« Ici, mais pas vraiment » - une conversation avec Claudia Comte et Garrett Nelson

Simon Würsten    For this year’s catalogue of the Swiss Art Awards, we decided to investigate the topic of artistic geopolitics, and more precisely two specific cases of artistic mobility from a Swiss perspective: on the one hand, Swiss artists living and working abroad; on the other, foreign artists moving to Switzerland. For a long time now, mobility has been a key factor in artists’ careers. The story of the Swiss Art Awards themselves ties in closely with mobility. The Swiss Art Prizes were first awarded in 1899 as a grant intended to fund a stay abroad during which Swiss artists would train in order to improve the general level of art in Switzerland. What is more, Paul Nizon notes in his 1970 work Diskurs in der Enge (Discourse of Narrowness) – an excerpt of which we have included in this catalogue – that moving abroad even used to be a necessity for Swiss artists who wanted to be successful. Nowadays and under radically different conditions, it still appears that mobility plays an essential role in young artists’ careers. With a view to creating a transgenerational dialogue and broadening the scope of the catalogue, we invited two artists to share their own experience of artistic geopolitics.

Léa Fluck    Claudia, Garrett, you are both artists, and you both live abroad, but you have gone in opposite directions. Claudia, you went from Switzerland abroad. You were born in 1983 in Lausanne and studied at the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL) and the Canton of Vaud University of Teacher Education (HEP). You have been living in Berlin for six years now. Garrett, you came from the USA to Switzerland. Born in 1982 in Bloomington, Indiana, you first studied in London and then Bern and now live in Basel. What made each of you leave your home country?

Claudia Comte    Right after art school in Lausanne, I had the chance to do a six-month residency at the Cité des Arts in Paris. It was my first great experience as an artist starting out in my career. I was able to visit many museums and galleries, meet people and show my work to a new audience. After this, I got a residency at the Istituto Svizzero in Rome and then in Johannesburg with Pro Helvetia. I also spent two months in Los Angeles for a show. From the very beginning, I was interested in moving around. As for Berlin, I had been invited in 2009 for a show at the Zwanzigquadratmeter art space and spent two months there as a resi­dency. I completely fell in love with the city and thought it would be an amazing place for me to stay and to work. It happened very naturally, and I moved there as soon as I had finished my studies at the HEP. I chose Berlin for very simple reasons: an international scene, affordable studios, a certain freedom… Not necessarily a freedom to create because I can create anywhere, the same as I feel comfortable everywhere. Still, Berlin is a very practical and dynamic city, without being as stressful as New York City, for example.

Garrett Nelson    I actually came to Switzerland because I fell in love with a Swiss man. Most of the reasons I found in life to move anywhere are either love or work. As a young person, however, I was also moving a lot. I am from Indiana, but I moved to London with my family, so I already had this very flexible idea of where I could live. I was probably seventeen or eighteen the first time I came to Switzerland by myself. I still lived in London at the time, but I was in love, so I would often come to Zurich on easyJet. I permanently moved to Switzerland when I was twenty-four, in 2006. I moved for the relationship on the one hand, and because I knew I wanted to do a Masters in Switzerland. After my studies, I stayed because I felt I had a life here and also because it is not a very easy place to move to. There was in me some kind of pride or stubbornness saying: “Sorry Switzerland, I am going to stay!” while rolling up my sleeves and pounding a fist on the table (laughs). Switzerland is a challenge, also artistically, but there is simultaneously a lot of support, residencies and funding, even though this whole system, for an outsider, is not always easy to access. It is often provided by art schools. There is a sort of ‘Swiss path’ that one needs be aware of in order not to be left aside and miss opportunities.

SW    There is this very site-specific mythology to your work, Claudia, like the fact that you carved your first wooden piece in the forest next to your childhood home…

CC    Every time I have a big chainsaw sculpture to create, I actually still work there! It is a spot next to my parents’ place in the forest. It is also where I store all my wood. This place means a lot to me, as a workplace and emotionally.

SW    What about you, Garrett? Is your art rather floating, ‘stateless’ in a sense?

GN    It has a sort of decentralised, rhizome-like shape. It lies within a network of people who are spread out all over the place. There are a lot of people in Switzerland who are very important for me, for my work and for colla­borations. Even if I am travelling and I am not so much in Basel, I come back very often and I see these people. And even when I am in Switzerland, it is not even one city, it is Basel, Zurich, Bern, wherever… When I am here for two weeks or so, I am really travelling around Switzerland, meeting people and connecting... So I would not say my work is geographically centred the way Claudia’s may seem. Coming from the outside, Switzerland is very small, so it is almost like one place for me: I lived in Zurich, studied in Bern and had my studio in Basel. I called it the ‘Bermuda Triangle’, because I would go in the morning from Zurich to Bern, then from Bern to Basel in the afternoon and back to Zurich in the evening. In Switzerland, one city is not enough.

SW    This is actually what Paul Nizon says in his Discourse of Narrowness: there is no city in Switzerland that is big enough to become an artistic centre. Switzerland as a whole maybe, but not a single city. According to him, this was also why Swiss artists had to move away…

CC    There is not one specific model for an artist. It depends on what one wants to be. I think it may be perfectly fine to stay in Switzerland for some Swiss artists. The challenge is to make connections. If you are constantly travelling and meeting people, it is perfectly possible to reside in Switzerland. The one important thing is simply to be ready to go anywhere anytime, and to do what seems good for one’s practice.

GN    I agree. My work is wherever I am. It is just the place where I would rather be at one specific moment. It is also about fate: wherever you have to go, you have to go. It is the condition of contemporary art right now.

SW    Garett, most recently you started spending half of your time in Mexico City. Is it because you feel a need to spend some time away, to confront new places and new scenes? To parapharase Paul Nizon, has Switzerland become too ‘narrow’ for you? And Claudia, as a Swiss-born, how do you relate to this?

CC    Switzerland is certainly small. At the same time, however, there is a lot happening here in terms of contemporary art. I moved to Berlin, and it took a while to create the perfect space to work in. It cost me lots of time, efforts and investment to have the ideal studio. If I were to come back to Switzerland, I would have to start from scratch. In Berlin, I have my big studio and my assistants. It is my base. However, as Garrett said, everything is constantly moving, and I am too. I surely need a space to do my paintings and sculptures, but at the same time I also often do site-specific works. So in the end I barely spend 40%
of my time in Berlin, and I am on the road the rest of the time doing shows and meeting people. For artists who want to build a career, we should not speak of home, but rather of a ‘base’.

GN    I feel like I have multiple bases, and Mexico interests me particularly as a place because it rejected both my European and American identities. It overthrew European rule in the 19th Century and continues to have a calamitous relationship with the colonising powers of the US. So it also has to do with the idea that you can have more identities. I can be Swiss, I can be American, but I am also Canadian, and I spend part of my time in Mexico. There is a multiplicity of identities and perhaps also a multiplicity of bases one can have. Switzerland is already embedded in this idea, because it is a nation that combines multiple languages and cultures. In a way, Switzerland under­stands that better than other countries.

CC    Exactly! And it therefore allows you to live in such a way. Switzerland empowers artists and encourages them to move around. I have this spot in the forest in Switzerland, which is like a second studio to me, but I am also constantly travelling with my chainsaw, because I am looking for new wood and places. I can tell many funny stories about chainsaws and airports! We are moving all the time. Taking a plane is almost like taking the bus. I am going to New York just for a dinner! It is completely crazy to think like this, but this is how it works, a condition of the artist life.

SW    You both seem to be constantly moving, even more than earlier generations of artists. Mobility seems to be increasing, if not in duration, at least in frequency and intensity. In his 1970 text, Nizon states: “The mass media have largely abolished geographical distances and made travelling appear superfluous. New stylistic movements go global as soon as they appear. They become world styles.” Would you say that this view is mistaken, or is this rather a complete paradigm shift?

GN    If he means mobility in terms of artists’ grants and residencies, I might argue that he is right. I think there is less necessity for having artist residency programmes than before, because we are already very easily mobile. The low-cost flights and the sharing economies made it much simpler. As for being mobile, Switzerland is maybe not isolated, but it remains small. It has not changed: it still has a border around it, it is still contained, and it is necessary to reach beyond it.

CC    But many people are coming here for recurring events like Art Basel.

GN    I guess the more people are coming, the more it becomes necessary for Swiss artists to leave as well, be­cause you create these connections with people who are actually moving around the world. If they are coming, why could we not go there as well, and I guess we are… That is the point. I meet the same people in New York, Basel or Paris.

SW    The effect of globalisation and mass media would then be, perhaps in contrast to Nizon’s statement, not that mobility becomes superfluous, but rather a phenomenon of constant motion instead of long-term movements.

CC    It also depends on where you are in your career. Young artists have a kind of urge to move around and to build a network. At some point, even if one needs to travel for exhibitions, it becomes less necessary to meet new people.

LF    In the etymological sense, Claudia, would you describe yourself as a nationalist?

CC    No. Even ‘patriot’ is too strong for me. I love Swit-zerland, but I consider myself first as a human and a European. I identify with a continental culture more than with the narrowness of a country. I love everything connected to Swiss culture, like the craziness of festivals and carnivals. It is wonderful, but I like to be open as well and would never tell anyone that Switzerland is better than any other country.

GN    I agree. I love Switzerland, but I also hate it sometimes. I am not frustrated, because I can only hate it as long as I love it. Through love, in a philosophical sense, one basically understands the world as difference. I am kind of proud to be Swiss, because I chose to be Swiss, and it chose me as well – through the language and the people I have ended up being with. It is complicated, because we had to choose each other. One has to be proud of it, because it is part of one’s identity, even though it is not the only thing I am, because I have multiple identities. It is a lucky situation. It is great, because Switzerland is very supportive. A lot of things would not have been possible without Swiss support.

SW    Where do you imagine yourself in the future?

CC    I would love to go back to the countryside. In the long term, I can only imagine being in Switzerland. It is such a stable country, you know? It would be wonderful to set up a new space in the countryside somewhere in Switzerland. I dream of a big house and a huge studio (laughs). Switzerland is an environment I know. I could go to beautiful Italy, or to New Zealand that seems literally amazing. I went to Zanzibar last year and thought I could live there. But I really think it would be great to come back at some point.

GN    I continue to leave in a way. I have not really left completely, so I cannot come back yet. But every time I come to Switzerland, I feel like it is home to me, so I will be here. I am around. I do not even really like to say too much that I am not here, because at least on a virtual level I am here anyway, even though I am not physically here. I have my nice ‘Schrebergarten’ – my allotment – on the Zürichberg here (laughs), and it is being taken care of until I am back, so I am kind of still here, but not really.

Interview recorded in Zurich on 29 August 2016.
Full version available on www.swissartawards.ch.