2024-02-03 18:35:15
The zoom screen reveals a bright studio space. Ersan Mondtag is currently a scholarship holder at Villa Massimo, the German artists’ house in Rome. Here he can exchange ideas daily with Yael Bartana, who also works there. The two will – together with four other artists – play in the German Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale from April 20th. Mondtag will also make his debut at the Roman Opera on February 7th, with a Puccini-Ravel double evening. And at the Berlin Deutsche Oper you can still see his production of the gloomy 1920s opera piece “Antikrist”, which is highly topical because of its apocalyptic pessimism. Today, however, the biennale is the topic. “Thresholds” is the name of the project in the pavilion and on the island of La Certosa. Ersan Mondtag speaks about the project for the first time.
WORLD ON SUNDAY: I stumbled across the term “thresholds”, which is rarely used in English here.
Ersan Mondtag: It sounded rather philosophical to me at first. The title is inspired by writers such as Ocean Vuong, Louis Chude-Sokei and Georgi Gospodinov. In their texts they all describe the migration experience from the threshold. In particular, the poem “Threshold” by Ocean Vuong is an important reference. Threshold is actually a very simple word, a very clear, inviting, active, imaginative term that I could immediately identify with.
WORLD ON SUNDAY: How did you become a Biennale artist?
Part of sentence: I have known Çağla Ilk, the curator responsible for the German Pavilion 2024, since her time at Berlin’s Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, where I was a production assistant. There she worked with the current Maxim Gorki director Shermin Langhoff. Then our paths crossed again at the Maxim Gorki Theater. She invited me to a large installation at the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, where she is co-director. When she was appointed curator for the Biennale, she contacted me immediately; she said she had a vision for me and a few others…
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Opinion Ersan Mondtag and Yael Bartana
WORLD ON SUNDAY: And that seemed plausible to you?
Part of sentence: Yes, of course, after all she comes from the theater, knows my work and is used to working with teams that are anchored in both the visual and performing arts. And she wanted to achieve that for this still challenging building. It’s been over a year since the invitation and I’m really excited about it. This work also inspires my other commissions.
WORLD ON SUNDAY: How important is teamwork to you?
Part of sentence: Very. Çağla Ilk always has very intuitive ideas, in this case her guidance comes from a dream. Then she makes thematic points, being very open. You travel together, spend time, discuss and then a thematic focus becomes clear. This threshold slowly crystallized beyond the Giardini to the island of La Certosa, so that we are now six artists involved in the project who work in very different ways.
WORLD ON SUNDAY: The main focus will certainly be on the pavilion’s use by her and the Israeli multimedia artist Yael Bartana…
Part of sentence: Maybe, but again: We see ourselves as six equal artists, even if we are split between two locations.
WORLD ON SUNDAY: Did you know Yael Bartana?
Part of sentence: I had my first contact with one of her works at the Volksbühne Berlin. Of course, I looked at a lot of her and was immediately fascinated and even irritated by her sometimes provocative gestures. That’s what connects us, even though their radicalism takes place on a different, historical level of art that my work usually doesn’t have.
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WORLD ON SUNDAY: Does this connection extend further?
Part of sentence: Absolutely. Yael is a very special person. There was instant chemistry between us. She is a very complex person with such a fine aura and a wonderful sense of humor, even when dealing with her own history, with Israel and Poland. We laugh a lot. This is doing us a lot of good right now. We see each other here at Villa Massimo every day. And yet Yael and Ersan work for the German Pavilion as independent, very different artists who keep their distance. But on a meta level there is a very meaningful, clear connection.
WORLD ON SUNDAY: Where did they get to know each other?
Part of sentence: In Venice, on a tour of Richard Wagner’s death room in the Palazzo Vendramin, where the casino is now located in winter. With a lovely older lady from the local Associazione Richard Wagner di Venezia. She played the original grand piano for us. Wagner also has a special meaning for someone who comes from Israel, and that was the beginning of our fruitful discussion that continues to this day. Even though we have now left Wagner behind us again.
WORLD ON SUNDAY: No “Ride of the Valkyries” under “Germania” runes?
Part of sentence: Definitely not. We can hardly do it that cheaply, even though I’m a big Wagner fan.
WORLD ON SUNDAY: They both have pretty big egos, and the building isn’t that big. Will it work? And do you always have to stage the history of the pavilion?
Part of sentence: We won’t step on each other’s toes. And yes, I think you can’t escape its history. It is still a constructed statement of a terrible time. I think it’s good that he exists in his creepiness. But of course the challenge is even greater to respond to how many art greats have dealt with this historicity in very idiosyncratic ways. So we have a place with doubly charged symbolism. We noticed: You can’t escape the pavilion. You can’t just do something in there. You have to react to him. By the way, this is different than in Bayreuth. The stage is ultimately a neutral surface once the lights in the auditorium are turned off. “Germania” still surrounds us in the pavilion. Our “threshold” project aims to rewrite the history of the building and, in the best case, add something to it. For me, of course, the German Pavilion, the whole of German history to this day, is not just the Nazis. My work will necessarily and very consciously refer to this.
What connects Ersan Mondtag with Yael Bartana
WORLD ON SUNDAY: They both have very different media at their disposal…
Part of sentence: Sure, I come from the stage, but Yael’s installation spaces are also theatrical in a certain way, that’s our interface. Our previous practice continues in the work for the pavilion; for example, I also include performative elements.
WORLD ON SUNDAY: You have theater training, but not as a set designer, and you didn’t go to an art academy. How do you find yourself at the Biennale?
Part of sentence: I slipped into something again and faced an unexpected challenge, as I often do in my life, whether it’s the opera or the Giardini in Venice. But please don’t think that I’m going there as a fool, I’m already doing my homework.
WORLD ON SUNDAY: But now the present has also written history…
Part of sentence: Exactly. And the pressure on this team in particular has grown enormously. Art, artistic freedom, the present with its discourses, it must be reflected in us. But not necessarily in an activist way. We have maintained our integrity in the preparation so far and have not started any debates about relevance. And between those of us involved, responsibility is divided into six different positions. We agree on the overall consensus, especially when we work in a confrontational way. It is a collective, contradictory statement. We have to learn to endure ourselves as a microcosm. And the public should too.
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Neukölln students in the theater
WORLD ON SUNDAY: A Jew and a Muslim are playing in the German pavilion, but that is very political.
Part of sentence: Neither of us is religious. Identity characteristics were also not the curator’s selection criteria. And I have never allowed myself to be made into an alibi Turk for German cultural fuzzies. I rejected everyone who wanted to do that very directly. Hey, my work is too good for that. The calls for a boycott and the opposition in the art scene are wrong and terrible. And we of all people have to stay away from it, otherwise we will fail. Because art is there for people to meet. Although I am a German citizen, I am only an artist in the German pavilion who performs it. Basta.
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