LLEI D'ART 14

When you are creating, which is themost important aspect? Imagination, instinct or the search for perfection? Well, I think imagination. I’mdoingmy dream. Of course, there are someplans I have.When I have one, I go tomy studio and try to realise that plan. The tubes...they don’t always dowhat I want them todo so usuallymy plans fail, you could say. The tubes, theyworkme in andout of the reactions. The next day I might end upwith a newplanbut theplan is basedon the experiences of theday before. So you could say that there is apath that is fairly capricious, very hard topredict, and in the endwhen none ofmy plans have succeeded the tubes havedirectedme: I amdirected by the tubes… What drives you to create thebeasts? Thedrive is, I think, life itself. I’m surprised that we are here and I’m especially surprised atmyself, of course, and indaily lifewe forget our lives and that we are here and I have the feelingof trying to find the roots, the causes of life - I would like tomakemanymorepeople aware of that.What I’m saying is that I don’t knowwhy I’mdoing this but I can’t do anything elsemore - a sort of disease that I - I love todo it somuch that I don’t really care if there’s a reasonor not. There is an element of your work that takes us into the realm of the sublime experience. Can yougo into thismore? Yes, well of course the future is hard topredict and you always try and hope for thr future and that it will work out. Because 99%of things don’t work out. But if you had enough small successes or even very limited successes, they give you hope that you cango further, and every time you take a small step in thedevelopment of the animal.My hope is that at the endofmy life the animals can live on their own so I don’t have to tell them anymore. They can leave theplanet and leave a new specimen to the world. Do youhave any new animal projects in the near future? Well, I build a new animal each year, so inOctober I start a new animal and inSpring I bring it to thebeach and then thewhole summer I dodifferent experiments on thebeach so at the endof the summer I’m a lot wiser and in the fall I declare the animal extinct, they go to theboneyard and the last few years theseboneyards have been adopted in exhibitions, sowhat we see in the FundaciónTelefónica [are just extinct animals. Then they reanimate the animals by popping themupwith a compressor, and they have awind stomach and youget a goodwind in the stomach and in thesePETbottles that are on theback and so you let the animal walk for a fewminutes and then they die again and so another death. Sowould you say they retire or that they die? I would just say that they did andby just reanimating the organs of thebeast they come alive again for a fewminutes. You couldn’t compare it to JurassicPark, as anold animal that comes alive again. You’ve spoken about the animal becoming extinct. Has it ever happened in a violent way - a collapse of the animal? Many times, yes. And is therebeauty tobe found in the collapse? Yes, I would say that. Imean, I’ve never turnedoff the camera so sometimes you see collapses aswell and I think it’s important to realise that it’s apart of theprocess and in fact there’s a lot of collapsing. Also, storms are very destructive and I try to survive these storms and they [the animals] are gettingbetter andbetter at that. Of course, in the olddays therewas a lot of damage and I just had to makemany of them again... Interviewer: CharlesMorganAllwood Theo Jansen. AnimarisSiamesis© Theo Jansen. 67