ELMGREEN & DRAGSET INTERVIEW

CF:
How do you start your day?

E&D:
Michael: Laptop, cigarettes and very strong coffee. In summer I enjoy opening  the big skylight in our studio before everyone comes in and just sit and contemplate under the sun – a moment with no planning until the phones start ringing and everybody ask me questions.

Ingar: With a long cuddle.

CF:
What is your current obsession?

E&D:
Michael & Ingar: not being scared or freaked out by what we are told by the media and the politicians who want us to fear the worst of the future in order to turn us into well behaved and easily manipulated small working ants or lame mainstream consumers with predictable minds and narrow minded moral values, ha ha. More than ever we need to be free minded and fearless so we can overcome the new challenges in this world.

CF:
How does your obsession inform your work?

E&D:
Michael: It’s like the “sex drive” in the whole process.

Ingar: The art world is a nucleus of society as a whole. We take nothing for granted.

CF:
Do you have a celebrity crush?

E&D:
Michael: I never recognize famous people when I meet them. I think most of the  real celebs I have met  seem rather lame to be honest. Instrumentalized in a way. Like hand puppets more than the hand in control.

Ingar: There are people like Gore Vidal, who have combined intelligence, entertainment, glam, (homo-)sexuality and a will to change things politically, but those are very few.

CF:
What was your first job?

E&D:
Michael: I ran away from home when I was 16. The only job that would fit with my hours at school would be an evening job. So I became a rent-boy.

Ingar: I didn’t know what a rent-boy was at that time. I still don’t think we’ve got them up in Northern Norway. Anyway, I was a part time nurse’s aid from the age of 16 to 23. A sobering experience, cleaning old ladies asses, changing peoples catheters and prosthesis. I aged quickly beyond my years I think.

CF:
What was your first job?

E&D:
Michael: I ran away from home when I was 16. The only job that would fit with my hours at school would be an evening job. So I became a rent-boy.

Ingar: I didn’t know what a rent-boy was at that time. I still don’t think we’ve got them up in Northern Norway. Anyway, I was a part time nurse’s aid from the age of 16 to 23. A sobering experience, cleaning old ladies asses, changing peoples catheters and prosthesis. I aged quickly beyond my years I think.

CF:
What is your most important accomplishment to date?

E&D:
Ingar: Realizing dreams we didn’t know we had.

Michael: Collaborating with Ingar for now 17 years.

CF:
What is your favorite smell?

E&D:
Michael: Coffee in the morning. And I must admit I prefer something so ordinary like Starbucks.

Ingar: The smell of spring after a long, cold and dark Berlin winter. (Maybe I really am a romantic.)

CF:
What is the longest relationship you have ever had with someone?

E&D:
Michael: 9 year and 9 months with Ingar. Never made it 10.

Ingar: Same here. I’m in another relationship now, going on six years, and aiming for sixty.

CF:
What are you working on now?

E&D:
Michael & Ingar: A site specific installation for The Singapore Biennial opening in March . We make a full scale traditional German barn with hay stacks inside. And local guys dressed in Southern German “leder-hosen”, hanging out like farm boys. Singapore is purely urban and has no agriculture. It is also rather homophobic so we assume there must be a link between homophobia and the lack of farm land, ha ha. In May we have a show organized by Boijman van Beuningen Museum at their new Submarine Wharf venue in the harbor of Rotterdam. It’s a giant space to deal with. But it’s still top secret what we’ll do there. Come to Rotterdam end of May!