Edits at author's request

content/interviews/dombois-kite_flying.md

@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ I've only been exhibiting as an artist since 1999 or 2000. I studied geophysics
 
 I'm primarily interested in art that alters our perception of reality. In my work, I'm not really interested in creating a situation where an artifact stands in the center and everyone says, "That's art." I'm much more interested in the moment of a collective art experience, because the viewer contributes at least as much to it. I'm a proponent of the "eye of the beholder"---just as much emerges from this process in the viewer's eye.
 
-For the record, it's perhaps important to note that the happenings had scores and were often score-based. That had a profound influence on me. When you're so deeply immersed in art, as an artist you often want to distance yourself from where you come from. I then studied geophysics in 1986 because I couldn't really identify with the contemporary art scene at the time---there was a sort of neoconservative movement back then, where the "young savages" wanted to return to painting and the classical media. But I had already strongly experienced that anything can be art and that art is more of an experience than an artifact. I probably felt out of sync with my generation back then.
+For the record, it's perhaps important to note that the happenings had scores and were often score-based. That had a profound influence on me. When you're so deeply immersed in art, as an artist you often want to distance yourself from where you come from. I then studied geophysics in 1986 because I couldn't really identify with the contemporary art scene at the time---there was a sort of neoconservative movement back then, where the "young wild ones" wanted to return to painting and the classical media. But I had already strongly experienced that anything can be art and that art is more of an experience than an artifact. I probably felt out of sync with my generation back then.
 
 In geophysics, I realized pretty quickly that that wasn't my world either. I was very interested in tectonics and reading the landscape as a sculpture shaped by geological forces. Math didn't hold me back---but the way scientific research is then articulated, through publications and so on, I found that totally problematic. And then there was something else important: Chernobyl happened in the third week of my studies. We immediately measured the radioactivity of the moss on the edge of the roof in the physics building at TU Berlin. It was relatively low at first because the fallout hadn't quite arrived yet, but after a week or two, the first rain fell---then the Geiger counter went crazy.
 
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ I then developed the tunnel into a transdisciplinary meeting place---perhaps it
 
 *You're now leading the research project "Worldwide Wind." What's it about?*
 
-The wind tunnel is, of course, the controlled form of wind. "Worldwide Wind" is about so-called triple instruments. I've developed kites that fly on piano strings. In Asia, there's a long tradition of hanging instruments from kites---either buzzers or whistles. When I learned this, I thought: "How can I bring the sound from the sky down to earth?" I initially wanted to solve this with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, until it dawned on me: The string itself can serve as a medium. If you replace it with a piano string, the whole thing becomes a giant instrument---like a giant electric guitar with a thirty-meter string.
+The wind tunnel is, of course, the controlled form of wind. "Worldwide Wind" is about so-called triple instruments. I've developed kites that fly on piano strings. In Asia, there's a long tradition of mounting instruments openness kites---either buzzers or whistles. When I learned this, I thought: "How can I bring the sound from the sky down to earth?" I initially wanted to solve this with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, until it dawned on me: The string itself can serve as a medium. If you replace it with a piano string, the whole thing becomes a giant instrument---like a giant electric guitar with a thirty-meter string.
 
 The project is about exploring these instruments musically and artistically on the one hand: What are their sonic possibilities? What do the materials do---which kites, which pipes, which wires? On the other hand, you can't give concerts anymore. We're back to happenings---you can't say, "We're playing from 3 to 5 p.m." The wind almost always plays tricks on you; you have to listen. I haven't given up on the wind tunnel, but I now have two ways of dealing with the wind: the natural one, where I have to fully engage with it and enter into a dialogue, and the controlled one.
 
@@ -59,15 +59,15 @@ When you can no longer give concerts, you need more time---you always have to pl
 
 *How did you come to the topic of protocols, and what terms did you use previously for your research practice?*
 
-I can pinpoint pretty precisely when the term became so significant for me. I'm part of the ELIA Working Group for Artistic Research. Two years ago, Glenn Loghran---brought texts by Walter Benjamin and Tyson Lewis on anti-fascist pedagogy to the group in response to the 2024 U.S. elections. These texts dealt with the concepts of constellation and protocol. We worked through these texts and then created an online series for the community: How can collective negotiation take place without having to reach a consensus? How can we still interact with one another despite our differences? In the process, I began to engage with the protocols and increasingly realized that this harmonizes perfectly with my other work.
+I can pinpoint pretty precisely when the term became so significant for me. I'm part of the ELIA Working Group for Artistic Research. Two years ago, Glenn Loughran---brought texts by Walter Benjamin and Tyson Lewis on anti-fascist pedagogy to the group in response to the 2024 U.S. elections. These texts dealt with the concepts of constellation and protocol. We worked through these texts and then created an online series for the community: How can collective negotiation take place without having to reach a consensus? How can we still interact with one another despite our differences? In the process, I began to engage with the protocols and increasingly realized that this harmonizes perfectly with my other work.
 
-As is so often the case: you don't start with the concepts, but only realize later which ones help you. Much of my artistic work is score-based. I've done happenings and written scores. My friend Isabelle Mundry always said, "What you're doing there are actually scores---you're like a composer." And what does a composer do? He creates a kind of protocol.
+As is so often the case: you don't start with the concepts, but only realize later which ones help you. Much of my artistic work is score-based. I've done happenings and written scores. My friend Isabel Mundry always said, "What you're doing there are actually scores---you're like a composer." And what does a composer do? He creates a kind of protocol.
 
 The second track: I've written research proposals---at first I didn't like doing that, but eventually I realized what it enables. The kite project was a huge breakthrough for me. To explain to a scientific community why it needs to fund research in the arts, I needed two arguments. First: Within the sciences, there are so many different understandings of research that they can't even agree among themselves---but the peer community is always cited as the common denominator. Transportation scientists have their peers in transportation science, philosophers in philosophy---and we in the arts have our peers too. You have to take them seriously.
 
 Second: The interesting thing about art is that it doesn't know what the outcome will be. We don't solve problems---on the contrary, we tend to create them. How can I promise a funding agency, which is itself under public pressure, what the outcome will be, without simultaneously compromising my artistic freedom? If I define the goal, I lose the point of art. So I said: Instead of defining the goal, I'll approach it through the starting point, the direction, and a rehearsal schedule. I create a very strict rehearsal schedule. There are models for this---from the school of Bertolt Brecht, then Heiner Müller and Christoph Schlingensief---who no longer staged plays but understood the rehearsal period as a time for collective development. At some point the curtain goes up; there is a result.
 
-I structured the proposal exactly the same way and discovered in the process that the concept of the "protocol" is incredibly helpful. I haven't used it in the proposal yet, but I'm going to make extensive use of it in the final publication. The protocol allows me to collaborate with other artists and orchestrate a temporary collective. I choreograph gatherings. The art market functions largely through the product, not through the process of making it---which is why I'm so interested in research. Without knowing what the outcome will be, I can bring people together, guide them into constellations, and release energy.
+I structured the proposal exactly the same way and discovered in the process that the concept of the "protocol" is incredibly helpful. I haven't named it like that in the proposal, but I'm going to make extensive use of it in the final publication. The protocol allows me to collaborate with other artists and orchestrate a temporary collective. I choreograph gatherings. The art market functions largely through the product, not through the process of making it---which is why I'm so interested in research. Without knowing what the outcome will be, I can bring people together, guide them into constellations, and release energy.
 
 Research is, to quote Thomas Kuhn, "a process driven from behind." There is a certain rigor, a certain seriousness to it. So instead of formulating a thesis, I said: We're publishing, we have outstanding people, and we have a rehearsal schedule that is so precise that no one questions whether we're worth the money. The corresponding staff positions are synchronized with the rehearsal schedule.
 
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@ Research is, to quote Thomas Kuhn, "a process driven from behind." There is a ce
 
 As I just said: I'm an artist who doesn't so much sit in the studio and produce something just to show it to the public. Of course, there are interesting positions like Bruce Nauman's, who says: Everything produced in the studio becomes art---and then goes to the museum. I don't operate according to that logic. I'm also spending less and less time in museums with exhibitions. Over the years, I've always opened windows in museums---that connection to the outside world was important to me because I found that exhibition space increasingly problematic. I've increasingly moved toward generating the energy that art means to me: What must one do for art to emerge as an experience? I'm not an actor or singer who stages this as a play---I create situations in which I hope things will turn out well.
 
-Kite flying is a central practice: Every first Wednesday of the month, we drive to the Engadin, where the wind is particularly good, and fly. Then you see what the wind brings. People come by---it's public, that's the great thing. The kites force me into public space. My studio has no walls, because otherwise there would be no wind. The wind is the friend of this openness, of the ephemeral, of moments of serendipity.
+Kite flying is a central practice: Every first Wednesday of the month, we drive to the Engadin, where the wind is particularly good, and fly. Then you see what the wind brings. People come by---it's public, that's the great thing. The kites force me into public space. Here my "studio" has no walls, because otherwise there would be no wind. The wind is the friend of this openness, of the ephemeral, of moments of serendipity.
 
 Then there's repetition. It's artistically interesting because modernism neglected it---due to its constant innovation and avant-gardism, there's no repetition there. Incidentally, that's also a reason why the wind tunnel interested me: in the early avant-garde, there was great enthusiasm for wind, storms, and wind tunnels. The Futurists were interested in machines, bullets, and fast cars---visual imagery from the wind tunnel played a major role. Since I have a problem with these early avant-garde movements because they are so machismo-driven, I built the wind tunnel to be extra slow. The idea: You don't overcome modernity by forgetting it, but by repeating it, incorporating a circular moment, and slowing it down in the process---there's something to that; at best, it's therapeutic, but at the very least, cathartic.
 
@@ -99,7 +99,7 @@ The wind plays a major role because, alongside the tide, it is the central force
 
 *So one could speak of a kind of Venice protocol?*
 
-Yes, indeed, one could. We published a Wind Tunnel Bulletin on Venice, in which I tried to represent our concepts in "clocks." There's a clock---actually a pie chart---showing how many days we spend on what. Or there's a 24-hour clock where we say: Typical PhD working hours might be nine to one and three to eight. But since we cook together, eat together, and sleep together in the same room, we do 24-hour PhDs. For artists, sleeping, dreaming, and doing the dishes are also productive times.
+Yes, indeed, one could. We published a Wind Tunnel Bulletin on Laboratorio Laguna, in which I tried to represent our concepts in "clocks." There's a clock---actually a pie chart---showing how many days we spend on what. Or there's a 24-hour clock where we say: Typical PhD working hours might be nine to one and three to eight. But since we cook together, eat together, and sleep together in the same room, we do 24-hour PhDs. For artists, sleeping, dreaming, and doing the dishes are also productive times.
 
 
 *There's also a dream log in this bulletin.*
@@ -129,7 +129,7 @@ At Laboratorio Laguna, the tide serves as a recurring pattern. For a while, we e
 
 When working with artists---and I'm no exception---if someone tells me what to do, I naturally won't do it. What I find interesting is that a score tells me what to do. For me, the protocol is, in some ways, a more abstract dimension because it governs the conditions under which I enter into a negotiation. I actually find that more interesting.
 
-I experience this with hang gliding, too. When we arrive, we unpack and set up, and I actually never give an introduction about what's going to happen. A colleague once said, "Why don't you explain what's going to happen and when it starts?" And I replied, "Because I don't want to say: You have to do this." The kites are like a constructed protocol---they establish certain relationships. You look up, you have something in your hand that pulls. You have a direction that you might not otherwise sense if you didn't have the kites in your hand. You're building, so to speak, a social choreography around an artifact---and not around a rule. The kites and the entire setup are implicit, non-verbal protocols.
+I experience this with kite flying, too. When we arrive, we unpack and set up, and I actually never give an introduction about what's going to happen. A colleague once said, "Why don't you explain what's going to happen and when it starts?" And I replied, "Because I don't want to say: You have to do this." The kites are like a constructed protocol---they establish certain relationships. You look up, you have something in your hand that pulls. You have a direction that you might not otherwise sense if you didn't have the kites in your hand. You're building, so to speak, a social choreography around an artifact---and not around a rule. The kites and the entire setup are implicit, non-verbal protocols.
 
 
 *That means there's a structure---a dispositif, an arrangement that's set up. You have things under control, like unpacking the kites. But as soon as they're released, the uncontrollable comes into play.*