like in a theater, and people came to see
a performance. So theater as a political tool, as something politi-
cally instrumentalized, was crucial for this piece. Vertically induced
pride through national theater and humiliation that stems from the
obsession that people have with remembering things. Problems
typical of second-class actors and first-class pieces.

MIRCAN_ Why did you decide that the performance would start at
midnight?

SIERRA_ There is a thing that marked me very deeply a long time

ago. At that time I wanted to show my work, and I had never gotten
an exhibition, but a friend of mine had already. I celebrated one
of these occasions by giving him a present, and afterwards I felt
ridiculous. He treated me like I was completely nave, and said
to me Youre being silly, nothing ever happens at an exhibition,
nothing goes on, there is nothing that could happen, its simply
an exhibition. It is like when a banker goes to the office. Well,
artists go to exhibitions to sell what they have been making in the
studio, we could say that they are just collecting their pay. This is
quite hard to admit, and if you want the audience to do something
you have to force them. If you want something to happen you have
to make it happen. There is a lot of wholesale information, the
channels of distribution of art are rigid and narrow, there are rules,
and there are lots more rules in an artistic institution than outside
of it, than in the street. Anything that could happen is abolished,
or minimized; it is closed. Therefore, changing the things that
are taken for granted is a good way of disarming the audience,
for example the schedule and socialization. That is, if a visitor
arrives at midnight to see an exhibition, it is not the same thing

153
as going at midday. You can play with this. Of course you can. If
the person comes at midnight, he or she might think that some-
thing fun is going to happen, like a party, something that includes
all of the characteristics associated with nighttime. He or she
might even get there in a cheerful mood. Then, if what I want is
to transmit a feeling of dislike about the place, even to provoke
an almost cathartic reaction where you reject the roles assigned
to you, I will try to undo the plot implicit in something as widely
accepted as opening hours, to undo the plot where you arrive at
this harmless and politically correct social event at noon. Instead
I will try to disappoint the audience by making them believe that
they are going to a party and, instead, sending them into this sin-
ister place. The other point is that the visitors go in one by one.
It is something that I did in Trento for the first time, and I want
to use it more. I think it is a very good strategy because, when
visitors go in together, they socialize, and because they socialize
the tension created by the piece is shared, banalized and dimin-
ished. You share the tension caused by the piece with someone,
and this tension is diluted. When you are alone, you dont have
anyone to share with and so the load is much bigger, and that is
something that I also wanted to include in the piece, it was like
seeing a play all by yourself, surrounded. Well, it was not like
that, it was that. Its a very strong sensation I once had with a band
of musicians. Many times ideas dont come from art, but from
things that happen outside art spaces. I remember I was alone
on the beach, in Cuba. I went to a bar around six oclock in the
evening and, at that time, by orders of the government because
all the bars belong to the government a band had to play. The
band had to follow these orders and it didnt matter if there was
an audience or not. They started playing at six and that was it. So,
all of a sudden, I discover that there is a group of around 20 musi-
cians who are playing salsa just for me, and I love salsa. There
was nobody else, just me sitting in the bar, and thats the idea

154
I wanted to use. I was disarmed,I could not enjoy myself having all
those people working only for me. There were also too many wait-
ers, in Latin America there are always too many waiters, too many
gas pump attendants, too many everything. I was ashamed and
baffled, and simply from that experience I clearly understood the
political structure of the country and how it worked. Well, of the
country or of the entire continent, I had this massive group of
people the kind of mass that perhaps only European coloniz-
ers in Africa might have known who were doing their best to
make my pia colada taste like heaven and achieving exactly the
opposite result. The message was clear: we are a crowd of beggars
who will give you everything for the price of your drink. Ever since
then I divide people between those who had a wonderful time in
Cuba and those who didnt. They managed to convey to me how
sold out to the capital they were, how defeated, how because
of their lack of organization they could not tell the boss that
playing at six oclock was downright insane because there was no
one there, and so how strong the hierarchies were. Its the usual
treason of the people by a regime that does everything for the peo-
ple without the people. This creation is based on that experience.
Well, no, creation is a very bad word. I think it is a very bad word
because nothing has been created here; the project is just the result
of many things brought together. You have that same sensation in
this piece. There is a massive group of people who is there just for
you. Therefore, the feeling of guilt is very strong in the audience.
The visitor has been disarmed socially, because of the time, and
because he or she is alone. And there is also a disproportional dis-
play that is centered on him or her, which gives the visitor a com-
plex, makes them feel like they are the trigger for this action, guilty.
Another element that we cannot overlook is my place of ori-
gin. People are fed up with left-wing artists, and they are also
tired of more people coming along and having a go at them. That
feeling is widespread, and it is the daily bread of my work and

155
my trips. So work was going on on this piece, of course I am,
lets say, from this Europe of the winners, and I show up here
and I tell them that there are beggars on the streets. As if they
didnt know! This causes a well-known feeling of deep rejection
towards me, of deep rejection towards the piece, and confusion
between the pieces need and reality. On the one hand visitors
realize that the subject matter indeed exists, that it is an impor-
tant issue, but on the other hand they understand that someone
is saying this, and in doing so they have a tone of superiority,
a tone of just look at yourselves, because I am superior and
I come from a totally different thing, as if they were no beggars
in my town. So the tension this generates in the audience is also
based on my place of origin, on the fact that I am a foreigner
and that, perhaps, I have money. I think that the piece makes all
these tensions collide and that was the purpose. Since I know
that there are beggars, and the audience knows it too, that is not
what the piece is about. Here we are talking about responsibility,
about guilt, about how we profit within the economic machine.

MIRCAN_ Several things happened regarding the participation of the

audience and of the actors. This piece is very different from others you
have made, as the women could keep the money people gave them, and
there was a person who approached you to tell you that she had tried
to convince the women to leave the corridor by offering them more
money than you were giving them. But they mocked her and told her
that they were making two million leis, which was not true. You told
her that that seemed fine to you, that it was a very good reaction to
your project. In that way it was an interactive piece, the visitors had
the possibility to destroy it, to alter it.

SIERRA_ If someone wanted to play Lady Di in the context of

this piece, they would have needed to act like Lady Di, carrying
a large amount of money. Therefore, since Lady Di is dead, the piece

156
was impossible to destroy. We are talking about a multitude. As
a matter of fact and even though there is a difference between the
number of people we registered and the number of people that
the organization says turned up, even in that case, a percentage
of the population of Bucharest was integrated into the piece either
as viewers or as actors. Were not joking. Were saying that if we
made an effort, in a week we would have more than 390 people
willing to do this job, and I dont know how many we could get if
we did it for a month with more money. But I am certain that any
company that carries out surveys would consider valid a survey
made on the basis of 390 people in a city the size of Bucharest.

MIRCAN_ One of the most powerful images in this project is actually

a part of the process of making it. Visitors didnt have any access at the
start, but probably some can see parts of the process in the catalogue.
There was this room in the House of the People, the Marble Hall,
with socialist rococo decoration on the walls; the people were there, the
women, probably 500. I dont want to sound sexist but every kind of
woman was there, from beautiful young girls to elderly woman, and
slowly the walls became yellow because they were impregnated with
the heat and sweat and steam and everything produced by the bodies,
perhaps this was under destruction in the sense that the walls of the
palace of the king were impregnated by the sweat of the workers. It
sounds really easy, but to me it was a very strong image. What were
the strongest images for you in this situation? What particular part
of the process struck you as important? What details did you notice?

SIERRA_ I dont know what the strongest image is. I want to talk
about something you mentioned before. It seems they were asking
in an Internet forum why they were all women. For me it is some-
thing quite clear. In any society we have determined social classes,
but if you go to the bottom of any of these women are at the lowest
level. Socially, historically, it has always been like that. Therefore,

157
for me it was justifiable to have this image of a woman, as the
person who keeps the household going and who, and at the same
time, is the one that is more tied, precisely because of those family
bonds. She is the one who has less mobility, and fewer chances of
escaping because she also represents the lowest tier. So it might be
something worth thinking about more carefully. My intention was
that the issue would be clear enough, but it isnt.

MIRCAN_ I am not actually sure but you told me this story of a beg-
gar, a woman begging somewhere in Western Europe saying she was
Romanian when she was actually from another country

SIERRA_ No, what I was telling you about was that, since the
presence of these people is so massive, it is normal to assume
that they are. Theyll say any beggar is Romanian, any. So they
are always identified this way, it doesnt matter whether they are
or not, or whether they go through life pretending theyre Roma-
nian, its that the population of European directly identifies beg-
gars with Romanians and they dont give it a second thought.
They also identify Arabs with drug dealers, and black men with
the bogeyman, and when it comes to it, they are only trying to
understand differences, or at least thats what they say.

MIRCAN_ In the press release I wrote something about a representa-

tion inside a museum that showed what a nation of beggars would
look like because, for someone coming from abroad, walking through
that corridor it was actually being inside a nation of beggars, a nation
which doesnt exist except in the collective imagination of Western
Europeans, so it was like an actualization of a clich, in a sense, it was
bringing a clich to life

SIERRA_ Lets see, what difference is there between a person that

is asking you for money on the street and a person that who has

158
succumbed to capitals most ardent desires in a factory by giv-
ing away twelve hours of his or her life a day to earn probably
exactly the same money as the person on the street? That is,
from what point of view is it shameful to beg? I dont see that
difference. I think that the person who is more subdued, more
fucked and more exploited, is precisely the one who spends
eight hours a day working. As a matter of fact, begging has
been associated with gypsies for a long time, a race that tradi-
tionally has also been associated with freedom of movement,
with not accepting rules, and with establishing their own codes,
even though, in eastern Europe, they were turned into slaves
as soon as they arrived. Therefore, which surrender is greater?
I believe that it is when the shame is greater or when all the neg-
ativity that the activity entails is greater. For me, the worker that
spends 12 hours a day sewing trousers in a factory is perform-
ing a task that is far more shameful. But who decides what is
shameful and what is not shameful? The established power and
the education we have received. It is really clear to me that a per-
son that gets out of that situation by begging instead of working
is far more noble, as are those who get out of that situation by
taking what belongs to them by force. It is better than working
for 12 hours a day in a factory; working for 12 hours in a fac-
tory is a brutal sentence, it is worse than prison, it is something
than cannot be explained, its barbaric. It is barbaric that there
are people who know that they have to get up at six oclock in
the morning and arrive home at night exhausted just to scrape
together enough money to buy a few trinkets, survive and carry
on waking up at six oclock for the rest of their lives. Dont look
at it from the patriotic side, I do not invent clichs, I just use
them because there is something about them.

MIRCAN_ Then what would be the difference between being a slave

and being a beggar?

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SIERRA_ Thats not the point, what I am trying to say is that
shame is usually associated with production. Shame is totally
associated with it and with economic interests. A beggar is
shameful because he is unproductive; a worker that is exploited
is not shameful because he is productive, so this is in our edu-
cation. In our culture we understand about having a useful role
in society even if your role is licking boots clean, you still have
a defined role within society. I am simply asking why we have
to accept this, I mean, why do we suddenly think that one thing
is more humiliating than another. I really think that the actual
humiliation is this other one, the one of work. It is useless to
ask who benefits from associating unproductiveness with shame.
Who could it be? By the way, something funny happened on Fri-
day, and its the second time something like that has happened to
me. It was the day of Saint Cuvioasa Paraschiva, the patron saint
of poor people so the project keeps branching out. There is also
the piece we did yesterday, although I dont know what public
form it will take yet or how we will make it public. We simply
recorded the sound of the museum by night for 80 minutes, with
a high fidelity microphone [Psycophony in the House of the People].
This not only tries to capture the sound of the building, but it
tries to come close to the idea of doing a psycophony. It touches
on that point which I found very interesting of the guards
who believe they see the soldiers who died building this place
roaming around everywhere. It was like listening to the political
ghostly core of the building.

MIRCAN_ It is a bit like Shakespeare, with the guards The guards

seem to be here to protect the new power from its own feelings of illegit-
imacy. There was a symbolic re-branding when the democratic parlia-
ment took over the House of the People; they said the building was not
the product of one mans terminal megalomania, but an expression
of the local construction genius. That allowed their insertion in the

160
place of the old power. As if in a local misreading of Hamlet, the ghosts
of the dead return to haunt the living. The guards with sophisticated
metal detectors, scared of ghosts that also has a theatrical quality
and adds to the mystery of the place.

SIERRA_ It makes me think of something I heard about the other

day, the history of the builder Manole, which seems to be a foun-
dational story of Romanian culture, like Romulus and Remus
in Italy. The Prince told Manole to build a church, but Manole
couldnt get it to stay standing. The structure collapsed night after
night. Then, Manole decided that the problem was that the build-
ing had no spirit, that it didnt have a soul, and that in order to
give it a soul, a sacrifice was needed. Someone had to be walled
up into the building. So it was decided that the first person that
appeared would be sacrificed within the walls to give the building
its soul. But it turns out that the first person who passed by the
following morning was his wife and children, coming to bring
Manole his breakfast. As a dutiful man, Manole walled up his
wife into the church and the building remained intact. It turned
out so well that the Prince got very excited, and wanting no one
else to have a church as beautiful as that one, he decided to kill all
the workers. Manole ended up trapped on top of a scaffold, with
no way of getting down. He finally decided to escape Icarus-style.
He got himself a pair of wings made of wood. He flew off the
building and, of course, the same thing that happened to Icarus
happened to him: his wings broke in the middle of the flight. He
fell and died, and a spring appeared on the spot where he fell.

Bucharest, October 16, 2005

Published in Spanish and English in Santiago Sierra, vol. 2, Mlaga,cac, 2006.

161
250 cm Line Tattoed on 6 Paid People. Espacio Aglutinador. Havana, Cuba.
December 1999.
 GERALD MATT, 2007

The work of Spanish-born artist Santiago Sierra, who currently

resides in Mexico City, deals with the themes of exploitation and
abuses of post-colonial labor relations. Sierra often resorts to radi-
cal methods, such as making underpaid workers perform actions
in museums and galleries; in other words, they are turned into
objects of display for money.

GERALD MATT_ A central feature of many of your works is the

seemingly useless actions that people perform and for which they are
compensated in the context of your art piece. For example, you have
people hold up a gallery wall at a 60-degree angle for four hours over
the course of five days; or in another work, 250 cm Line Tattooed
on 6 Paid People, 1999, you pay people to tattoo their bodies for
a little extra cash, they become brand-marked forever. In doing so,
you reference the well-known saying: time is money. You take this
saying literally, though the compensation does not necessarily have to
be money; it could also be a shot of heroine. How cynical is Santiago
Sierra actually?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ Generally, cynical refers to a person who

lies shamelessly. But the term can also be used in the sense of
impudent. Based on this question, I can draw conclusions
about you. Lets say you believe that the statement that laborers
work for money and sell their time is false, and that anyone who

163
makes such a statement is a liar. This, in turn, indicates a certain
level of shame in the treatment of these topics. I think that your
question reflects a pervasive attitude in the art scene, an attitude
that I would really like to distance myself from.

MATT_ As you readily admit, you use people as materials and

objects. In your work, you grapple with the social structures of labor
and compensation in a capitalist system and with the consequences of
modernity. Through various methods, you attempt to turn capitalism
into a caricature of itself. But isnt this at the expense of the poor and
underprivileged whom you expose and who are already victims of
the system?

SIERRA_ I dont caricature capitalism because I regard it as

a type of eternal damnation to which these people are subjected.
With regard to the rest, it seems that this is more of a statement
than a question that can only be confirmed or denied. Yes. When
we hire someone, we do it only with a view to using them for our
means and always to obtain some kind of benefit. Of course you
cannot refer to these people in question as the privileged of the
system. It seems right to me that you would define them as peo-
ple who are already victims.

MATT_ You know that capitalisms strength is that it can sell what-
ever it wants, even criticism against itself. As a radical critic of capi-
talism, you are also located within the art industry network, which is
part perhaps often the critical part of society and also of capital-
ism. Are you not afraid of becoming entirely consumed by the system?

SIERRA_ I have no right to present myself as a critic of capital-

ism, as that would be too optimistic of me. Therefore I am not
afraid of being consumed by the system; I have been consumed
by the system since birth.

164
MATT_ For the project at the Kunsthalle Project Space in Vienna,
you sorted thirty Viennese of ethnic backgrounds according to their
skin color. This resulted in a color spectrum ranging from light to dark
[Hiring and Arrangement of 30 Workers in Relation to their Skin
Colors, 2002]. Why did you create this specific work in Vienna? How
does this project relate to previous ones? You had also planned a pro-
ject for the ps1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, for which you
intended to line up people according to hierarchy. This project was
never realized. Can you elaborate on this?

SIERRA_ Race is a factor that doesnt have anything to do with

education, but rather genetics, and is often used when selecting
laborers. This practice is more common in a multicultural envi-
ronment than somewhere where there is a limited amount of eth-
nic diversity. I had intended to line up all employees of the ps1
according to their hierarchy within the organization not skin
color. We could have also arranged them according to skin color;
the result would have been the same. The lower-ranking employ-
ees liked the idea, while the higher-ranked ones were vehemently
opposed to it. In Vienna, as well as in the rest of the European
Union, there is a strange debate going on about race, without ever
actually naming it. There is just a gradual adaptation to a practice
that is already commonplace elsewhere, for example in New York.

MATT_ What is your take on the socio-political concept of the Brger-

arbeit, which sociologist Ulrich Beck coined in 1997? It is based on
the assumption that people who are unemployed and living in a state
with mass unemployment volunteer under the direction of a so-called
public welfare organization as a form of social engagement. Their
work is rewarded, but not monetarily compensated.

SIERRA_ I believe that Groucho Marx put it this way: I find that
to be gloriously dumb!.

165
MATT_ Within contemporary work, one can ascribe meaning to the
recipients right to act and react through participation. This also refers
to the dissolution of the traditional and static relationship between the
artwork and beholder. In your art, one is explicitly confronted with
a certain type of participation, namely with the people who receive
compensation. Normally, it is the beholder who participates; yet in
your work, the beholder is almost exclusively confronted with clas-
sical photographic and documentary work. Which role should the
beholder, visitor or recipient of your art assume?

SIERRA_ In the visual arts, the beholder is a fundamental part

of any work. Velzquez was already aware of this in his work
Las Meninas. Personally, I distinguish only between people with
different intentions who find themselves together in the same
space. It is wrong to assume that semantic meaning can only be
located where the artwork is. When the work consists of a group
of people that also includes its audience, then these people can
switch roles, because the way I see it, both embody the work in
equal parts.

MATT_ The piece Obstruction of a Freeway with a Trucks Trailer,

1998, was set up on a very busy street in Mexico City. I found this ini-
tiative to be typical for you, since it symbolically represents the inter-
ruption of dynamic structures, as in so many of your other works.
You use stylistic methods of negation. Additionally, in your works, one
encounters confrontation, futility, awkwardness, idleness, tautologies,
fatalism and even hatred. Is this your plea for more resistance and
antagonism? Or simply resignation in face of reality?

SIERRA_ Likely the latter, though one cannot forget that resig-
nation closely borders hatred, because, as Machiavelli said: Fear
and hope rob the heart of its strength.

166
MATT_ Why did you go to Mexico City? How did Mexico City change
your attitude toward art and your artistic strategies? How important is
your artistic network in Mexico City? What connects you to the work
of Teresa Margolles?

SIERRA_ I went to Mexico for many reasons. Perhaps the most

important reason was that I was becoming less and less interested
in what was happening around me. Mexico, on the other hand, had
a lot to offer. Above all, I could dive into another unbearable
reality and that drastically changes your own concept of art and
your understanding of your own attitude. While I was still in
Europe, I didnt expect Mexico to offer any connections to groups
of like-minded artists. I didnt even expect it to offer me connec-
tions to the the usual art scene; instead, I expected an opportunity
to distance myself from all of that and to be able to create inde-
pendent art. As soon as I got to Mexico, I found extraordinary art-
ists and with a vitality that was entirely unimaginable in Europe.
In addition to that, Mexico City is, on its own and on a socio-polit-
ical level, almost as complex as all the other cities together. These
two factors led to me extending my stay to now, even though
I doubt this was an entirely free choice.
I have had a very close relationship with Teresa Margolles
which has been very beneficial to our artistic growth from the
start. She isnt afraid to take her dense works, which are born
out of an inner necessity, to the limit. That is something that has
always deeply impressed me.

MATT_ Your works reflect influences from minimal art, happening,

concept art, site specific art and intervention art. You are a trained
sculptor. With regard to your works, could one speak of an extended
sculpture concept and how do you define contemporary art? To
which artistic tradition do you feel the closest affiliation? Who or what
had a particular influence on you?

167
SIERRA_ Generally speaking, I always keep the direct and con-
vincing approach of North American anti-form sculpture and
Italian arte povera in mind, as well as the radicalism of the 1970s
German authors. On the other hand, minimalism is the best
school in terms of syntax, which is why I use it as a formal foun-
dation. Another great influence on me has been direct contact
with artists of the highest authenticity like Stanley Brouwn and
Isidoro Valcrcel Medina. One influence from beyond the art
world is the organization of elements in an architectural structure
which is visible and practical and, at the same time, successful.
Mexico contributes a chaotic repertoire of forms, which reflect the
violence triggered by social conflicts.

MATT_ In Vienna you were particularly interested in the work of the

Viennese actionists. Yet, you remain personally distanced from them.
Which aspects of the Viennese actionists are relevant for your work?

SIERRA_ Actionism is relevant to me as a method. We may par-

ticipate in a discourse on drive (Trieb) and counter-conscious-
ness if I may call it that but that is only possible with the
help of a strict method and clearly defined classifications.

MATT_ You told me that you loved the freedom you had at the begin-
ning of your career in your artistic work and practice. Bound to your
career is as you said a certain biography that is increasingly
causing your work to retreat into the background and your personal-
ity to assume center stage. How will you react to this?

SIERRA_ When you work from the underground, no one pres-

sures you and no one cares about what you say and do. But this
changes as soon as your work is exhibited in a museum. The insti-
tution offers you greater feedback on your actions and, as com-
pensation, gives you a name. Now it is no longer the work that is

168
speaking, but instead I am, someone that people know this thing
or the other about. With regard to myself Santiago Sierra
possibly I can only be a reactionary, someone who looks after
his own comfort, his career and other mundane things. And that
stands in stark juxtaposition to the power of an artwork, which
says nothing about me and for which it doesnt matter who I am.
When you see xy in a museum, and then in another, soon you
stop paying attention to what the art piece is trying to say or
sometimes to xy themselves. The only possible way for me to
react is to continue working as I have until now.

Published in German in Interviews, Vienna, Kunsthalle Vienna, 2007.

Translation: Tessa Wegener.

169
Public Secreted According to Its Income Were Greater or Smaller to
Thousand Gross Euros during a Simposium. Kunstakademie. Institute
Cervantes Berln, Germany. May 2010.
 PATRICIA BLASCO, 2010

Berlin recently hosted the 4th German-Spanish cultural confer-

ence, organized by the Cervantes Institute and the Goethe Insti-
tute. Prominent figures from both countries came together at
Art+Crisis. They discussed the consequences for the arts of the
current financial situation in order to develop possible approaches
and creative solutions. The Spanish artist Santiago Sierra was
one of the two artists invited to perform an action within this
event. Both polemic and admired worldwide, Santiago remains
faithful to his solid style, often hidden behind controversy.

PATRICIA BLASCO_ The symposium Art+Crisis focused on how

the capitalist crisis affects the arts. On some occasions, you have described
capitalism as a devastating success and you said the crisis would have
similar effects. Applying this idea to the art context, where does the
success of this crisis lie? What would be the interaction between art
and crisis?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ Well, when I said that crisis and capitalism

are successful, naturally I meant that they are a success for their
designers and beneficiaries. It is a success for the financial system.
They needed a lot of money to make bubbles, and they had it. It
is obvious, though, that for the rest of us mortals, it is a robbery.
But this matters less every time, and the fact is that the elites
control over the population appears to be another devastating

171
success. Democracy is definitely a fraud. It seems that it has also
affected the art world. But it didnt sink the ship, or even hit it.
Bear in mind that the unemployed working class doesnt buy
contemporary art. Furthermore, in the art world, as in other sec-
tors, searching in the states pockets makes less and less sense,
since the government is already private.

BLASCO_ In the action you carried out, in order to access the sympo-
sium, you created two entrances, one for the people with a gross salary
of more than 1,000 euros and another for those who earned less. Once
inside, both groups of people were separated by a wall [Public Secreted
According to its Income Were Greater or Smaller to Thousand
Gross Euros during a Simposium, 2010]. This is a recurrent element
in your artwork, to reflect the physical walls or imaginary barriers that
divide a society, forcing us to question which side we are on. At the end
of the symposium, the wall came down partially. Did this cause the
reaction you expected from the attendees?

SIERRA_ A sign on the wall is only a sign on the wall. Its the
observer who attaches one value or another to the sign. This is
because signs are usually erected by important institutions that
have significant coercive power. However, because our sign did
not have the backing of organized violence, all participants could
act how they deemed appropriate. Unfortunately, most behav-
ioural signs in our social environment dont allow us to disagree
without being punished. So I imagine they enjoyed their action,
and that is always good.

BLASCO_ Time has passed since your career began, you left Madrid
because you found it stifling and went to Hamburg, which wasnt con-
ducive either to starting an art career. What do you think about the
art scenes in both countries?

172
SIERRA_ Look, I had certain idea of the art scene in Madrid at
the beginning of the 90s, but only of its most outsider aspect.
I also knew something about Hamburgs, but not as much. Later,
between 1995 and 2000, I got to know the Mexican art scene
in depth. But to be honest, since then I have been too focused
on myself. So from that moment on, I began to work in distant
places, I started to move around a lot and, in a certain way, to
learn more about many places. But that made me lose this direct
connection with the art scene that having more free time had
permitted. I moved to Italy three years ago and I am now plan-
ning to set up my studio definitively in Madrid. Therefore, even
though I have worked there quite regularly, I havent worked as
much in Berlin and Madrid as in other places, so I can just tell
you my general impression. And my impression is that working
in Spain implies that you have to depend on institutions, and that
is halfway between begging and reward. Thats why I wouldnt
recommend that anyone set up a studio there without solving
this problem first. And Berlin is highly recommendable because
the price of property is very reasonable and the art scene is large
and strong, but I dont think the treasure is there either.

BLASCO_ Only a cynic can set an example. Despite sentences like

this, it seems people still expect a certain redeeming attitude from you.
However, as you have emphasized on many occasions, your artwork
represents a reality by intervening in it. But the intention is not to
change the lives of the people hired to participate in your actions or
to change the world through your art. You bring social and economic
injustices to light harshly and plainly, and you have even been cen-
sored on some occasions. On the other hand, people talk more and
more about how the art world is becoming a show and they reproach
you for the media frenzy around your artworks. Are you the eternally
misunderstood artist?

173
SIERRA_ Sometimes you need a lot of patience to stand the
stereotypes that the media publish about you. And sometimes
I simply dont have it; thats why I almost have no relationship
with them. The best thing to do is to talk only with the special-
ized press. I think that the general commercial press has lost all
its credibility, not only in the field of art, but in all fields. There
still remains some independent press, but it is scarce and, on
the other hand, we artists are always being removed from our
representation spaces. But there you go.
Look at Paul the Octopus.1 He is only a miserable animal
in a tank; hes not a spectacle by himself, the poor animal has
no idea of what is going on. Im not comparing myself with
Paul the Octopus, but this is how the media work: they turn
octopuses into money and into alienating chunks of informa-
tion. Ask journalists why this happens, not the artists. Why do
they print controversies in the headlines that only materialise
when they publish them? The art world is comprised to a great
extent of well-educated people who are sufficiently mundane to
accept artistic expressions that the media would undoubtedly
tear to pieces in a flash. This is why I said earlier that artists are
being removed from their representation spaces since its very
different creating a project for a public who is perfectly familiar
with 20th Century (and subsequent) linguistic contributions,
than for a public who is less familiar with them and sees the
project via the media instead of directly all between Paul the
Octopus and a car advertisement. And about whether I feel
understood: yes, I do, and a lot, because I am usually very clear
and firm in my presentations. Of course, Paul the Octopuss fan
club wont understand me, but who cares.

1 Paul the Octopus was used as an oracle to predict match results at the
Euro 2008 and 2010 World Cup football tournaments [Ed.].

174
BLASCO_ You have a pessimistic and defeated feeling towards the
violent pressure of reality. Social relationships revolve around work
and remuneration. As you explained before, violence exists when there
is an instrument that forces another persons will; and that instru-
ment is money. Life is work and work means punishment and death.
Capitalism has caused people to lose their value and buys their time,
their body and their will. Even you have bought other peoples bodies
and will. Isnt there a hint of hope? Have you always found candi-
dates for your actions, beyond borders that you hadnt imagined?

SIERRA_ Yes, the number of temporary, casual, unspecialized

workers keeps on growing; and that is the idea of capitalism:
increasing poverty by stealing the resources that kept poverty
at bay. The machine seems to be well oiled, the computers and
guns too, so capitalism works well and, when that happens, the
number of poverty-stricken increases exponentially. And regard-
ing my defeatism, its not exactly that. I take it as a personal strat-
egy because, if not, hope and fear paralyze you.

BLASCO_ Your work is for reaction, rather than collection. Your

work isnt art that is only to be seen, and even less to be appreciated
for its beauty: it is to be discussed. Your actions are based on the process
and they show their maximum strength when they are being carried
out. Later, they are captured in pictures and videos in order for them to
be marketed.
Does this type of art receive enough support from galleries and
collectors? Despite the difficulty of the art medium you use, and taking
into account your notoriety around the world in museums, biennials,
etc., do you think your work features sufficiently in art auctions? To
what extent do the aesthetics and themes of your artwork influence this?

SIERRA_ Well, I have my market; I know Im not Botero, but

there it is. Regarding support, I cant expect to sell as much as Jeff

175
Koons because our themes are very different, and thats normal.
I have good support but its not exactly the number of people that
makes it good, so I feel comfortable in my position. As for auc-
tions, they make me feel like I am risking my career at a casino;
I am not convinced. However and Im not an expert I pre-
ferred being sensible about the prices of my artworks and I can
say that they are worth what they cost. Apart from that, this has
nothing to do with tactics. I spend my time working on my pro-
jects; its what I really do.

BLASCO_ And if what we get back isnt money directly? The art
world operates according to the same model as capitalism. According
to Professor Georg Franck, fame or attention in the cultural world also
follows these mechanisms. The curator or the director of a museum
or gallery lends exhibition space and fame to an artist, who is like an
entrepreneur, and expects a return on their investment in the form
of greater reputation or fame. Speculating with reputation has even
more social consequences than money. Wealth pales in comparison
with fame. What do you think about this?

SIERRA_ Paying with glory is a very stupid trick, but of course

it works. Go to the offices of any museum and ask the interns, or
think about the Venice Biennial, which only works because the
participants pay for everything themselves. Glory is a good trick,
but until we change the system people should be paid for their
work, and thats it.

BLASCO_ Just another example from todays modern art world:

last June Art Barter presented its second exhibition in Berlin after
its launch last year in London. As its name indicates, the particular
characteristic of the exhibition is that it works through the exchange
of anything except money. For instance, Tracey Emin exchanged
her artwork for 30 hours of French tuition. As well as being a nice

176
alternative during difficult times, do you think looking for alternative
means to money in the art world is pure utopia? Would you exchange
any of your artworks for anything but money?

SIERRA_ Bartering has always been very common between art-

ists: to pay the bill in a guesthouse or artists exchanging artworks.
I dont think we are standing in the way of the practice of trading.
The thing is that my marketable artworks have been created to be
sold, and what you are talking about is very exceptional.

BLASCO_ In 2009 you launched the project NO, Global Tour.

A massive NO on a lorry has traveled across America and Europe, stop-
ping by the most varied places: places on the art scene, financial and
industrial districts, public buildings and so forth. And it will continue
its voyage during the next few months. Following the course of your art-
work, one could think it is a NO to capitalism, a NO to the system, from
which there is NO exit What lies behind this exaltation of the NO?

SIERRA_ The tour is now going through its Asian phase and
we will do a road movie of the European and American phases
next year. The tour will continue until we get tired of it. Since
the filming is over, moving it from one place to another is now
easier. I will try to make it as global as possible. In the meantime,
and while the NO continues moving, I will try to add as little lit-
erature as possible to the action. The word NO is very emphatic,
and little more can be said after saying NO.

BLASCO_ No doubt, Santiago Sierra is one of the most renowned

artists internationally. Going back to your action in Berlin, its obvi-
ous what side you would have been sitting on. What have you gained,
apart from the gross figure, or lost personally and artistically during
this process of crossing to the other side of the wall? As you have
said, you cant be considered a proletarian artist, because, despite the

177
subject matter of your artwork, you produce luxury goods. However,
would a part of you still want to sit on the proletarian side?

SIERRA_ Definitely not. The proletariat isnt a good place to

be. Proletarians have the lowest salaries and a high unemploy-
ment rate. They are the ones whose assets are being seized and
are unserved in all their basic necessities, so nobody should be
a proletarian. Regarding my earnings,: I havent worked for over
10 years and that is wonderful, trust me. I dont have to offer my
body in the market for someone elses benefit. And I never ask
anyone to lend me money. As you can imagine, I have gained
a lot with art: my freedom.

Published in Spanish and English in Artfacts.net, September 13, 2010.

Translation: Marta Jimnez and Paula Rodrguez.

178
 CUAUHTMOC MEDINA, 2010

CUAUHTMOC MEDINA_ In the past year your actions seem to

have been expanding the territory of their questions. As well as inter-
rogating the collusion between the art world and the exploitation of
labor, you deal with sexual exploitation, linguistic oppression and
the mechanisms of national and migratory exclusion. In your new
project for the Lisson Gallery you allude to the occupation of Iraq.
Could it be that your critique is shifting from the sphere of economic
coercion towards a more concrete political critique? Is it the case that
when you move away from the Third World, exploitation in general
becomes less important in your discussion than an exploration of the
responsibility of Europeans in many other fields of injustice?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ I dont see a great difference between

the systems of exploitation that you mention, if these serve the
same interests. Capital is their beneficiary and their administra-
tor, and it does this not in a capricious manner but is motivated
by profit. Capital is not racist, or sexist, or classist or whatever
you might care to mention here. It simply uses any excuse to
generate the greatest profit, whatever the consequences and
whether people like it or not. The political and the cultural are
appendices, and not unimportant when we consider that their
function is to provide us with alibis. But they are appendices
nonetheless. On the other hand its true that, as you say, the
works maintain a tight relationship with the specific context in

179
which I work, and in this instance I am working in a country
that is officially at war, and if this war exists, its because the
Third World doesnt exist. The countries we call rich do not
act in the territories that nominally belong to them, because in
order to maintain their levels of production and consumption
they need a much larger territory than the one they administer
under their flags. So when I make work in countries that can
pay for art, I do it always in the same world and always in the
same territory.

MEDINA_ A similar question, but not identical, is whether in a cer-

tain way you feel that your work is no longer confined by Latin-Amer-
ican references, even though Mexico is still your center of operations?
How do you understand the location of your artistic operation?

SIERRA_ I wouldnt talk about the dominance of a set of cir-

cumstances, but more about an awareness of them. When you
make a piece in Mexico and you exhibit it in Berlin, for example,
the sense I have is that I am providing shocking, exotic post-
cards of a savage place to entertain, in between cafs, potential
two-for-one tourists with a social conscience. The only way to
escape this is not to do it. On the other hand, the circumstances,
unless you retire to work in an extreme place, are ever the same.
The Mexican public from the wealthy districts of Las Lomas or
Polanco would react in the same way to the disasters in their
city as they would to those in Morocco, its just as far away and
exotic, but in the first instance their complicity is greater and it
therefore makes more sense to use them as a subject. This is the
same strategy that I use in New York or Zurich, because these are
the rich areas of thousands of cities spread throughout the world,
only that in order not to make postcards I must attend to the dis-
asters that are freshest in their minds. But Mexico is still the place
where I work the most.

180
MEDINA_ Your new piece involves the hiring of Iraqis who are sub-
jected to the force of a pressurized jet of polyurethane, exposing them
not only to a certain physical violence, but also to a controlled chemi-
cal risk. Its clear that in this work you confront the art-world spectator
with explicit references to the torture of prisoners in jails such as Abu
Ghraib. In what way do you consider that the complicity of the art
world with the war or with the abuse of prisoners is similar to their
participation in the capitalist economy? Why do you involve the work
of art and its spectators in this territory?

SIERRA_ When I mentioned to you previously about officially

at war, the linguistic trap didnt escape me, because a war exists
when the will to kill is declared and performed publicly, but Cap-
ital kills constantly with no mention of war, and it does so in
peace. So if we consider the low life expectancy in overseas assem-
bly lines, to cite one generic example among millions, with the
torture in Abu Ghraib, we imagine that those tortures are more
terrifyingly prolonged than these. These are also more sophisti-
cated, because they are only visible through a pair of jeans, which
is also sexy. The relationship with the art world doesnt conceal
itself here. The most obvious aspect is that the art world feeds
on profit, and we dont need to remember how and where it is
obtained. We could talk about a similar innocent complicity in
those that wear the jeans, I agree; both may enjoy their goods
without complexes. Can I produce them without complexes? No,
and I dont think its too much to share them with the public.

MEDINA_ The use youve made of polyurethane through the years is

interesting. You use polyurethane whether its to refer to the semen of
the clients of immigrant prostitutes in Italy [2002] or to the violence
against prisoners of war in Iraq. Is it relevant to discuss your materi-
als? What importance do you attribute to this product that makes you
return to it in many of your works?

181
SIERRA_ The relationship between weapons and the evolution of
the human species seems evident since animal bones were used
as the only means of survival for the species, so our history would
appear to be tightly bound to the evolution of these artifacts with
clear phallic references. This element is replaced in my work by
the gun that sprays polyurethane, connecting something which
I wouldnt know how to connect in any other way: the protection
offered by a thermal insulator with the violence of the weapon. Both
forms of domination, love and hate. What we will obtain with this
action is an image very similar to that of the refugees who arrive at
Europes coastlines, first protected from hypothermia with blankets
and then returned to their places of departure. The white protective
clothing for working with polyurethane is identical to that used in
oil-spill disasters, and so on, until there is a chain of images which
joins the disasters together, fresh in our memory. All we will get
will be formless polyurethane spread around the floor and walls.

MEDINA_ Its worth noting that the idea of nationality has also been
acquiring a greater significance in your work, as evidenced by your own
intervention in the Spanish Pavilion in Venice. Moreover, as you have
mentioned to me on occasion, you discovered with some horror that your
reactions to the attack in Madrid on the 11th March 2004 were much
more painful than those you had to the victims of other places. Could
it be that your interest in the problem of nationhood derives from your
own conflictive relationship with the presumptions of being Spanish?

SIERRA_ Vzquez Montalbn said that the proletariat has no

country [proletariado no tiene patria] must have been written
by the same author who wrote they shall not pass [no pasarn]
or the united people will never be defeated [el pueblo unido
jams sera vencido]. The nation is only present among those who
benefit from its benefits. Fights between nations or cultures or
religions create gray areas that are immediately exploitable by the

182
market. So its also beneficial to create these conflicts. Yes, when
the massacres happened in Madrid I felt more anger than I usu-
ally do in those situations, which is quite logical since I am from
Madrid. This was shared by many in the west because Madrid
could have been their city. The chances of a cnn newsreader get-
ting into your head are growing exponentially and with this are
the chances of success for the politics that best accommodate the
desires of corporations. This has its counterpart in the pan-Islamic
world. So what we all discover with a certain horror is that however
much we may have wanted to flee we are in a new boat that, like
the Russian dolls, will always replace the ones coming before it.

MEDINA_ To what extent has the current international crisis, and

the Iraq war in particular, affected the trajectory of your work? What
adjustments take place in your work in relation to this particular crisis?

SIERRA_ Theyre affecting it a lot, because the means by which

profit is obtained would terrify anybody. Its evident who gains
from the massacres that are carried out in the west and how much,
similarly with the friendly relations between contenders, the false-
ness in official versions and the simplicity of the statement that
hides all this: sell us oil. There are developments to the art of war
on a scale that has never been seen before which together with
conventional means and the lack of consistency in what they call
peace, make your responses, wherever you are making them
from, insufficient and frustrating because of their obvious insig-
nificance. The fundamental change, and the only possible change,
would be to make my work coexist with this sentiment.

A largely unpublished interview, carried out for the solo Santiago Sierra
exhibition, Lisson Gallery, London, 2004. An excerpt from the conversation was
published in Spanish in the online magazine Salonkritik on 5 December 2010.

183
Word of 350 cm Height by 1200 cm Wide. Church of San Matteo. Lucca,
Italy. May 2004.
 MARCO SCOTINI, 2010

MARCO SCOTINI_ Your work has always been a declaration of

opposition. In recent years your actions have continued to represent
antagonism, contradiction, conflicts between artwork and utility,
between the middle classes and the subproletariat, between the oppres-
sors and the oppressed. In your most recent project all this is drasti-
cally reduced to a minimal three-dimensional symbol: the two letters
that form the negation NO reproduced on a monumental scale. How-
ever you do not renounce, even in this case, the theatrical aspect that
is characteristic of your style of work, creating for the two letters an
unusual and unique tour on the back of a lorry from Italy, through
Europe and then around America. NO, Global Tour, between 2009
and 2010, seems to follow the movement of movements which from
1997 to halfway through the next decade, marked part of our history
of opposition to contemporary neoliberalism. What are the reasons
that led you to make this decision?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ Well actually Ive been travelling with the

NO, Global Tour for several years, but producing a different work
in each city visited. It was a very tiring process and I wanted to
try out another idea, I needed a project that could work in many
different contexts, both in its form and in its content. I was look-
ing for a type of iconic symbol of our time, like Robert Indianas
love, and indeed NO is in the air as love used to be. NO has a high
semantic value in just two graphic symbols. Their transformation

185
into sculptures and their insertion into a context make this work
strong, complete and, I would say, necessary. During the trip we
made a road movie about the first year of the Tour. The NO posi-
tions itself at the crossroads of two extremes: on a political level
it means imposition, but it is also emancipation. It all depends
if it is the shepherd saying it to his flock or the flock saying it to
the shepherd. Thats why this NO works as perfectly in exhibi-
tion spaces as in suburban streets. The social perception is also
very interesting, as NO is a desirable object for both employers
and employees; even if some use it more than others, everyone
longs to have the power to say it and at the same time everyone
fears the power of those who can say it. When you see the NO
pass by your house you might ask if it is being said to us or if
it is us speaking. And so it becomes 100% local in every part
of its journey. It is a burning subject, bordering on risky. It is an
icon that works like a magnet absorbing all the NOs it meets in
its path, attracting all the prohibitions designed to subdue the
people and every slogan against the system. It is a black surface
that absorbs all the wavelengths of light and does not reflect
any, it is dense. In this way it sounds timeless, but it is not, and
this is where one of my main reasons for doing this work lies.
If I wanted to control the behaviour of another I would proceed
in stages. In the first stage I would wait to see if the behaviour
could change by itself, thereby saving effort and avoiding risks, as
I would imagine that overcoming the person would not be to their
liking. Then, in a second stage I would try to change their con-
duct by talking calmly, taking certain risks. And in a third stage is
where our NO appears, pure risk itself, because the fourth stage
is violence. NO is the last resort before something worse, because
NO is not negotiable, it is the last and final word. All this makes
the Tour crazy because its like sounding an anti-aircraft siren; it
is a piece of work that adapts like a glove to this society that is in
a permanent state of disaster.

186
SCOTINI_ This last project of yours does not stand alone among the
rest of your work. In September 2009 I saw the NO installed inside
the abandoned space of the former Cavallerizza in Lucca before start-
ing its world tour. This same theatrical impression in a space was
achieved in the same city in 2004, in one of your solo exhibitions.
Entering the former church of San Matteo one was confronted with
a word that was 12 metres long and almost 4 metres high, filling the
space. It was a quote from Marx and Engels Klassenkampf (Class
Struggle) [Word of 350 cm Height by 1200 cm Wide, 2004]. The
letters illuminated from below, casting shadows onto the walls, gave
a sinister, threatening and spectral aspect to the work. Why have you
returned to this theatrical representation of the word?

SIERRA_ We could consider art a physical literature. The class

struggle, Klassenkampf, is the opposite of the identity of inter-
ests that strongly supports the common meaning, it is the Marxist
word that defines the conflict of interests that a small part of soci-
ety imposes on the rest. Class struggle, like our NO, has a dou-
ble meaning, for this reason it cannot be expressed descriptively
like the ill-treatment of the lower classes. It is the product of a sin-
ister, threatening and spectral reality, to use your words; it makes
us think of another era and make comparisons. It was, in effect
a theatrical representation or a proposal to reconsider a term that
has fallen into disuse, in colloquial terms we would say to mix
up the cards on the table. At that time I was living in Mexico and,
occasionally, coming to Europe meant decanting concepts from
one continent to another, words that continued to exist there and
words from the old political theatre that, as I said before, I have
been carrying around for years with the NO, Global Tour.

SCOTINI_ What is the relationship between these last two exam-

ples and the monumental inscription of the word sumisin on the
ground at Ciudad Jurez in 2007?

187
SIERRA_ Im afraid that our habitat is the place for these words.
Perhaps Jurez sounds like something far away, exotic, as an idiot
once told me, but Ciudad Jurez is a model, not an anomaly: this
will give an idea, I think, of where we are today. There, I tried to
symbolically burn submission, but we were not allowed to do it,
not even on a symbolic level. It is already too late there.

Published in English and Italian in Santiago Sierra, Busca, Castello del

Roccolo, Collezione La Gaia, 2010.

188
 PACO BARRAGN, 2011

PACO BARRAGN_ Are we living in the NO era?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ Yes, undoubtedly. The most ubiquitous

NO is from the State and capitalism. Its a NO written in capi-
tal letters in order to domesticate the citizen. From the perspective
of those at the bottom, there is a double negation: from the father
to his son, and from the son to the father, which is a different kind
of NO.

BARRAGN_ This reminds me a lot of Naomi Klein and her book,

No Logo, as when you open it you see No Choice, No Space, No
Jobs, which is a good description of whats going on right now.

SIERRA_ Yes, its interesting that you recall it, as I recently tried
writing the word shock in huge letters in a port called Hungry
Mile in Sydney, Australia, where there were long lines of workers
during the crisis of 1929. We tried to make it the biggest graffiti
in the world, so Naomi Klein is an appropriate reference.

BARRAGN_ Lets talk about NO, Global Tour, which started in

Lucca, northern Italy on July 18, 2009. It is a huge sculpture saying
NO in Arial type font. Its a work in progress that has visited cities
like Berlin, New York, Brussels, Washington, Toronto, and Miami,
and it will visit Iceland in January. How did this work come about?

189
SIERRA_ I was saying to myself that I wasnt doing it properly,
or maybe yes, but maybe it was too much work, especially when
youre making, for example, 12 pieces a year. And when you make
a piece each time in a different country, its not only a big effort,
but also difficult to hit the nail on the head each time; and its
also a huge effort in terms of understanding a context and a real-
ity which arent mine. On the other hand, the work didnt really
reflect the life I have now, which is far more stable than before,
where I had a nomadic existence, immersed in a kind of road
movie. So, a multi-contextual piece like the NO was the solu-
tion, as this is what came to mind when I considered the society
we live in, the political system, and the whole structure framing
it. So a big NO was the right answer. And I also liked the NO
because its the only language that you can have against power.

BARRAGN_ The NO is interesting because its tremendously

strong but semantically open. It has crossed iconic areas and regions;
for example, in East Germany it went through mining and other eco-
nomically depressed regions, it also went past the front of nato head-
quarters, the European Parliament, Wall Street, and Times Square,
and in Spain you even projected the NO on the Popes back. Was there
a road map?

SIERRA_ Yes and no. There were places where it was impor-
tant that the NO would go through, like the city of London, that
is, places where a huge amount of evilness is concentrated. In
London, you could also see the Death counter: the counter of the
number of deaths in Iraq according to the American Institute of
Statistics. So, yes, there are spots clearly selected, like nato, the
great temple of slaughter and barbarity, and the other great tem-
ples of slaughter and barbarity: the Pentagon and Wall Street. In
Germany, it was more metaphorical. I was not only interested in
monuments of power, but also in places where people struggle to

190
make ends meet because of the economic depression. In Detroit,
for example, we visited General Motors headquarters and all
the neighboring areas, which are totally empty now, like ghost
towns. And the NO will travel to Iceland. And yes, last August we
projected a NO on the Popes back in Madrid, and that gave me
enormous pleasure!

BARRAGN_ Iceland is an interesting example because the people

carried out a putsch against capitalism and its powers, and decided
not to pay back what its bankers had squandered.

SIERRA_ Yes, but Iceland is a country of 300,000 people and

practically everyone knows each other. In Europe, for example in
France, Germany, or the United Kingdom, there are generations
and generations of deeply-rooted crooks and thieves that have had
control over abuse and larceny since time immemorial, actual lin-
eages that you can trace back to the Middle Ages. Of course, the
Icelandic solution is enviable, but in the rest of Europe it is unim-
aginable and we are heading towards a fascist dictatorship.

BARRAGN_ This work reminds me a lot of the powerful NO you

did for the Spanish Pavilion at Venice Biennale in 2003, where you
hid the word Spain from the pavilion and only people with a Span-
ish passport or id could access it. A NO against nationalism, the art
world, globalization

SIERRA_ Yes, of course. We are talking about art and culture,

but you have to treat them like your worst enemy, and this is the
rule that guides me. And why should the art world be my enemy?
Because the art world is not what it claims to be. We are faced
with a theater where the same things are being exalted over and
over again: plutocracy, hoarding, and the enrichment of a small
group at the expense of a large majority. And the art world is

191
part of that, and part of the value that we grant to the collector as
a connoisseur. Im against that, and against the ideas of nation
and globalization. We should be very cautious, especially with
globalization, because it seems as if were facing a new and
highly topical issue by using a new word, but in reality its a phe-
nomenon that already began with the Renaissance and the birth
of capitalism, very slowly at first and now its at a runaway pace.

BARRAGN_ You also said NO to the National Prize for Visual

Arts of Spain. Why? Didnt you have the slightest doubt? After all it
was a 30,000 euro prize.

SIERRA_ Well, its a considerable amount of money, and every-

one appreciates something like that, especially in economic
times like these. But this is also the price you pay to be able
to experience the pleasure of expressing yourself. On the other
hand, I have to say in all honesty that it wasnt totally improvised.
I knew people that had been proposed for the prize, so the fan-
tasy was already there. I mean, I had already fantasized about
what I was going to do in the event that I was given the prize.

BARRAGN_ Lets talk about Wall Street and, especially about

Occupy Wall Street, which is connected with the 15-M indignados
movement in Madrid. During the past 15 years there has been more
political art or at least more art with a political focus. I see a clear
disconnect between the art world and society in general, as we can see
with the movements I have mentioned. What is your opinion?

SIERRA_ No, I dont agree. For example, I always see artists

at the Plaza del Sol in Madrid participating in the 15-M move-
ment. Maybe there is more political art among the younger gen-
erations. In the 1990s I was living in Latin America, in Mexico.

192
BARRAGN_ Yes, but Latin America, and in Mexico in particu-
lar I see that art deals much more with society and urgent social and
political issues, unlike in the us or Europe, where we work on a more
formal level.

SIERRA_ Well, there are artists that are political, like Democra-
cia in Spain. But having said that, I dont like to protest or par-
ticipate in demonstrations, as that is a kind of secular procession
in which instead of asking the Virgin for a miracle, we ask a guy
with a tie to solve our problems. The guy with the tie is not there
to solve anything, he is just there to maintain the status quo.
What I think is that people should not go out and protest them-
selves, but start doing things for themselves, explore forms of
self-organization on every level, and start breaking the ties with
the State: stop working for the State. Dont let your children join
their armies, overthrow the educational system and provide a par-
allel one, and so on. Basically, get out of the system. Its about
putting into practice an active and creative opposition in order to
create a new society.

BARRAGN_ In that same sense, dont you think that what we do

in the art world hardly ever has real repercussions in society?

SIERRA_ Well, I do think that art can be very powerful, and it

depends on how you use it. As a matter of fact, art is the favorite
tool of politicians, the State and capitalism; art is what the Catholic
church uses with its temples and its performative rituals, in order
to fascinate the faithful; and art is also all the trash tv we watch,
where everything is like a fantastic Hollywood script where the
dead actors dont even know theyre dead. Im having this debate
with Artur Zmijewski, who is curating the Berlin Biennale. He
is insisting that I shouldnt make a piece of art, but a political
action; and this is rather funny as he is a curator, and of the Berlin

193
Biennale. I think we shouldnt take things to that extreme, and
that each one of us should be useful to society doing his or her
work, and not become a problem to society. We as artists have to
find the way we confront the State and capitalism, and the same
should be valid for an architect, a doctor, and so on.

BARRAGN_ Your work has given rise to controversy on many

occasions. Lets recall your action on New Street the citys busiest
shopping street in Birmingham, England, in 2002, titled Person
Saying A Phrase, with a homeless person saying to the camera: My
participation in this project could generate $72,000 profit. I am paid
5 pounds. We always find at the heart of your praxis the Marxian
concept of labor as added value.

SIERRA_ Time, the body, and intelligence are treated as if they

do not belong to us, as if they are being auctioned at a market
to the highest bidder. Thats how the system works. And when we
talk about the art world, its like we are talking about a gilded cage,
a special place, and art can be many things, but it also forms part
of the capitalist system, and as such it harbors the same injustices.

Published in English in ArtPulse no. 10, 2011.

194
NO, Global Tour. The Film. 120 minutes, 35 mm. February 2011.
NO Projected Above the Pope. Madrid, World Youth Day. August 2011.
 HANS ULRICH OBRIST, 2012a

HANS ULRICH OBRIST_ I now have the great pleasure to intro-

duce the next speaker, Santiago Sierra. My first question: a year ago,
I visited the pioneering conceptual artist Isidoro Valcrcel Medina in
Madrid. He has always resisted exhibitions and biennials. You have
known him for years. Could you tell us how he has influenced you?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ He has influenced me quite a lot. Isidoro

has worked considerably, and very well, on the difficult subject
of money; for example, charging fees as a wall painter for one of
his pieces, or requesting such a small budget six euros that his
show was cancelled because they thought he was making fun
of them. He has made perturbing, unique works. For example,
when he served gruel from a charity dining hall at the elitist
Crculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. Another time, just a few days
before he was set to show his work at a museum, he begged pas-
sersby for objects, so his exhibit was of a coin, a subway ticket,
a piece of bread, and so on. His works function when they are
described in words, and they generally leave nothing behind. He
is 100% independent and hes a model of moral integrity and
artistic coherence. For as long as Ive known him, he has been
an example for me and a very high standard against which to
measure my own work.

OBRIST_ Medina is very related to your latest work. He always says no.

197
SIERRA_ Obviously, we cant say yes to everything. I imagine
that your name or that of the institutions and events you men-
tion sound mainstream to him. Isidoro is an outsider by his own
persuasion. Sometimes he has also said yes to important insti-
tutions he doesnt always say no but with him, you never
know. And that means it is Isidoro himself who decides how to
spend his time. It is a gesture of freedom that should be under-
stood as one of his works, because that is what you asked of him:
to say no. Dont give up next time, tell him you have come on my
behalf, although I make no guarantees. The relation of all this with
my own work may be easier to see from outside than from within,
because this tour has been my life for the last two years. If you
wish, Ill tell you about it.

OBRIST_ Yes, certainly. I am very interested in hearing all about it,

because I saw the work for the first time at a fair, but it is in constant
movement, isnt it? It exists in many different contexts. If you could
talk a little about this trip.

SIERRA_ It is the expression of my disaffection with reality as

a whole, especially with power, the state and capital, institutional
death, work and religion. In other words, this tour condenses
what I have done until now. My work has always been articulated
to mirror what I deny: reality. It is, if you wish, something per-
sonal. My NO is not a matter of proselytizing; it is one more NO
in a sea of nos that are all around us. We filmed this NO as it
travelled around Europe and North America, and there is now
an excellent document about it. It consists of two enormous
letters, weighing over 500 pounds each, that travel on a truck,
but we are also making other nos of other materials and for-
mats. Yes, it is a trip we began. I always like to deal with dates,
using everything to step outside the borders of the art world and
relate it to other aspects. So we began on July 18, which is a very

198
disagreeable date for the Spanish [the day in 1936 of the coup
dtat that effectively started the Civil War], and it seemed like
a good moment to start something like this. I started in Lucca,
with no real plan in mind. It is a painted and protected wooden
sculpture. We had no exhibition planned, and so we began a trip
to start showing it, and little by little we set a route and even
managed to move it across two continents. We have already been
around Western Europe and in industrial parts of the us: Detroit,
Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toronto, New York, and Miami. All of this
is extraordinary material for a road movie, which is what we are
working on. And the language may be more from film than from
the visual arts, but its really a sculptors film and that is going to
be very clear. So thats what Im doing.

OBRIST_ The trip is ongoing?

SIERRA_ Yes, its ongoing. We just finished up the film in Wash-

ington dc, which I enjoyed because its the capital of the empire,
and it seemed right to finish there. But the tour continues. It goes
to Japan now, and to Eastern Europe, and we are working on the
possibility of getting it to Latin America, although I havent man-
aged to pull that off yet. The motives emerge by themselves, and
the NO, Global Tour is going to be going on for quite some time.
In fact, the original idea was to keep a NO travelling around the
world for as long as possible.

OBRIST_ And is there some sort of documentation coming out of this

project? Does it have an end, or is it ongoing?

SIERRA_ No, the idea is that the piece continues to travel, regard-
less of what I may be doing. In fact, through the webpage, its
possible to make contact and request the piece. Its just a matter
of figuring out how much it would cost to send the piece to that

199
city. But it isnt possible to be constantly filming, so that had to
be finished.

OBRIST_ Seeing these images reminds me of the first time I saw your
work. It was in Mexico City, in that project with Pedro Reyes: La
Torre de los Vientos. Pedro does that project with you, and also with
a truck, but here, the truck isnt for transportation, it is an obstruction
[Obstruction of a Freeway with a Trucks Trailer, 1998]. Could you
speak about this concept in your work? Because I believe the concept
of obstruction is very present in your work.

SIERRA_ Well then, Im going to show you this work, which is

my most recent, and is also Well, art in movement is very close
to what Im doing. I believe that you and I and a lot of us here
today spend our lives on airplanes, or traveling, and that is why
I would like this piece to have that kind of life, rather than just
sitting in a room. Museums are fine with me, theyre fantastic,
but they are not the only place in the world. I have always enjoyed
getting out on the street. Here is another that I also wanted to
show you, which is a recently-made obstruction, but the other
way around so the people obstruct the line of containers [Per-
son Obstructing a Line of Containers, 2009].
So that is obstructing What happens with these things is
that when you try to describe it, its absurd. This piece is very
good, but if I start saying that I am obstructing the flow of capi-
talism, it sounds too high-flown and absurd, even though thats
really what Im thinking about. In a symbolic way, its a very
Tiananmen piece, but instead of tanks, we have trucks trying to
pass while a person tries to keep them from getting by. They do
this for around ten minutes, and they are continually beeping
their horns, trying to get through.

OBRIST_ Is that the same project youre doing in Stockholm?

200
SIERRA_ Its similar to what you told me about a container that
is obstructing, which is also the problem of the placing of a sculp-
ture in a public space that doesnt have to be friendly either.
I like it when artworks cause problems, rather than just looking
at them and thats it. I want them to have some sort of leverage,
to move things, so that something changes. And this one really is
bothersome, its quite an uncomfortable piece, like many others.

OBRIST_ It has a lot to do with that project with Pedro Reyes, with
the obstruction in Mexico.

SIERRA_ Yes. Pedro Reyes is a stupendous artist and at that time

he was with La Torre de los Vientos. I can accept that that building
has its artistic value, but they ask you to work there, and thats
a little uncomfortable. So I wanted to go outside. I wanted to
do a piece that was related to it, but outside. La Torre de los Vien-
tos is a building belonging to a set of sculptures made for the 1968
Olympics, and all of them are by the ring road, which is a place
where Ive often been caught in traffic jams. Living in a city like
this, with so many cars and so much heat, can make you hate it,
so it was a sort of revenge as well. It has a certain degree of:
Now Im going to be the one to cause the traffic jam. It was five
minutes long, but the consequences lasted all afternoon, because
once the road was blocked, the cars remained backed up all the
rest of the afternoon. We were lent the truck by Eugenio [Lpez],
who is another collector in Mexico. He works with juices and
has large trucks, so he lent me one to create the block, and the
driver was thrilled. He had no qualms whatsoever. There are
people who do this frequently. Whenever they want to protest,
they block the streets, so the driver had no real problem with it.
He enjoyed it. In fact, we all had a lot of fun. I should add that,
with this piece, Pedro paid me my first artist fee, and thats not
something one forgets.

201
OBRIST_ Its interesting, because in previous marathons at the
Serpentine Gallery in London, there were many protests. Series of
protests. Eric Hobsbawm made a protest against forgetting, Gilbert
and George made a big protest against rucksacks, that is, backpacks, and
Gustav Metzger protested against flying in the art world. So it was
a whole series of protests. My question has to do with La Torre de los
Vientos, which is Pedro Reyes artists space. Today, weve been talk-
ing about the museum and some of the artists have been speaking
about their ideal museums. There are artists who invent art spaces
for themselves, like the space Ernesto Neto founded in Ro, Gentil
Carioca. I am quite curious to know if you have invented a structure.
What is you imaginary museum?

Sierra_ Definitely a peoples museum, where people take charge

of their own past and present heritage without its having to serve
the interests of the state or of capital. A truly public museum would
be a complete dream.

OBRIST_ Another question has to do with your unrealized projects.

Do you have unrealized projects?

SIERRA_ Yes, there are a multitude of unrealized projects, a moun-

tain of them. But its a little like asking Casanova about the women
who turned him down. I recently found a folder full of unrealized
projects. Someday, I may be able to carry them out, so I might as
well keep them. Still, there is one project Ill never be able to do
and I really regret it because it would have been my best project.
I wanted to take down Pablo Ruz Picassos Guernica, and rest it
on the floor for a few minutes as a brief action with just a small
audience. Sadly, the canvas is in very poor condition and cannot
even be touched. And even if it isnt, that at least fends off the
requests from Bilbao and Barcelona to exhibit it there. It would
have been fantastic, because touching the taboo and taking it

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down would have reawakened all the stories about this painting.
Poor Picasso didnt want Guernica to come back to Spain until
there was a republic here, and look where the painting is: in
a museum that, to top it all, is named after Queen Sofa [Museo
Reina Sofa]. Moreover, the police cars in Spain are now of a model
called Picasso. He was fortunate in life, but betrayed after he died.
Still, there is always the copy at the United Nations in New York,
which is the most famous because, when they announce bomb-
ing missions, those rascals cover it with a blue cloth. Maybe all is
not lost and there is still a way to carry out this action.

OBRIST_ My final question is the Rilke question. In 2010, what advice

would you offer a young artist?

SIERRA_ I would tell them not to pay any attention to what peo-
ple around them say. Being an artist is a very good decision. You
dont have to repress your creativity and you dont have a boss. If
things go well for you, youre very well paid, and if they dont, at
least youve had a good time doing what you love. That is better
than working in a bank, being a policeman, or stealing to sur-
vive. You can talk, get up late, and so on. It is a fine decision and
I congratulate you, and never forget that art is a way of exercising
your freedom.

OBRIST_ Thank you very much, Santiago.

Published in Spanish and English in Conversations in Cceres, Cceres,

Fundacin Helga de Alvear, This Side Up, 2012.

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Person Obstructing a Line of Containers. Kaj 3 Frinhamnen. Stockholm,
Sweden. February 2009.
 HANS ULRICH OBRIST, 2012b

HANS ULRICH OBRIST_ Before we talk about the NO, Global

Tour, can we discuss your hero and inspiration, Isidoro Valcrcel
Medina? Whenever hes invited to do an exhibition or a biennale, he
nearly always says no. He believes its okay to say no. Hes being redis-
covered. Hes the great conceptual artist, one could say, of the 1960s
and 1970s in Spain, but hes still not known outside of Spain. Could
you tell us a little bit about the way he inspired you as a young artist
when you started out in Madrid?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ For me, Isidoro was an example of how,

during the 1980s, when the art scene was full of color and hap-
piness, he was making conceptual art in a very pure way, and he
had the ability to say yes or no according to his interests. I remem-
ber once at the Crculo de Bellas Artes, a very elitist institution
in Madrid, he organized a dinner (each day a different meal),
where what you received to eat was exactly the same as people
were eating in the beggars asylum. And he took his ideas ad
absurdum. For example, when he was invited to make a show at
the Museo Reina Sofa in Madrid, he asked about the amount
of money the museum dedicated to its entire budget under
Spanish law, you can ask to see a museums budget. They didnt
give it to him. But over the years he established a correspondence
with the museum, writing letters to the people in charge. Hes
the kind of person who goes his own way, and I think hes very

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proud not to be part of the mainstream, or to not be part of any
common knowledge. Hes a person who loves his privacy, and
loves to work like that: to say no or yes freely.

OBRIST_ Which brings us to your touring sculpture, NO, which has

appeared in many different contexts. Its a tour, a journey. How did
it all start?

SIERRA_ I was at a stage in my life when I was travelling a lot,

meeting people in different contexts and working in different areas.
And I thought, Why not make a multicontextual piece a piece
that could look perfect everywhere? And I think NO does look per-
fect everywhere. It has a magnetic power: all the nos youre car-
rying around with you go directly to the NO. If the NO suddenly
appears on a truck, youre going to understand it, because its a very
powerful word. It started because I was thinking that if I wanted to
take one piece to many different locations, it had to be very univer-
sal as a symbol. I thought of love [1967] by Robert Indiana. love
was a sign of the times when it was done. NO is the sign of this
time, because no is what we see spelled out in letters at entrances
a list of prohibitions and no is also what we say to the powers
when they try to take our freedoms, each time with more and more
bleak consequences. I think no is an appropriate word, and it has
worked very well around the world. And weve not only done this
NO sculpture, but weve done some other NOs, for example, this
projection made by a machine called the Fulgurator. Its an inven-
tion of Julius von Bismarck, a kind of flash gun, but instead of pro-
jecting a flash it projects an image, which disappears very quickly.
You can only catch it with a camera its activated through the
flash of a camera. We were flashing NO, NO, NO onto the pope
during his visit to Madrid, and many cameras caught it, but no eyes
could see it, and even television couldnt catch it. So in a way its
a continuation of the NO, and it seems to be appropriate to make

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a different version of the NO at least once a year. There are some
other pieces that Im working on now, in the same way as NO,
Global Tour. For example, in Berlin recently we repeated 400 Black
Posters, done for the first time here in London in 2008. I like this
idea of having black posters everywhere. Its the negation of public-
ity, but it could also be a libertarian image. Or it could be a negation
of Catholic images. So its like a piece that can travel.

OBRIST_ Youve toured the NO to Washington dc, which is very

interesting, because, as you told me once, its the capital of the empire
for you. But you also went to Japan, Eastern Europe, you were toying
with the idea of taking it to Latin America Its a sort of a global tour.
Can you tell us a bit about how the tour evolved?

SIERRA_ My first idea was to keep the NO rolling all the time,
because its not that expensive to move, but that turned out to be
impossible. If we have another opportunity to show it, well show
it, but Im not actively trying to find more venues or more roads for
the NO. What I did was to try to transform each one of my shows
into part of the NO, Global Tour, and in that sense I was trying
to establish a route. We started in Lucca, Italy, the place where
I was living at that moment, and then we covered the industrial
area of the north of Italy and Austria. We went to eastern Germany,
to western Germany, Holland, the uk, the French coast, Spain;
the industrial areas of America, Detroit, Cleveland, etc.; the cap-
ital of the economic empire, New York, and the military empire,
Washington. Then we stopped filming, but we didnt stop the tour,
which continued running in Poland, Japan and many other places.

OBRIST_ Will there be a road movie at the end?

SIERRA_ Yes. When I look at my photographs taken with a cam-

era that I always bring with me on the trips, its like a movie. It

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was very natural to make the movie, to follow the work, to capture
the same images that Im trying to catch with my camera. We have
a fantastic cameraman, Diego Santom, and we also have a team
of montage people, including Ivn Aledo. But its a very reduced
team. And also we mix the film with other pieces we made on the
way, for example the Burial of Ten Workers (2010) in Calambrone.

OBRIST_ One can also go onto your website and hire the piece for
a local destination. To what extent has the Internet changed the way
you work? Your website seems to be a very important feature for you
in terms of organization.

SIERRA_ Yes, its true. Ive always taken care of my dossier, espe-
cially when I was starting to work in art professionally. Obvi-
ously, on the Internet I can explain what Ive done very well. So
for me its a basic tool for organizing. Were trying to transform
the website into an archive of photographs taken over the years.
Also, my work has produced a lot of literature. There are a lot of
texts written about it and we want to complete the website with
these texts.

OBRIST_ And if people can get the NO to their city through the web-
site, thats a different way of using the Internet: it becomes more of
a feedback loop.

SIERRA_ Yes, we receive many requests from people asking me

to bring it to their town. If you want to pay to bring it to your own
town, you just have to tell me. Its possible to order the NO, Global
Tour online.

OBRIST_ The website also contains an archive of all your films.

Before moving on to that, I have a last question about the NO: one
very direct manifestation of the NO is a letter you sent to the Spanish

208
ministry of culture rejecting the National Art Prize. You said, Dear
Ms. Gonzlez-Sinde, I am very grateful for the recognition and evalua-
tion afforded me by the art professionals. However, in my opinion, prizes
are awarded to those who have rendered a service, such as employee of
the month. I wish to make clear at this time that art has given me
a freedom that I am not ready to give up. Consequently my common
sense compels me to reject this award. Could you tell us a little bit
about this gesture, which has created so much press and was a point
of national discussion in Spain?

SIERRA_ I think of prizes as a way of buying people. Its a way

of telling people, Okay, now were enjoying good relations, so
peace between you and me. Theres something perverse about
them. In Spain and also in Mexico, and I imagine that here
its the same, theres a politics of prizes: its to make people
understand that theyre not going to make serious problems for
institutions. In that case, it was a high prize: 30,000 euros. In
my opinion, its like saying, Heres 30,000 to shut up, calm
down. Were going to take a photo with you and a lot of people
in ties and youll appear in the newspapers. So I didnt accept
it. The government in Spain, and many other governments, has
troops in stupid, imperialistic wars around the world. I cant
accept the declaration of such a government. They also decided
to give an unbelievable amount of money to the banks, in order to
solve I dont know what. No, I cant shake hands with these
people, because I deeply disapprove of these politicians and
their actions.

OBRIST_ You connected your rejection of the prize to the NO, Global
Tour, because at the end of your letter to the ministry, you very beauti-
fully said: The state is not all of us. The state is you and your friends.
Therefore, dont count me among them. Im a serious artist. No sir.
NO, Global Tour.

209
SIERRA_ Well, Im going to put this letter on sale, for the
amount of 30,000 [The Sale of the Renouncement, 2011], because
what I want to do is to use that money to create a center of prop-
aganda in Madrid, directly against this kind of politics dis-
solving my activity as an artist a little bit and becoming more
a propagandist against this craziness. My proposal is to sell the
letter for these anti-governmental purposes.

OBRIST_ That idea about the production of reality leads us to the

works that are in your archive its something that has played a role
since the very beginning. Already in 1994, in your very early videos, one
can see that the work is about producing reality its about construc-
tion. It was a collaborative practice in the beginning; you worked with
Manuel Ludea, and one of the early videos, Black Paint On a Wall,
from December 1994, shows the construction of a house. Youve said
that you were almost like a movement or group in Spain. Can you tell
us about these collaborative constructions?

SIERRA_ When I was young, we collaborated. You found affin-

ities with other artists, and established a collaboration, because
collaboration allows you to make a difficult sculpture, or to find
new spaces. So Manuel Ludea, Almut Linde, and I established
a group that moved between Hamburg and Madrid. We did four
shows or something like that together, and then the collabora-
tion finished because each one wanted to make their own career.
Then I went to Mexico, where I established different contacts and
different experiences.

OBRIST_ And what prompted you to go to Mexico? The mid-1990s

was long before Mexico was considered a center for contemporary art.
Now its very well known, with so many Mexican artists in the inter-
national art world and numerous museums and art centers and gal-
leries there, but in the mid-90s it was a very different situation.

210
SIERRA_ I had this stupid idea of making migratory movements
in the opposite direction! And also I thought at the beginning,
although it turned out not to be like that, that my situation in
terms of labor would be easy because of the language. It wasnt
easy in Madrid. I was working as a teacher for three different
schools, running all day for three coins, for nothing a month.
I decided that maybe in Mexico I could get more success. I didnt
get it for five years; it was a bit of a nightmare. But afterwards this
knowledge of the situation from the inside has made me more
powerful when I talk about poverty, because Im talking about
something that I know.

OBRIST_ It was in Mexico that I saw your work for the first time,
in the 1990s, when I went to visit the artist Pedro Reyes. He had this
incredible space, one of the great artist-run spaces in Latin America of
the 90s, called La Torre de los Vientos (The Tower of Winds). It was
the day I arrived in Mexico, and Ill never forget, we saw this video
Obstruction of a Freeway with a Trucks Trailer, from November
1998, one of the earliest videos in your archive, where you already
have this theme of obstruction, which then became important in many
other pieces. You basically had a truck obstructing the traffic. Can you
tell us about that work?

SIERRA_ Well, La Torre de los Vientos is a very beautiful space,

but its a typical classical space thats so beautiful you have nothing
to say inside it it doesnt allow confrontation with the building.
But I wanted to make something anyway. The interesting thing
about this building is that its right in front of a highway. At that
time, I was working a lot with containers, introducing containers
into the space, thinking about the problem of sculpture in a pub-
lic space. And then I thought about articulating the problem of
sculpture in a public space as a minimalist object in a public space
in a street blocking a highway. It has some resonance for me

211
because Ive spent hours and hours of my life being blocked
on this highway or on similar highways in Mexico. It was like
a revenge in a way. Also, it was this sense of blocking, of interrupt-
ing the fluids of the capitalist system. Im sorry for the people who
spent their evening inside their cars, but if it wasnt me it would
be somebody else ten minutes later, so I dont feel bad.

OBRIST_ In another incredibly poetic piece, Person Obstructing

a Line of Containers, from February 2009, I think filmed somewhere
in Scandinavia, one person blocks these very powerful trucks for a very,
very long time. It feels endless.

SIERRA_ The video is on my website and it was done one or two

years ago, in Sweden. The idea was to copy the image of Tian-
anmen Square, where somebody very small blocked the tanks.
I decided to create a similar situation, but using trailers, because
trailers are the containers of merchandise. It took ten minutes
and it was very tense, because in ten minutes many things can
happen. On my website you can see that intensity.

OBRIST_ Im fascinated by this archive of all your videos. There

are obviously different ways of classifying the material. One can do it
chronologically, like on your website, or one can do it alphabetically or
numerically. Whats interesting is that if one does it in an alphabeti-
cal way, one becomes aware of how many enumerations are involved
in your titles. Weve just talked about the 10 minutes, but theres also
the 10 centimeters, the 60 people, the 60 degrees, the crowd of 430 you
rented in Peru, the 3,000 holes. Can you talk a little bit about this? It
seems to be a feature.

SIERRA_ I think titles are very important in any piece of art,

because it gives you extra information thats sometimes useful.
With titles Im more classic than contemporary, in the sense that

212
I like titles like Woman with a Violin, where, when you look at
the picture, you see a woman with a violin. I like titles to say
what it is, instead of creating poetry. There are a lot of artists
making art, and a lot of confusion, and I think its better to be
very clear, to try to give the exact information that the public
needs. And because Im the public for art too, I know what I like
and what I dont like. I prefer information.

OBRIST_ One thing that also becomes obvious looking at your

archive is that the turning point after your very early works which
are about construction and about architecture and houses, and about
obstructions, circulation is when people enter the work, and thats
an umbilical cord that subsequently links the different works. Do you
remember how this happened? Was there an epiphany where you sud-
denly had this idea of a kind of living sculpture, or was it something
that happened gradually? What was the first piece?

SIERRA_ No, Id always worked with people; were doing it

together right now, all of us in this gallery. I always quote this
example: somebody cleaned the floor, somebody painted the walls;
this morning the space was full of boxes and somebody took them
out. You dont see it, but its a lot of work. What I was communi-
cating was not that all this work happened, which is something
that everybody knows, or that each space is a space of work it
was just acknowledging that this kind of invisible work exists
putting a name to it, saying how much it cost, how, who, or which
worker was involved, and in which conditions. This kind of infor-
mation isnt helpful if what you want to see in the art world is
something beautiful you dont need to see the workers activ-
ity, and in fact its considered taboo, as is the money, the income
of the workers all of these things are taboo in art. And I think
it was also probably the influence of Isidoro [Valcrcel Medina],
who was famous for trying to make a show with six euros they

213
didnt like it and they cancelled the show because he was asking
for six euros as the budget of the show!

OBRIST_ I didnt know that; so thats an unrealized project?

SIERRA_ It was a very funny project. They didnt accept it because

it was too low-budget! But what I did was not to make a painting of
a woman and claim that she represents spring, for example, but
to say, This is a woman who doesnt have a job; were making it
for her. This is the difference.

OBRIST_ There are many pieces where you paid workers to do spe-
cific jobs. Veterans play a big role. Last summer Klaus Biesenbach
and I did the show 11 Rooms at the Manchester International Fes-
tival. The idea is that there are eleven doors in the space, and behind
every door theres a sculpture, a living person: Veterans of the Wars
of Afghanistan, Iraq and Northern Ireland, Facing the Corner.
As far as I understand it, this sort of work with war veterans is
continuing in your work. Can you tell us about this piece and how
it evolved?

SIERRA_ The militarization of society is obvious its some-

thing thats in the air. In most countries its not difficult to meet a
veteran. In the usa, you just have to stand up and ask for one. Its
how we live. We have done more works with these veterans. The
last one was in Colombia, a fighter in the jungle against who
knows what? Or it could be somebody from Ukraine, fighting in
Afghanistan for the profits of oil companies. And were going to
continue the series.

OBRIST_ Another dimension to this piece is that the war veteran

stands facing the corner of the room and doesnt respond to the audience,
doesnt react to anything that happens around him. This makes the

214
experience profoundly disquieting. Can you talk about this why
theres no feedback?

SIERRA_ These people, I imagine, grew up watching stupid Hol-

lywood movies about fascist people making jokes while killing.
They enjoyed it, and afterwards they probably enjoyed killing
people on PlayStation. And then one day theyre twenty five, and
they recognize that theyve really killed people. Many of them are
completely destroyed. The problem is that the educational sys-
tem produces people without creativity. Theyre ready to receive
instructions but not ready to act for themselves, and it makes
me very sad, because theyre everywhere now. In Germany they
didnt have veterans for decades, and now they do. In Spainvet-
erans of what? What war? Who is the enemy of Spain? This is the
crazy thing: were just making wars for somebody else.

OBRIST_ Another type of piece where you work with people is where
the work becomes invisible. 100 Hidden Individuals (2003) is com-
pletely invisible because the work is the street. Can you tell us about this?

SIERRA_ Its my favorite too, because its very powerful. Imagine

if everyone in this audience was hiding but we knew that you
were here. Its very weird. Sometimes not to show is heavier than
to show. You have the knowledge that there are 100 people hid-
ing and the street becomes completely different. You take the
photograph, but its not a photograph of something empty. Its
full, and in that case full of people who were without work. The
workers and the unemployed are the main and central characters
in all of my work. Thats why I dedicated this show to them.

OBRIST_ Some of your pieces, like the 11 Rooms in Manchester, are

one-to-one encounters. But youve also worked with crowds. Theres
the piece where you hired a crowd of 430 people in Peru [430 People

215
Paid 30 Soles per Hour, 2001]. There are also the 465 people in the
Tamayo Museum in Mexico [465 Paid People, 1999]. Can you tell
us about these crowd works?

SIERRA_ During the Franco period, when they wanted to fill

a square where Franco was giving a talk, they went to all the
provinces of Spain, filling buses with people in exchange for
something to eat and some money. And in Mexico they do
that for government rallies and things like that. With this idea
of a paid-for crowd, I organized two pieces using very differ-
ent methodologies. In Mexico, I used an employment agency:
we said we needed one person per quarter of a square meter.
And they filled it, but they created a lot of irregularities; for
example, they hired a whole battalion of soldiers, and a complete
school of children who arent allowed to work.
At the beginning we had 400, but in the end the crowd
started disappearing. In Peru it was different. In Peru theres
a program called Glass of Milk, which aims to give basic food to
underprivileged classes; they give it to the women. But the women
have to fill the acts of the political party who makes these contri-
butions. I paid these women to fill the gallery in Lima.

OBRIST_ These pieces obviously have a limited lifespan that defines

the duration of the piece.

SIERRA_ You cant have many, many people standing for a long
time under a big light. And you keep them just for the time youve
paid for, or theyll live there.

OBRIST_ Then other pieces are permanent, like the 160 cm Line
Tattooed on 4 People (2000). That tattoo stays. When I watched the
video again this morning, I was thinking about your earlier pieces,
like 30 Loaves of Bread Lined Up (1996). The 160 cm Line could

216
almost be sort of a Stanley Brouwn idea, whereas 30 Loaves was obvi-
ously a take on Carl Andre. Can you talk a little bit about how these
works connect to conceptual or minimalist art?

SIERRA_ Well, the only thing with the lines is how long they are
it has no more interesting aspect. Thats why I use it because
its an empty glass that I can fill with whatever I want. Of course,
if I made a drawing instead of a line, Id be telling a different
story. But if Im just making a line, Im making the minimum
gesture to provoke a social relation in which somebodys paid to
get tattooed and photographed. Its a minimal expression, and
thats the way I like it. Im a great lover of the minimalist form
but Im also a big enemy of it, because of its lack of content. Or
at least because its content refers too much to the moment of the
industry, or refers to ignorance of the problems that are generated
at this moment of industry. I like minimal artists, but I work with
them a little bit like an enemy an enemy that I deeply admire.

OBRIST_ Another link is Joseph Beuys, since many of your pieces

connect to the idea of social sculpture. The piece that you often mention
has also to do with Wolf Vostell is your work 245 m3, in a former syn-
agogue in Pulheim-Stommeln, near Cologne (2006). That, certainly,
of all your pieces is the one that became most public. It created a main-
stream discussion for many, many weeks in Germany and beyond.
I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about this work and how it
connects to Beuys, to social sculpture, or to Vostell, to Fluxus.

SIERRA_ When they offered me the synagogue space, it wasnt

the first time that an artist had installed work there; Carl Andre
and Sol LeWitt had also shown pieces there. I found out that
this had created a certain aesthetic that people felt should be
respected, and if you cross it and you dont use the same aes-
thetic, then they can get mad. And the aesthetic is just to bring

217
flowers. In my case, I decided to take the offer, thinking of the
generation of global German artists that I like Vostell, Eva
Hesse, Beuys and others and bringing them into the piece.
Cars were parked outside the synagogue at different points of
the street, and I directed the fumes from their exhausts inside
the synagogue. This was an idea taken from a work of 1970 by
Gustav Metzger, where he pumped car fumes into an aquarium
not filled with fish but filled with plants, which died. It was
also inspired by Hesses tubes; she had the sensibility to create
a minimalism that was alive. Obviously we had a motor running,
and I was thinking of the milk pump, of Joseph Beuys. And the
general presentation was close to Vostells presentation: creating
a situation of panic, making people believe that what theyre see-
ing is much worse than it is in reality. The piece was very well
accepted by the public who were there, and I think by the art
scene, but its easy to create a confrontation. Its as easy as it is
to pick up a phone and say, Look, a radical artist is attacking the
synagogue! And then you cant talk about it anymore; you can
say nothing. When the conversation starts at this level, you have
to shut up and wait for your moment to explain yourself.

OBRIST_ Do you have any projects that are too big or too small to be
realized? Or projects that may have been censored, or self-censored?

SIERRA_ Its like asking Casanova about the women that he

couldnt get! Probably 80% of my projects are unrealized. Also,
when I realize a project, its not my project anymore, because Ive
got to negotiate, and Ive got to accept the imposition of reality on
my own idea. It becomes something else. So for me its common,
not realizing projects. I dont get depressed; I go on to the next
one, so its normal. Censorship I consider a very heavy word. We
have to take into consideration the fact that, many times, what to
some people looks like censorship is a disagreement between the

218
people inside the institution, a disagreement that can probably
be resolved through talking. But what is censorship? Its when
you involve the law, when you involve the police, when the police
arrive and say, Take all your shit out of this place. And this is
very serious and has happened only once to me. It was in Ciudad
Jurez, Mexico, during the Submission piece in 2007. And I hope
that never happens again. But what we frequently talk about as
repression is sometimes in reality nothing other than the results
of the artwork. You cant wait for everybody to clap their hands;
sometimes people will throw tomatoes at you.

OBRIST_ What happened exactly with Submission? The project

was partially unrealized, wasnt it?

SIERRA_ It was partially unrealized, but this is the reality of that

project. It exists. I dont feel that I did nothing, because this project
was there for five months. We excavated the letters of the word
sumisin into a piece of deserted land. The fight was to set it on
fire. You need, as in any country, permission to do this. But the
people who were working with me were thrown out of this place.
This is what I call repression or censorship.

OBRIST_ Are there any questions from the audience?

QUESTION_ To me, the really compelling, sharp end of your work

lies in your intensifying of the contrast between the context of the gal-
lery and the wider socioeconomic realities within which that exists. It
works as the ultimate endgame for contemporary art. Are you inter-
ested in the potential for social transformation? Do you think that
thats possible through art?

SIERRA_ Well, I think that the transformation of society corre-

sponds to the particular society. Only the self-organization of the

219
society can do something for that society, not me Im just an
artist. Some kinds of art can change reality not the art we see
in the galleries but, for example, the spectacular and dramatic
compositions that we see on television, on the news. It changes
the mind, it changes the climate, but not in the right direction.
I think art is always a good friend of power, and has always been
very helpful in maintaining the structures of power. But in my
case, its not what I pretend to do. Im not obsessed with being
an activist because while I admire activists, I can change nothing.
But I can talk this is something that not everybody can do.

QUESTION_ Do you care about how your work NO is installed in

the gallery?

SIERRA_ Yes. Are you going to say that its not well installed?

QUESTION_ Yes, because I think it doesnt work at all. Why dont

you leave it outside somewhere, for instance down in Brixton some-
where outside?

SIERRA_ That would be much better, yes, but

QUESTION_ Is it for sale? Can you buy it?

SIERRA_ Yes, if you want to you can buy it. But I tell you, the
NO looks good everywhere.

QUESTION_ The word no is a very negative word. Do you see the

NO, Global Tour as a negative influence? Or do you see it as a positive
one, since whenever theres a no it means yes to something else?

SIERRA_ Well, no has two aspects. Theres the no that the

powers say to all of us, or to the people who dont have any power,

220
and theres the no, a form of liberation, that children can say
to their parents: No, I dont want to do it. Its not all negativity.
Its a game of mirrors. I dont think that to put your finger on
what you dont like is always cruelty or negativity; it could be an
emancipation, a liberation in a way.

QUESTION_ Could you tell us something about your childhood?

SIERRA_ I wore shorter pants.

QUESTION_ Tell me more.

SIERRA_ No, its very important! Because at that time they

believed that children should wear short pants to have good legs,
and it was torture. If you ask me about my childhood, thats the
most important aspect: short pants.

QUESTION_ When you started in Mexico, there was a huge gap

between rich people and poor people, and the art that youre showing
talks a lot about that. How did you deal with that? What did they
think about your art in that moment?

SIERRA_ Well, at the beginning in Mexico, the reaction to my

work was very bad, because Im a Spaniard. I was always being
seen as part of the problem, and I had to take care all the time
to explain to everyone, No, no, Im not coming here to exploit
you. You have this sensation that youre considered part of
the exploitation just because youre from Spain, from Europe,
and its difficult to manage. Most of the artists in Mexico are
from the same background: theyre not directly Spanish, they
were born in Mexico, but most of them have backgrounds of
Spanish origin. I found fantastic artists there, fantastic friends
and allies.

221
QUESTION_ How much distance do you maintain from the people
in your work the people that you tattooed, or the veterans? Theres
a very interesting power relationship there. Whats your personal rela-
tionship with them when leading up to the project, during the project
and then afterwards?

SIERRA_ At the beginning, a lot. When I started making these

kinds of collaborations, I felt that I was working very closely with
the people. I tried to get to know them, to talk. With the veter-
ans I have fantastic contact with one of them in Berlin. But now,
although we talk a little bit, usually I try to keep a distance. Its
mainly a question of stress; Ive listened to many stories and now
Im making things in a very different way. I have people helping
me, a different structure.

QUESTION_ What keeps you making art?

SIERRA_ The work is nice. I enjoy my job. I like it. It keeps me

making art because I am what Im able to do. I dont know if its
stupid, but it is what Im doing. This is the only reason.

OBRIST_ I have one last question: I see that there are a lot of young
artists here in the audience and Im interested in what would be your
advice to a young artist. Youve said before that for you its all about
exercising your freedom and not paying attention to what people say.
Can you talk a little bit more about that?

SIERRA_ If there are some art students here, what I have to say
is, congratulations, because its the best job that you can have.
Youre not part of the police, youre doing nothing wrong, you
dont have bosses and you can use the creativity that in other work
youre not allowed to use. So congratulations. Its not advice its
encouragement. Its a good job for those who decide to go ahead.

222
[Questions to Santiago Sierra About The Black Cone, Monument
to Civil Disobedience (November 12, 2012)]

OBRIST_ I would like to ask you a few questions related to the pro-
ject you executed in Iceland, The Black Cone, Monument to Civil
Disobedience. I bring this up because we have talked thoroughly
about your work in relation to construction, obstruction and circula-
tion; however, this monument stands out because it touches on ideas
of destruction and how destruction is used for the naissance of the
improved. Could you talk about how this work came to be and its per-
sonal significance to you?

SIERRA_ In the past I think my work focused on victims. I always

drew attention to the structures of repression, but after many
years of this I have decided that perhaps the time has come to
point the finger. I think this was part of the motivation in the NO
tour and definitely in the NO (Pope) series. In Reykjavk I wanted
to make an homage to the people, to the revolution they had there,
now called the Kitchenware Revolution. The situation in Iceland
like everywhere now was really bad after 2008, and the peo-
ple did not just take it, they rallied until the government resigned
and the banksters and their employees, the politicians, who had
caused the situation were held accountable.

OBRIST_ It is interesting to see the monument in relation to perfor-

mance, as though cracking the monolith is as significant to its mean-
ing as the resulting piece itself. It is a living sculpture of some sort.
How does the memory of the performance or lack thereof play a role
on the monument?

SIERRA_ I like the act of cracking the rock because it has the
appearance of a macho act that would require great strength, but
in fact it is about intelligence. You need to create weaknesses in the

223
structure, then at a certain moment you can just tap a cone into the
right place and the rock will split. So the split is the record of this
work, of the worker acting intelligently to break the rock, to create
the monument.

OBRIST_ Similar to other works where the workers and unem-

ployed are main characters in this piece the importance is also placed
on the people. Does this mark a record of civil disobedience or a celebra-
tion of liberty, or both?

SIERRA_ Yes, this is a monument to the revolution they had

in Reykjavk, but I would not use the word liberty. We are not
saying liberty, equality and brotherhood anymore. The reference
to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man is slightly ironic.
Liberty within that context always refers to the social contract, so
only existing within the arrangement of the state. Civil disobedi-
ence is a right restricted to citizens within a state, and I do not
entirely agree with the state being the entity that bequeaths rights
to human beings. I, like everybody, do not need to be governed.

OBRIST_ The city council has finally agreed to place the monument
in front of the parliament building. The success of this project begs the
question of how you plan to carry this message on in future projects.

SIERRA_ The monument in Reykjavk is the first monument to

civil disobedience; I will be continuing the project in a series of
different languages. The aluminum plaques will be made avail-
able to the public so people can create their own monuments by
attaching the plaques to existing objects in public spaces.

Published in English in Santiago Sierra. The Black Cone. Monument to Civil

Disobedience, Reykjavik, Reykjavik Art Museum, 2012.

224
The Black Cone, First Monument to Civil Disobedience. Outside the Icelandic
Parliament Building. Austurvllur, Reykjavik, Iceland. January 2012.
2 Cylinders Each Measuring 250 x 250 cm, Composed of Posters that Have
Been Torn Down. Espacio P. Madrid, Spain. February 1994.
 JUAN ALBARRN, 2012

JUAN ALBARRN_ You began your career in Madrid in the late

1980s and early 1990s you participated in the Muestra injuve in
1991, you showed at ngel Romero Gallery and in alternative spaces
like El Ojo Atmico and Espacio P. After having spent a year study-
ing in Hamburg (1989-1991), how do you remember the Spanish art
scene during those times?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ In the late 1980s the scene was still very
divided. On one side we had the painters, which was the official
scene, and then these alternative, very minority scenes. There
werent as many people doing work as there are now. When I say
minority its because at a performance festival, for example, the
performers made up the audience for the presentations, the coor-
dinators were the performers, and so on. It was all very dispiriting
and incestuous. You knew that no one was watching you, that we
only watched each other. None of the galleries was interested in
the people working in the alternative scenes. There was a group of
people who wanted to leave because nothing could get done here,
and another group that was hoping that a gallery from New York
would come knocking at their door. I left for Hamburg. I came and
went because at that time there were more possibilities for doing
work there. In Germany I realized that art could be understood
as a professional activity in the most radical terms, that there was
space for everyone. The problem is that in Hamburg I had to do
very unpleasant jobs. Thats why I ended up going to Mexico City,

227
where I thought Id get a better position. The difference between
the scene in Hamburg and the one in Madrid was very big. If you
had a good show in a squatter house or in an alternative space in
Hamburg, the people in the art world went to see it, they were
interested in it. On top of that, there was a terrific school with pro-
fessors like F. E. Walter, S. Brouwn, B. J. Blume, S. Polke who,
incidentally, didnt let me into his classes. At the art department
in Madrid, the master lesson in your fifth year consisted of teach-
ing you to paint some grapes. The difference was night and day.
I liked my experience in Germany a lot, but after the Wall fell
things were harder, there were difficulties working, the language
was a problem too, and I came back.

ALBARRN_ What was your experience like at Espacio P? In your

statements you tend to claim the influence of some minimalists and
conceptualists the name Valcrcel Medina comes up quite frequently.
What was your impression of Pedro Garhel and what, do you think,
was his importance as manager of that space? Several generations of
artists were working there in the performance and new behavior scenes
at the same time, from Daro Corbeira, Valcrcel Medina and Con-
cha Jerez to Francisco Felipe, Rafa Lamata and Jaime Vallaure (Los
Torreznos).

SIERRA_ Indeed, thats what it was like. At Espacio P the out-

siders would come together, the ones who were doing marginal
art from a Duchampian rather than a pictorial tradition. We had
our little myths the Pamplona Meetings, 1972; Valcrcel him-
self, etc. Pedro Garhel was doing powerful work, he was the first
Spaniard in Documenta. Espacio P was his studio. When I met
him, Pedro was very open to everything; everyone passed through
there, he was a guy with a lot of vitality. The first Festival de Per-
formance was held there in 1990. It was a tiny space, but we all fit
with room to spare. As an artist, Pedro didnt really excite me, to

228
be honest. At that time, performance was always about stripping
naked and lighting a candle, as they say. And Pedro was one of
the people who were reclaiming performance as an action with the
naked body. His work as a performer didnt interest me that much,
but some of his pieces were really good. For example, that piece
with the toothpicks in his teeth, which Ive tried every way to copy.
My piece with the gypsies teeth vaguely recalls the one Pedro did
[Campaign Teeth of the Last Gypsies of Ponticelli, 2009]. I liked the
idea of the teeth. Showing your teeth is a universal sign.
With regard to Isidoro Valcrcel, he was and is a ter-
rific guy. He had no problem coming to your house to see your
work even though you were a twenty-year-old kid. He would talk
to everybody. He was someone from a different generation who
would pay attention to you, which gives you a lot of encourage-
ment. And he was also an example of morality. At that time I was
a lot more radical, I was more in agreement with Valcrcel in the
sense that I believed that it was important not to sell the work,
to stay pure, and so on. Now I believe that those attitudes are for
children from wealthy families. In my case, I couldnt afford it,
I had to earn money and there was no other way to do so. Some
day, at an international level people will realize how important
Valcrcel is. Hes a figure who carries a fundamental weight. He
has always been there.

ALBARRN_ When youre planning your works, what are the dif-
ferences between those that are designed for alternative or non-institu-
tional spaces and those that you propose for important museums and
art galleries? Do you see your work as pulsing with strategies related
to institutional critique since you reveal labor relations that mostly
remain hidden, for example?

SIERRA_ I dont think there are that many differences between

working with big institutions and alternative spaces. The difference

229
that I see is rather about whether you have to negotiate or not
in order to do your work. There are times when I make a piece
on the street, without telling anyone, and then afterward I fig-
ure out how to formalize it photography, video, etc. Its very
different when you have to negotiate in any space, big or small.
Ive been working in alternative spaces for a long time, but Im
not overly excited about alternativeness. Theyre spaces where
you can say what you want, but nobody gives a damn because no
one hears you. Theyre spaces where everyone helps each other,
theres solidarity, theres another set of values. Which is great.
But theyre really just waiting rooms outside the professional
world. I think thats all they are. There you have the opportunity
to make mistakes, an opportunity you dont have in an institu-
tion. The problem, I have to say, is that nobody hears you. In
non-institutional spaces you have a freedom that you dont have
anywhere else.
The level of negotiation is, to be sure, higher in an insti-
tution. You never know whats going to happen. A lot of people
work in a museum. Often the relationships among the members
of the administration teams are bad; Ive always had problems
with the negotiation, and I like that. I believe that you have to
try to create problems in the institution, like a sort of soft direct
action. I dont know if you can call that institutional critique.
I dont know if we have sufficient moral status for that. We sell
objects to rich people. Dogs bark, birds sing, and I blaspheme.
We artists blaspheme, we make art. Thats my job.

ALBARRN_ Maybe some sectors of the art world dont really want
to see what youre revealing.

SIERRA_ Revealing other peoples misery is never pleasant,

clearly. Although for a European it might end up being comfort-
ing to see the misery on the streets of Mexico. I think theres an

230
opinion floating around that every nation gets what it deserves,
as if they were the ones who are doing it wrong. When I started
working in Europe again, I was constantly being asked to show
blood, to show misery. I was saturated with requests for the same
piece (the Mexican stuff), when I wanted to be making new
pieces that dealt with other contexts.

ALBARRN_ Are you comfortable working with big art institu-

tions? In the case of Spain, whats your opinion of the evolution of
the art institution of cultural policies in general since the 1990s?

SIERRA_ It seems that museums are like medieval cathe-

drals: every city wants one, if possible a very big one, and it
doesnt matter too much what gets put inside. There are mar-
velous institutions where its good to work and theres respect-
able programming, and others where that isnt really the case.
It all depends on the judgment of the director when putting
together the team, coordinating it and laying out lines of work.
Ive seen a massive growth in institutions. I believe that the
provinces have disappeared from the institutional map, some-
thing that critics havent recognized. Critics go to the provinces
to talk nonsense and then come back to Madrid to play at being
serious people. However, I think there are some high quality
centers in the provinces.

ALBARRN_ You moved to Mexico City in 1995. Why Mexico?

Im guessing that the artistic atmosphere in Mexico City was very dif-
ferent from the one you had been breathing here.

SIERRA_ Its very foolish to think that you have to stay at home
and that if you leave youre no longer from here. I dont see myself
as a Spaniard, I see myself as a citizen of the planet and a lifelong
anarchist. Mexico seemed like a very interesting place for me to

231
work. I went with a miserable little grant of 2,000 pesos, and
jumped in at the deep end. The atmosphere there was worth the
trouble. Before I left, some friends who traveled to Latin Amer-
ica a lot had told me that Mexico City was dead, that there were
only conservative galleries. When I got there I found something
very different. I remember, for example, the performance fes-
tival in Mexico City, which was held at the Ex-Teresa, with long
lines of people waiting to get in. There was an audience for per-
formance. When an artist wanted to have an exhibition in Mex-
ico, he or she would take all the furniture out of his or her room
and install the exhibition right there. It was very normal and peo-
ple went to see it. In that sense the atmosphere was much more
dynamic than in Spain. I also remember La Panadera, a place
that had an opening every Wednesday. At times like that, at the
same time, I lose interest in art. Im much more interested in
the reality on the street.

ALBARRN_ A large part of your production is formalized in series

of videos and photographs that document performances and perfor-
mance-based installations. What kind of relationship gets established
between an action and its documentation? How far can these two
elements function autonomously?

SIERRA_ Ive always documented everything Ive been doing, but

afterward I would keep the documentation in a drawer, I wouldnt
give it an outlet. Producing the photographs in large formats
was an idea I got from Ace Gallery in Los Angeles, with whom
I began working in 2000. They told me that I couldnt sell any-
thing. I was in poor shape economically, and it seemed like a good
idea. After that I started developing a fondness for large formats.
Ive also been improving the quality of the videos up to the pres-
entation of my most recent film in 35mm [NO, Global Tour].
Photography cant be independent of the action. Photography

232
is one more moment in the performance, and on top of that its
the moment that can be brought to market.

ALBARRN_ This documentation is always in black and white

never in color which immediately brings to mind a conscious
reference to the photoconceptualism of the 1970s. That said, your pho-
tographs tend to be printed in large-format pictures. Is that because of
a merely aesthetic decision the ability to get absorbed in a large-for-
mat image hung on a wall, out of a desire to subvert the traditional
poverty with which performances and conceptual works are docu-
mented, or out of a need for the images to reach a high market value
an important element in the process of making the mechanisms of
alienated labor and the production of added value visible?

SIERRA_ Using black and white spares me some problems.

Photos in Latin America always come out looking pretty; you
take a photo of something horrible and you always get a marve-
lous color. Photos in Europe are grayer. So I started working in
black and white so as not to have to think about color. Also, I did
want to see myself as a 1970s artist because I consider myself to
be a modern artist; I dont like postmodernity, I dont subscribe
to it. The establishment makes us all out to be postmodern, and
I dont agree with that. I act as if I werent aware of those new
imposed codes. The size of the images gives them a capacity to
have an impact on the spectator. The success of the work also
has to do with the rise in the prices of the images, which, when
they came out, had a market price of $2,000, and now cost
$25,000. Otherwise it wouldnt make sense. Sebastio Salgado
could be a great artist if he made the value of his work explicit
in his photographs: for doing this they pay me so much. But
he doesnt do it. Whats your role in all this. Im interested in
being clear about my role. I think the artist cant do otherwise,
seeing everything like the omniscient narrators from the 19th

233
century. We have a responsibility for what gets done, and we
have to say what it is.

ALBARRN_ To what extent is the development of your performances

controlled by you yourself, and to what extent are the workers, as
hired performers, the ones who shape it autonomously? Has there ever
been a time when youve lost control of a performance?

SIERRA_ Yes, sometimes Ive lost control of some actions. Its

just that I only put up the successes, never the failures [laughter].
In Mexico City I was going to dye a lot of peoples hair blond its
the piece I did later in Venice [133 Persons Paid to Have their Hair
Dyed Blond, 2001]. Then, when we were starting to dye, it turned
out that they had bought green dye instead of blond, and I had
all those people there waiting. Other times I myself have tried to
make the action spin out of control, to provoke disorder, for exam-
ple with the piece with the inclined wall [The Wall of a Gallery
Pulled Out, Inclined 60 Degrees from the Ground and Sustained by
5 People, 2000]. I thought it was too much, that they werent
going to be able to hold it up, that they were going to let the wall
fall. But they held it up because they needed the money. In gen-
eral, if the people go for free, anything can happen; when you pay
people, everything goes well, people do what you ask of them.
Thats history: nobody likes their job, or the society in which they
live. We work in order to get paid.

ALBARRN_ On other occasions, youve stated that you arent try-

ing to change society through your practice. What can art do, in polit-
ical terms? Does it have any hope of intervening in reality?

SIERRA_ Arts function is to get us to talk. A good work of art

provokes discussion. We have the good fortune of being able
to talk. Art allows you to talk. But I dont know if it can change

234
reality. I believe that the established order cant be changed; its
like a curse thats been cast our way.

ALBARRN_ Some of your projects have been censored. Do you see

censorship as politically legitimizing your work, or at least as demon-
strating that it isnt at all innocuous in political terms?

SIERRA_ There are censorships that I dont consider to be cen-

sorships. For example, when youre told that you cant do a piece
for security reasons, or for whatever reason. Thats normal. Ive
gotten used to that. In those cases, you have to negotiate with
the institutions: if not this piece, which one, until I succeed in
getting what I want. Censorship is when the police show up, like
in Ciudad Jurez [Submission, 2007], to kick you and your whole
team out by force, asking you to destroy the work when you have
all your permissions in order. Thats censorship and its intimi-
dating. We cant trivialize censorship.

ALBARRN_ People have criticized you by accusing you of being

a cynic and a hypocrite for reproducing and making money off
of the mechanisms of capitalist alienation. Maybe these criticisms
are governed by a moralism that understands art as a human produc-
tion that must necessarily be irreproachable in ethical terms. Have
you had any regrets?

SIERRA_ Those accusations are typical criticisms from the

right. The right is very embedded in art, very well disguised. The
art world is full of conservative rich people who parade around
openings. To me it seems much more ethical, much clearer, to
reveal your participation in a work, what your role is, than to hide
it. I could have called this photo [points at 250 cm Line Tattooed
on 6 Paid People, 1999] Boys from Havana. Now that would have
been cynical. I think that those criticisms have to do with my

235
communicating information that wasnt revealed before. Maybe
thats what was missing from conceptual art, saying how much
and how. Regrets: Im an artist. The photos tend to reflect the
toughest moment of the action. With the boys from Havana,
for example, we had a good time, they were the beach gang, the
guys who would flirt with the girls, etc., and afterward we went
out partying with them. We tried to have as good a time as pos-
sible. Sometimes weve dealt with people who are in really bad
shape, in the middle of a tragic process. Then you dont have
a good time, but in the negotiation process they become aware
that the work is a way of saying that they exist. For example,
with the Chechens it was like that [Workers Who Cannot be Paid,
Remunerated to Remain Inside Cardboard Boxes, 2000]. Imagine
a group of people who cant work because they dont have per-
mits, and who are stuck at home while their kids are out stealing
boom boxes. I had to be very convincing to get them to agree and
they only did it as a way to make people see that they were there.

ALBARRN_ Youve talked about torture in relation to your work,

of the undignified forms of labor that deform the bodies of the wage
earners or that put their physical resistance to the test. Some of the
classic performances from the 70s Burden, Pane, Abramovic
have also been related to torture the performer would take on a form
of torture, a physical punishment as a way of redefining the power
relations at the core of Western society. To what extent have you been
influenced by those classic performances? Recently Claire Bishop has
approached your work under the rubric of delegated performance,
explaining that that strategy of externalization of actions (labor) cor-
responds to the dynamics of subcontracting, generalized in business
management since the 1990s.1

1 Claire Bishop, Delegated Performance: Outsourcing Authenticity,

October, vol. 140, 2012.

236
SIERRA_ Those performances have been important for me, but
they have problems. That attitude has to do with Catholic mar-
tyrs; the artist was the protagonist, the work of art. To me these
attitudes seem dishonest. The artist flagellates himself in soli-
darity with those whove really got it bad. But deep down its you,
Chris Burden, who signs it, its you whos in the action, with your
face. Its part of your oeuvre and the torture isnt real. I worked in
actions before. But in Mexico City I stopped working when I real-
ized, during a performance, how ridiculous it was to work with
the galleros who unload garbage trucks. I was irrelevant there, it
was for show. I had to get out of there. I include myself as the
boss, as the employer, sometimes I show up in the background
paying the workers. Its true that at first, in Mexico City, I wasnt
too far away from these people; I had it almost as bad as they did.
Later on I was. In fact, when my economic situation began to
get easier this kind of work lost some of its toughness, Ive been
changing some things. The works are more sculptural, more alle-
gorical and less cruel.

Madrid, June 6, 2011

Published in Spanish in Del fotoconceptualismo al fototableau. Fotografa,

performance y escenificacin en Espaa (1970-2000), Salamanca,
Universidad de Salamanca, 2012. Translation: Christopher Fraga.

237
Los Encargados. Madrid, Spain. August 2012 (with Jorge Galindo).
 FIETTA JARQUE, 2013

FIETTA JARQUE_ Youre opening two new projects at galleries in

Madrid almost simultaneously: El trabajo es la dictadura (Ivory-
press) and Los Encargados (Helga de Alvear), together with Jorge
Galindo. This is perhaps the most notable presence youve had in the
Spanish art scene for a long time. Is it just a coincidence in program-
ming, or has the atrocious situation in Spain led you make your state-
ments with greater emphasis now, in the face of this reality?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ Ive never known of a political situation

in Spain that wasnt atrocious. They say that during the years
when Id left the country, during the era of Aznar and Zapatero,
Spain was among the champions, as if that were something to
be envied. I havent seen it for myself and I dont believe it but
things can always get worse, clearly. The piece at Ivorypress is
basically an editorial project. The proposal was to make an inex-
pensive small format book like the ones that have already been
done with Kiefer, Cabrita Reis, Long, Kounellis, and others. The
book is the result of an act of labor or of penance, which amounts
to the same thing. The project being produced by Galera Helga
de Alvear and carried out with Jorge Galindo is a bit more com-
plex; its a call to rise up against this absurd regime. Los Encar-
gados is a jewel of counter-propaganda in which the master
filmmaker Ivn Aledo is also participating. Im really proud of
the result and I believe we have to thank Helga de Alvear and

239
her team of professionals for the help that theyve given us to
move forward with the project. The project is made up of seven
large-format paintings that evoke the big cinema billboards on
Gran Va and in each picture theres a black and white, upside-
down portrait of everyone who has served as Prime Minister of
democratic Spain, plus his Head of State. Later well take them in
procession down Gran Va. The outcome of all that is what well
be showing in the gallery.

JARQUE_ In your opinion, what are the most troubling or outra-

geous issues that are currently going on in the social and political
spheres in Spain?

SIERRA_ The other day I read some statements by Gallardn

asserting that to govern is to distribute pain, and hes completely
right about that. Or its to administer Death, as Agustn Garca
Calvo more audaciously put it. Political parties everywhere, includ-
ing here, are criminal organizations whose efforts are aimed at get-
ting their hands on the public coffers and distributing the publics
booty among their cronies, bosses and family members. Whether
left or right, here the only direction worth mentioning is up and
down: theyre up, everyone else is down, obviously. Political par-
ties belong to the banks, that is, those who finance them, just as
the majority unions belong to the State, that is, those who finance
them. Corruption is not an anecdote, corruption is the Regime,
and extortion is its method. The State is a parasitic body and its
objective will never be the common good, but rather the private
good, class wellbeing, the wellbeing of their class. In the process
they toss some crumbs to the mob so they can throw it in their
faces on the daily news and then off they go. In Spain we have
a colonial administration that does whatever they tell them out-
side the country in exchange for impunity in their embezzle-
ments. Spain actively belongs to the biggest terrorist organization

240
in the history of the planet: nato, prime suspect in the March
11 attacks in Madrid in 2004, among many other tragic events.
Spain is a monarchy by the grace of the Pentagon, which only
cares about the stability of its military bases. Its a subject of the
European Union, an authentic pirates cave, which one day issues
the order to dismantle industry in order to please the industrial-
ists of the north; on another, to dismantle agriculture to please
agro-industry in France; or, as were seeing lately, to cheerlead
the wholesale robbery of the population of the peninsula. The
European Union wants us to be waiters and construction work-
ers while science is prohibited and culture is on its knees, and
with no universities: ignorant, poor and sick. This is a country
of murderers and murder victims, the ditches full of forgotten
people and the streets full of untouchables. Here they bury fas-
cists to the sound of bagpipes and celebrate the massacres of
the New World. And when theyre not doing that, they entertain
themselves by torturing animals on Sundays. Then theres the
mafia in Rome who view sodomy as a perfectly acceptable teach-
ing method, the rich kids, the fat cat class, soccer, the media, and
so on. A goddamn disaster. Its the apotheosis of the cretins. But
whats really troubling is the obedience. Thats the biggest prob-
lem we have, obedience and navet.

JARQUE_ In the performance El Trabajo es la Dictadura you return

to a strategy that youve used in previous works, like 20 Workers in
a Ships Hold (2001); 11 People Paid to Learn a Phrase (2001);
and Hiring and Arrangement of 30 Workers in Relation to their
Skin Color (2002). There are those who consider these actions to be
an irritating (or cynical) exploitation of people in a disadvantaged
situation, especially because later, as an artist, the documents of said
performances come into the art market at a very high value. How do
you respond to such assessments? What has your experience with your
employees been like in previous performances?

241
SIERRA_ Work is not necessary. And what Im saying is just
that: work is always exploitation. We must avoid the stereotypes that
dignify the laborer without questioning the very nature of work.
If what I do upsets the morality of the bourgeoisie, they can
go to the opera; there are still tickets, they wont see poor peo-
ple there. I dont own any chains of cheap clothing manufac-
tured by child slaves in exotic countries, nor do I sell massive
quantities of toxic products or trick old ladies in order to steal
their life savings, as the respectable people of this country do.
I work in contemporary art, which is an occupation, not a crime.
One day Id love to see questions of this sort directed at the
big fat cats. From my position as an artist I do one-off actions,
always within the law, because Im not a bank owner or a relic
from the old regime. I know what it is to work and I dont like
it at all, so they have all my respects. If you had to be homeless
in order to speak out against the system, we wouldnt be able to
speak at all and wed be left cheering from the gallery.

JARQUE_ Tell me how you arrived at the phrase that they write in
their notebooks: El trabajo es la dictadura [Work is dictatorship].

SIERRA_ Its an objective fact. The question is no longer

whether workers are paid fairly or not. Even if theyre paid fairly
theyre only there for the job, for the money. Their time, body
and intelligence have been stolen for someone elses benefit,
not their own. Workers do not own their lives; their life is
work. What do we call that? Work does not set us free. We cant
agree with the maxim that greeted the Nazis slaves at Auschwitz
(Arbeit macht frei). It doesnt dignify either. Mans dignity doesnt
come from work. Its another thing that we have no choice but
to do it, but that is gifting the elite their lives, not for the public
benefit, or individual benefit. It doesnt make us especially
happy either.

242
JARQUE_ What was the casting process like? What profile were you
looking for?

SIERRA_ There was no casting. There was a public offer of work

that was advertised in employment offices, and unemployed
workers showed up. The profile was people willing to work for
the laughable sum of money thats dictated by the current law
plus a little bit more, because the minimum wage in Spain
is medieval.

JARQUE_ In Los Encargados you work with another artist, Jorge

Galindo. How did that collaboration come about?

SIERRA_ Jorge and I have been friends since the days of Jon El
Cojo Manteca, since the Art Department. Maybe thats where
the idea came from. It hasnt been too complicated to work
together, or to make decisions; its been a pleasure. Hes a great
artist. The idea was to strike back at the propaganda machine
that weve had to put up with as long as we can remember. Its
an opportunity to get even; its counter-propaganda.

JARQUE_ The portraits of Los Encargados are paintings. Why

paintings and not photographs? Whats your assessment of painting
in the context of contemporary art?

SIERRA_ A ceo doesnt frame a blown-up photo from a photo

booth. He has a painting made of himself, a portrait that will
then be paid for by the taxpayer, clearly. Painting requires skilled
labor and more labor time. Therefore its more expensive; its cor-
porality solidifies a greater volume of value. Its a luxury. Paint-
ing was a necessary and consistent choice in Los Encargados. Its
a question of status. When you see a portrait of a king its impos-
sible not to think about the history of art, from Velzquez through

243
Goya to Bacon, for example, or about the portraits that came out
of the socialist realisms, or about the movie posters that filled the
Gran Va in the 1980s.

JARQUE_ When I asked you, at the time, about the authorship of

that action, you answered: Its a clear act of disaffection with the fas-
cist regime headed by the elephant-hunting Francoist military leader.
We are not an organization, were just anti-fascist. Why isnt Franco
included, while all of the rulers of democratic Spain are?

SIERRA_ Because democracy is the other face of fascism. Democ-

racy is just a scam, its a dictator who gets elected. And were talk-
ing about this fascism, not the other one. With regard to Francos
fascism theres a consensus outside of their Francoist caves, and
so we take that as being accepted. In Spain people are being thrown
out on the street by the thousands manu militari. Its as if there was
a permanent tropical storm destroying houses daily and leaving
people in the street, the difference being that on any Caribbean
island solidarity kicks in and tents go up, and hospitals, interna-
tional aid, etc. are organized. The constant suicides are silenced.
And the people who have lost an eye from a rubber bullet or have
been tortured only to see their torturers absolved, or the kids with-
out any heat or toilet paper who took a beating from the defend-
ers of order in Valencia because they were protesting. Pure
fascism. Fascists dont tend to look like Hitler; they wear ties and
have nice haircuts and carry id cards issued by the party, by any
party because its all a bit of a fourth-rate theater. We dont need
them to govern us, or for guys toting guns to control the streets, or
summit meetings for thieves, or armies of trained people whom
we can only wish to see free. We dont need them: every advance
that society has been able to make has been despite Los Encar-
gados, the ones in charge, not thanks to them. Theyre the ones
who, in the name of their bosses, deprive humanity of progress.

244
 We all know who Franco was: a mass murderer, a sadist,
a huge tragedy. Another encargado. The shocking thing is that now
theres a Fundacin Francisco Franco telling us which subjects
we cant talk about. The case of Eugenio Morenos Always Franco,
denounced by that Foundation for disrespect of his honor, its
like the Adolf Hitler Foundation denouncing Maurizio Cattelan
for disrespecting his honor. Insane but real. The Franco stuff
deserves a chapter of its own, him and his Franconsteins. In Los
Encaragados were talking about a sneaky fascism, about the great
scam of democracy. Franco left everything tied up, and well tied
up at that. Franco and the cia.

JARQUE_ You have lived and worked in Mexico City for a long
time. In fact, a lot of the time people in art circles see you as Mexi-
can. Although there are a lot of differences between them, what do
you think distinguishes artists from Latin America in relation to
Europeans, for example, now that they seem to be a focus of inter-
national attention?

SIERRA_ I have to confess that these questions make me a lit-

tle uncomfortable because they force us to generalize, and thats
always the beginning of xenophobia. Mexicans are like this and
Croatians are like that. Societies are always complex. There are
many Latin Americas, just as there are many Europes or Spains.
On top of that, the contexts are very different and the actors
depend on the context and on their position in the game. Theres
an ocean in between; its no pond. As for the rest of it, the signif-
icant thing is that there are artists in Latin America too. Before
everything was Europe and New York, now theres China and
India. Its better that way. In the case of Mexico City, the prolif-
eration of spaces and actors in recent years is real and objective,
and that generates more vitality than somewhere else where the
opposite occurs and everything is closing down.

245
JARQUE_ The concept of freedom is very important in your work.
How would you define it, more with regard to yourself as an artist
than to a dictionary definition?

SIERRA_ Freedom is a word thats been stolen and sullied by the

elite. If someone declares that theyre going off in search of free-
dom to who-knows-where, we already know what theyre after: to
steal. The concept of freedom has to be restored, because it defines
something non-existent and we need to rethink it urgently. It
would be difficult to salvage it, but its worth trying.

JARQUE_ Your works tend to wake people out of their lethargy. You
question, you make people uncomfortable, you make people think or
(in some cases) just react. Is that the poetic balance point that youre
looking for?

SIERRA_ I think that people come to my exhibitions already

either asleep or awake when they leave home. I dont know
whether art can wake anyone up or not. Personally, I dont like it
when people want to wake me up; it sounds to me like messian-
ism, something I stay well away from, and I like sleeping. Every-
body should come to his or her own conclusions. As an artist, Ill
try to keep doing what I like.

Published in Spanish in El Pas, January 19, 2013.

Translation: Christopher Fraga.

246
20 Workers in a Ships Hold. Maremagnum Mall and pleasure-boat mooring
in the port of Barcelona. Barcelona, Spain. July 2001.
12 Workers Paid to Remain inside Cardboard Boxes. ACE Gallery New
York. New York, United States. March 2000.
 ROTEM ROZENTAL, 2014

In his installations, live performances and cross-media projects,

Spanish artist Santiago Sierra explores and critiques the relation-
ships between power structures, civic spaces, individuals and
materials. In 2014, he was invited to create an installment of the
project Veterans of War in Jerusalem, as part of Under the Moun-
tain Festival, held in the framework of the Jerusalem Season of
Culture a private non-profit. After Operation Protective Edge
had begun, the planned schedule of events was cancelled. In this
interview, Sierra discusses his practice, the war and its outcomes,
as well as cultural boycotts and global areas of conflict.

ROTEM ROZENTAL_ It seems to me that when considering your

work, it is important to begin with civil disobedience, as a key term
and a methodology. How do you perceive resistance and civil disobe-
dience in your projects and the position you articulate in and out of
the art world?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ Obeying is accepting our role as subordi-

nate to the orderer. A free man, equal to the others, disobeys on
principle. Obeying and paying attention to the psychopaths at the
helm is an act of submission, an individual and collective suicide.
Taking charge of ones own life means taking our own decisions.
Children must be taught to disobey and not to go near those who
give them orders.

249
ROZENTAL_ What shaped your interest in the political powers of art
and their potential impact on the public realm?

SIERRA_ There is always manipulation in art, as it consists of

reproducing in someone elses head an idea produced in your own
head. In order to do so, you appeal to the spectators sensibility
with sensations rather than arguments. Thats why Plato expelled
us from his Republic. Art is demagogy in a way, and thats the
reason why politics uses it so much. In politics there are colored
flags, songs, fictitious plots Art is very powerful, and thats why
politicians use it. As people we are more affected by an image than
by a rational and objective argument.

ROZENTAL_ Are there any correlations or lines to be drawn with

the project you planned for Jerusalem and Veterans of the Wars of
Afghanistan, Irak and Vietnam?

SIERRA_ Yes, of course. This is a wider project, in which we not

only have veterans of the wars you mention, but also of North-
ern Ireland, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Colombia, Eri-
trea, East Timor and even of the allied occupation during World
War II. The project has been shown in usa, Canada, Colombia
and half of Europe; it was last showed in 14 Rooms (Art Basel,
2014). We live in a world at war. There are veterans everywhere,
even in countries where there were not any before. A year ago we
included a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan in Donesk,
Ukraine. It was an ordinary, eastern European city, and today it
is the stage of massacres.

ROZENTAL_ How was your connection with the festival and Jeru-
salem established? Did you encounter any international reactions to
your decision to work in Jerusalem?

250
SIERRA_ Everything went as usual until the project was can-
celled. Veterans arrived excited from Gaza, in the usual warlike
atmosphere. The project was very intense. I am showing another
piece in a museum in Jerusalem, so the cancellation was not tar-
geted at me, but at the action itself. When weapons speak you
must shut your mouth.
Concerning the reactions, Israel is under a cultural boycott
and obviously I am not supporting it. If we worked only in coun-
tries not involved in mass killing of civilians we could only show
in the Kingdom of Bhutan, and not even that. I hate all armies
equally: I make no distinctions. Careful, I say armies, because
the people organized in their self-defense is emancipating; I will
always understand the organized violence of the slave. I have
never worked in a country whose government I agree with either;
I dont work for the political class. They disgust me. My public is
the people, and if people are suffering a situation of warmonger-
ing madness, this is all the more reason to go and speak against
the war. I would like to use this opportunity to greet the people of
Artists Against the War, thats the way to go.

ROZENTAL_ How would you describe your experience of the events

that led to the festivals cancellation?

SIERRA_ We are told that the ugly ones and the bad ones die in
war; thats not true, in war everybody dies. Children die, old men, old
ladies, women, men, pregnant women, teenagers, your pet. They
all die, and the pain caused to survivors remains for generations as
a huge indigestible trauma. I cant get the images of Palestinian chil-
dren dismembered by the glorious Israeli Army out of my mind.
Who do these people think they are? We need to get rid of the meg-
alomaniac psychopaths, who are sick sadists, that govern us, and
also of every form of government. Its really easy: civilization equals
solidarity and mutual help, barbarism equals war and genocide.

251
ROZENTAL_ The human body and the physical space the body
inhabits emerge in your projects. In 2003, you examined the move-
ment of bodies across borders and economies by realizing a field of
holes located where African refugees land when they arrive illegally
in Europe. You hired African laborers to dig the holes, which were
recorded by aerial photography, resembling visually minimalist land
art installations. A few years earlier, in 1999, you exhibited the work
8 People Paid to Remain inside Cardboard Boxes in Guatemala
City. How did these projects materialize?

SIERRA_ Its all taken from the environment. Swelled bodies of

young African immigrants appear floating between the swimmers
on the beautiful beaches of southern Spain. In Guatemala work-
ers are put into boxes inside of trucks going through Mexico to
the usa. Many of them are found dead by suffocation; others are
captured. From my point of view, everybody has the right to go
wherever they want, and thats it. An evil mind is needed to
install a border and divide people into countries. Countries are
the human equivalent of livestock farms and we are people, not
cattle. We all aspire to a better life, and anyone who prevents that
is an enemy of the people and of our freedom. Anything else is
despicable talk. I know who I am, and I dont need an identifica-
tion document that transforms my identity into a sentence. We
are something physical, real, a body that doesnt belong to us and
must be ours again.

ROZENTAL_ In that regard, the body in your projects becomes a type

for the laborer or the worker, and the public space becomes the setting
in which the worker enacts this role. Klaus Biesenbach referred to this
work as political minimalism. I wonder if you can relate to that.

SIERRA_ Minimalism achieves an effect of presence, material-

ity and evidence of great formal efficacy. The minimalists tried to

252
make a syntactic abc, completely disregarding any external ref-
erence. They are proudly not-referential, and there is there some
kind of proud sin. I dont think that minimal forms say nothing.
The works of Donald Judd, for example, couldnt have been made
in another historical moment. They have a notable relationship
with the contemporary architecture of his time, with those big
corporate blocks, with the container industry. Minimalism was
something very good to use, like an empty jar in which you put
anything you want. In my first works I was thinking clearly in
terms of commodity. When they talk about Marxism in my work
thats what they mean: the relationship with commodity fetish-
ism as it is theorized in the first chapter of Capital. But, as we all
know, in the commodity there can be no trace left of the workers,
of the process, and I was trying to do just the opposite. I wanted
to create materialistic art that didnt talk about desire but about
reality, with the marks of the workers in the cubes. From that
moment on, I stopped cleaning the art centers, leaving the dirt,
and even food leftover by the workers. But there is another inter-
esting aspect in minimalism: the methodological aspect. The
radical saving of elements, its famous less is more, that applied
to semantic aspects is tremendously useful.

ROZENTAL_ Your works continuously cross various borders. As an

artist, you assume the role of the creator, but you also produce particu-
lar forms of labor. I wonder if you could relate these transitions in your
work and your awareness to the political economy in which you, as an
artist, as a citizen, also function. For instance, I am thinking about
the homeless individuals in Person in a Ditch Measuring 300 x 500
x 300 cm (Finland, 2001), who were paid to sit in a ditch for a num-
ber of hours each day or 184 Peruvian Workers (2007), who received
$15 and a meal to pose for a photographic series and take part. I also
wonder if projects such as NO, Global Tour (2009), in which the word
NO, mounted as a large-scale installation, traveled to various locations

253
around the world, also emerge from these preoccupations, concerning
the crossing of borders and resisting existing systems of labor.

SIERRA_ Work is not necessary; work is dictatorship and I say

that with my work. People for hire, people who sell their body, their
intelligence and their time for someone elses profit, who postpone
living forever and all of that in increasingly worse conditions. What
do we call that? Dictatorship. Work doesnt liberate either, we cant
agree with the Arbeit macht frei motto that the Nazis used to
receive their slaves. The workers dignity doesnt come from their
work, their dignity comes from somewhere else.

ROZENTAL_ In 2012 you created Worlds Largest Graffiti near the

Saharaui refugee camp. How did you find yourself in the Algerian
desert (Western Sahara)?

SIERRA_ I was commissioned by Artifariti and the Saharan

themselves. They asked me to highlight their situation, to make
some noise so they could be seen, ask for help, and that was what
I did. The Saharan are a people expelled from their lands by the
glorious Moroccan Army. They live like refugees in the middle
of the desert, with nothing; they depend on external help for all
their needs. They bear temperatures of 48oC, sirocco And on
top of that, they are persecuted and harassed by the Moroccan
soldiers and police. Another dirty trick.
The graffiti measures 5 x 1.7 kilometers. We made it using
the same technique as in the Nazca geoglyphs in Peru; we just
used tractors to scratch the ground. The letters can only be seen
from space, so maybe the Virgin Mary or aliens can help these
people. Real people dont even know they exist.

ROZENTAL_ This project also brings me to the use of video in your

work, and your resumed interest in this medium. It seems to extend

254
beyond the mere documentation of projects. In a sense, the videos func-
tion as your comments, as an appendix or rather, another chapter in
the work.

SIERRA_ Well, video is just another tool, there is no need to attach

too much importance to it. In the 1970s there was a media rad-
icalism: you were a video artist or you were a performer. People
thought they saw an expansion of genres in it. For me, its one of
the many things that can be used to speak.

ROZENTAL_ What are you currently working on?

SIERRA_ I dont like to announce projects before they are done.

I like them to be unexpected. If you give advance notice you cre-
ate a predetermined image in the public and the actual piece will
have to compete with that prejudice. The artwork should be pro-
duced in the spectators head.

Published in English and Spanish in PostScript. Jerusalem Season

of Culture, October 10, 2014. Translation: Mara Aylln.

255
Cubic Container Each Side Measuring 200 x 200 cm. Galera ngel
Romero. Madrid, Spain. June 1990.
 THOMAS D. TRUMMER, 2015

THOMAS D. TRUMMER_ Santiago, your cube [583 Hours of Work,

2015] has impressive measurements. It is four by four by four meters, vir-
tually an architectural scope. I had the opportunity to witness the deliv-
ery of the concrete units. Actually it consists of eight wall elements and
one for the roof. They looked fantastic next to the highway pillars that
confine the park and lead cars and passengers over the Rhine River. Why
did you choose concrete as the material? What does it mean for you?

SANTIAGO SIERRA_ It is the most everyday material in archi-

tecture, the most industrial and widespread. I dislike the gray
dust that it produces, its dryness. It evokes immense industrial
buildings, walls between states, bunkers. Last year it caught my
attention that during protests against the bombing of Gaza, in
an act of protest in Telaviv, the group Artists Against the War,
in addition to asking for the end of the occupation, called for the
end of the cement: no more concrete, was one of their procla-
mations. It is a material that is very much in vogue now in dec-
oration: it is left all raw and unpainted. That reminds me of the
slums of Latin America and I dont like it. I use cement because
I dont like.

TRUMMER_ The cube has a long history as an architectural and

sculptural element. It seems to be almost overloaded by previous mean-
ing. One cannot avoid thinking of the Kaaba in Mecca, of the tradition

257
of the four elements the cube representing the earth and of course
the long list of works rooted in the history of minimal art. For example,
Tony Smiths cube has become an iconic monument. How do you refer
to these diverse traditions, inherent allusions, different uses of the form?

SIERRA_ I am interested in the extreme lack of originality of the

cube. It is simple and does not distract the gaze from the seman-
tic center of this sculpture. It is also, like the cement, something
closely linked to industry. The cube is easy to stack and build, its
practical, well made. Its a predictable form in all its dimensions.
Its construction is the excuse that unleashes hundreds of hours
of work. I use the cube in its condition as an empty container.
Now, its clarity, its presence and sense of formal evidence make
this container an amplifier of the written message. It gives vol-
ume to the text and this text seems to be shouted.

TRUMMER_ What does blackness mean to you? Absorbing light

and raising attention? You told me you used to work as a stonemason
on tombstones? Can you tell me more?

SIERRA_ Perhaps it is incidental, but yes. When I was a student

I worked in the Almudena cemetery in Madrid putting the letters
onto tombstones. They paid per placed letter. In this work we also
put metal letters like on the Madrid tombs. It is clear that with this,
added to the use of black, my intention is to link work with death.
Black also has a high energy level. A white cube flies, a black one
expresses a greater weight; its more emphatic.

TRUMMER_ When we visited the site we got into a conversation

about the art of Ulrich Rckriem, a German sculptor who is repre-
sented in the park with a couple of works. Actually I want to promote
his statements I like to call sculpture a kind of a statement though
speechless and bring them forward. You saw his high monument in

258
the corner and actually stepped on the tombstone next to the office
building. What is your interest in his body of work?

SIERRA_ Ulrich does not hide the marks of work. Often you
completely understand the cutting process of every single stone,
interpreting only the traces on the surface. It is like an anticli-
mactic action painting where the creative freedom is replaced
with work. This makes Rckriem a very original artist, because
normally there is nothing left of the labor in art. As well as that,
I like the megalithic aspect of his works. I always found him an
inspiring artist who I have evoked in some of my works, espe-
cially at the beginning of my career.

TRUMMER_ The cube displays the working hours involved in its

production, construction and erection. Why do you want the visitor to
be reminded of these facts?

SIERRA_ All these hours express a moment of lack of freedom

for the workers. They were not interacting with the world in a free
way. They are hours in which an everyday crime was commit-
ted, that is the result of depriving a person of their time and put-
ting their body and intelligence at the service of interests other
than their own. All produced objects retain a certain burden of
guilt that emanates from the exploitation that is always present
to some degree. Perhaps the person walking through the park
where the cube is located will enjoy their leisure time thinking
of these things.

TRUMMER_ Your artistic practice reflects social conditions of labor

and class. You raise questions of humanity and migration issues
that are more than imperative these days with the catastrophes in
the Mediterranean, as well as other subjects such as exploitation,
lacking prospects and humiliation. Undoubtedly your body of work is

259
one of the most relevant voices bringing hidden issues of capitalism
to the fore, its repression and refusal to reform itself toward a more
social construction of life and communities. Why do you see art as
a political means?

SIERRA_ An unemployed person or a worker tends not to be

interviewed, nor do they have resources to express themselves
in public. Artists do, and that gives us a certain responsibility
beyond our own navel! Otherwise, I think that I deal with many
issues that are not strictly political, relating to art or life. That
there are even different layers in the perception of a job. There is
always an initial scare and then a more thought-out story that
comes later. Politics is a very fashionable term, and I prefer to
think that I make a libertarian art.

Published in German in Kln Skulptur, vol. 8, 2015.

260
Franz Erhard Walther and Santiago Sierra Demostrating No. 46 from
Walthers First Woerkset (Sehkanal, 1968). Rhn high plain, Germany.
December 2011.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS / AGRADECIMIENTOS

Diario abc, Art Pulse, ArtFacts.net, Mara Aylln, Paco Barragn,

Patricia Blasco, cac Mlaga, Suzanne Carey, Guido Comis,
Comune di Trento, Javier Daz-Guardiola, Pamela Echeverra,
Diario El Pas, Flash Art, Fernando Francs, Cecilia Gandarias,
Mariana Gell, Galera Helga de Alvear, Fundacin Helga de
Alvear, Violeta Janeiro, Fietta Jarque, Jerusalem Season of Cul-
ture, Carlos Jimnez, Kim Klehmet, Kunsthalle Wien, Collezione
La Gaia, Galera Labor, Julin Lacalle, Lisson Gallery, Gabriele
Mackert, Gerald Matt, Cuauhtmoc Medina, Minhea Mircan,
Reuben Moss, Luis Navarro, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ida Pisani,
Salom Prada, Reykjavik Art Museum, Mario Rossi, Rotem
Rozental, Marco Scotini, This Side Up, Susanne Stoffel, Carlos
TMori, Thomas D. Trummer, Hilke Wagner, Hafr Yngvason.
poliuretano salpicado sobre las espaldas de 10 trabajadores, Lisson Gallery
(Londres), julio de 2004.