"Life is no argument" – a conversation between Konstantino Dregos and Daniel Marzona

"Life is no argument" – a conversation between Konstantino Dregos and Daniel Marzona

DM Konstantino, we meet today to talk about your work and its conceptual foundations. Before we begin, maybe we should take a brief look at your biography. Can you very briefly describe how you came to art?

KD Actually, in my childhood it was never my dream, never my wish to become an artist. My inclination only became clear to me later, when I was serving in the Greek navy. Because of a misunderstanding, I was put in a military prison and had to sit there for all of eight months until my innocence was proven and I was finally found not guilty. The only thing I had in my cell was a great deal of time, a pencil, and a little paper. And I drew, day and night. And at some point I thought, as soon as I get out of here, I should do something with it. And that’s how I originally came to art. I didn’t even know that there was an art academy. I had no clue.

DM So, we could say that, in a situation of absolute lack of freedom, the possibility to draw proved to be a scope of
freedom that opened up your first access to art?

KD That’s well put. It was the only way out of there. And that was definitely not a pleasant experience. But looking back now, I can say I’m grateful that it happened that way, because it’s like so much became clear to me in the shortest possible time.

DM Did you then head directly to the art college after your time with the military?

KD Yes. An acquaintance of my mother's suggested I study art. And as I said, I had no idea, but I was suffused with the experience I’d had in prison. Actually, I didn't even know you could study art.
DM It is a questionable idea that you can learn art.

KD It is, isn’t it. Nonetheless, I applied to the Academy in Athens, and I was immediately accepted. But basically, the time there wasn’t really productive. I can’t blame the Academy for that – what should they do? In the end, one is familiarized with a few basic techniques and you have to find your own way. I spent a lot of time with private studies in the library. At some point, I was finished and, through a foreign-study stipend, I landed at the Art Academy in Vienna studying with Heimo Zobernig, but he seemed to have little time for a graduate student from Athens.

DM Then you changed your major and began studying Philosophy in Vienna. Would you like to briefly say something about your experiences in that time?

KD Considering the circumstances, continuing my studies of Art didn't seem very fruitful to me, and after it was clear that, in the framework
of my stipend, it was possible to change my major. So, I followed my inclinations and turned toward philosophy. Ultimately, after two years
I broke off my studies, although I was finished with all the courses and had already begun writing a doctoral thesis. The topic was the aesthetics of hatred and I'd had an independent study course with Robert Pfaller. But at some point I realized that I didn't like what was going on in the Academy's Department of Philosophy. I wasn't in agreement at all, didn't want to be a part of it, and I took the consequences.

DM And here "Academy" means philosophy in its school form. Right?

KD Exactly. Exactly. Philosophy as an institution, but not as an activity, was absolutely unattractive. Philosophizing - questioning things - actually
speculating - coming up with totally absurd ideas and examining them - all that didn’t seemed desired. So then I went back to art, which promised greater scope for freedom, and I began to draw again, to paint, to make pictures and sculptures. I simply tried things - dance, performances,
and so forth. That was important - simply to try myself out. Try things. And then came the Walter Koschatzky Art Prize. I was one of the three prizewinners, and the consequence was a little exhibition together with other people who had received the prize, in the basement of MuQua. A gallery operator, Friedrich Loock, looked at it and said, you don't belong here, you should come to Berlin. And so I came to Berlin.

DM Maybe we should let that be enough of a glimpse of your biography. It was important to me also because a basic interest in philosophical questions can be seen in your work. If we now start looking at your work, I'd like to begin by talking about your painting, because I regard your painting, in combination with components of drawing,
as central to your oeuvre. What one always perceives
when looking at your pictures are overlaying strata. More precisely: there are often graphic elements, pictorial signs, that are clearly defined, on the one hand; and on the other, gestural, free motifs that overlay each other in strata, and yet, despite their seeming disparity, they meld to a whole.

KD Certainly; that's right. The origin and as if the source of my whole worldview, which you can somehow sense in everything I do, was in the time when I sat in prison. Back then, I drew an awful lot and I deeply explored the point and the line. In particular, I noted how great the gap really is between an idea, no matter which, and its implementation.
That's a huge gap that you have to bridge as an artist. Somehow, I understood that this path, the path from the conception of an idea and its implementation is necessarily full of contradiction, logical gaps, reversals, and errors. But this path still offers a resistant insight into the human situation.

DM Resistant in the sense of robust?

KD Resilient, exactly. Ultimately, out of that develops a kind of Platonic view of the world and of the happenings in life, of the resonance between myth and science. And precisely that ultimately forms the framework of my work.

DM That means, layering as a design principle points to the mode of the palimpsest, so to speak, to these fissures, these dissonances, this oscillation between myth and logic. But that also means that your work is always also about what actually cannot be done because it can hardly be captured pictorially. Would it be right to suspect that this constant hinting at what you diagnose as the conditio humana may be even more important than conveying specific contents, whatever the latter might be?

KD I wouldn’t suspect the one or the other. Why? Because we are always caught in this paradox. A human being always describes only what
he knows. What you don't know, you can't describe. Even if what you describe is completely lied or completely made up, it is still within the realm of the known. In contrast, I've always been moved by the ineffable. One can't say "interested", because it's not clear what kind of interest
one can have in it, but what is inexpressible has always moved me. It's like with Schönberg, who always had problems with the term "atonal music", because the expression doesn't really fit what he really wanted to achieve. But there simply is no better term. If you reject this chromatic scale of Western music, which demands that one hear music solely through these seven notes - and that is precisely thelimitation Schönberg wanted to break out of - then there is initially no fitting term. Then you just have to see what happens and endure the freedom. Like one of
my favorite artists, John Cage, always reminds us: the world - i.e., as it is inscribed and classified - is not the world as it actually exists. That's what has always fascinated me.

DM I can understand that. Against this background, it's understandable that it's not easy for you to make concrete
statements about your works, since it apparently is also about joining you crossing the boundaries of the known and what can be said. We could, of course, generalize this stance and claim that art is precisely what necessarily cannot be captured in language, and I think that there are good reasons for this stance. I think we can still continue speaking, however, because the attempt to approach
the issue should still be possible. And when I look at your pictures, I always understand them also as a kind of celebration of intuition that not only forgives errors, but also greets them and lets them stand. At the same time, motifs can be found on your canvases that come more from the realm of rationality, i.e., architectonic sketches, axiomatic equations, numerals, letters, and on the other hand, delicate pictorial happenings that seem more gestural and very open. Is it right to suspect that you, possibly unconsciously, often maintain and work out a balance between the two poles of the Apollonian and the Dionysian in your works?

KD That might be a legitimate attempt to describe in general what happens on my canvases. But if you ask me now concretely about this
or that component in a picture, dear Daniel, all I can say is I don't know.
I have no idea, and that's mostly because of the method I've developed over all these years. I start a picture and stick with it until it's done, no matter how long that takes. There have been pictures I've worked on for five days without a break. That means that, when I find an access, I stick with it until the picture throws me out. And during that time, something happens that can't be captured in words. If I assert something else, it would be a lie. When a picture is finished, I usually have no more access to it. St. Augustine once put it this way: I know what time is, but when you ask me, I don't know.

DM Then you could say that the reflection on what is preserved in the picture as a result of painting is irrelevant as soon as it is done – this is true at least for you as an artist. But that may touch upon a fundamental difference between language and the picture. Because we can ask if it makes sense at all to try to retrieve within language an experience whose significance is not anchored in the realm of thought, but in the realm of acting. Should that even be attempted in language? And in what way is the experience of viewing a picture at all fertile in the viewer? All these questions make me think of Wittgenstein, who spent years producing a logically based foundation for the relationship between the world and language and in whose Tractatus we find the following formulation: "There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical." Does that correspond with your stance?

KD Yes, I would agree with that. For me, the interesting question was always: how can it be - let's take the example of Hamlet - how can it be that things that I have thought up say something about me that I know nothing about? Do you understand that? I mean, the way I formulate it is a bit paradoxical, but I can't formulate it any better than that.

DM I think I know what you mean. But you can gladly explain it more, because I think it's an important point.

KD One already sees that the actual point that I'd like to clarify here shows a process that is and remains inseparable from every description. Whether this description is done in words or numbers. You can grasp this in the sense of a monad, a conceived unit that cannot be separated. We confuse the fabulous characteristics of a description with what actually happens. And we are captive in a strange relationship with the world, with what we call nature, with our material surroundings, with our own body, with so-called underlying matter, etc. And that doesn't make us happy. It's a tragic story that I'd like to formulate like this: the map and the territory, i.e., the actual landscape, are not congruent; there is a massive difference between the two. The difference between a menu in a restaurant and the actual dishes is equally great. Oddly, many people seem to assume that the menu is more nourishing than the actual foods.

DM Then, of course, fundamental problems lead to developing criteria to judge the aesthetic realm, if your linguistic description fails. But we'll let that stand and
move away from the relationship between language and the world and from the difference between linguistic representation and actual happenings and try to unfold another concept with an eye to aesthetic phenomenon.
I'm thinking of the concept of experience that various schools of phenomenology have introduced to our thought in various ways. Would that be a concept that brings us further?

KD Absolutely. In relation to art or music, it's surely fruitful, because that is precisely what must be experienced. That simply can't be described. When I was still studying, I saw a wooden sculpture by Donatello, the depiction of a Maria Magdalena that stands in the Dei Frari Church in Venice. I had seen the work earlier several times in books, and when I actually stood in front of it, I was totally fascinated. I spent more than two hours standing in front of the sculpture, viewing it from various perspectives. Don't ask me what all I experienced in that time; I don't know, but I simply couldn't walk on. Everyone who has ever been in love is familiar with that feeling. You can't describe what suddenly draws you to someone, because you can't know what it is. It's not your bank account that you can print out and then know how much money you have. For example, how can you experience John Cage's "4'33"?

DM Always differently?

KD Always differently, because the surroundings and mood are different. Each time, always anew.

DM The point isn't even to say that a picture or musical work offers a stable experience, because it's not. It's rather an unstable experience that depends on many factors. But it's an experience that lies within us, that's not divisible, and even less conveyable, because it has to do solely with us, ourselves.

KD You put it very well. An unstable experience, I really like that – to have a very unstable experience. That is precise. I would go one step further. I'd like to make it more personal and call it an intimate fusion. You used a very apt word earlier and I'd like to respond to it. You said "mystical", and I hear that often. Ultimately, human beings are the epitome of what is cryptic and mystical. Why? Because human beings are not transparent. We don't even know why we do what we do.

DM I took the term "mystical" from the early Wittgenstein. It's well known that, in later years, Wittgenstein took his philosophy in other directions and strove to understand how existing forms of language function. How is it, actually, that we understand each other in everyday life, if we don't even know why we do what we do?

KD It's a wonder! There's an essay by Richard Rorty that I read years ago. Actually, I didn't understand a word of it, but maybe I just wasn't in the mood to do so. The essay had the title, "We Need More Uncertainty". That stuck with me. I suspect that Wittgenstein went in the direction of analyzing the everyday use of language, because he found for himself that language always produces a result, whether it is understandable or not. And you have communication on one side, and on the other side you have inner necessity – under the motto: I want to write now, I want to put my thoughts down on paper. How often may I do that? How do I do it? How many hours must I spend to bring to expression precisely what I have in me? Will I succeed in that today? Will it happen in two days or in ten years? What I want to say with that is this capto vacui (capture the void) - history as an allusion to the horror vacui. The only thing possible is what happens, what you do, and that's not so very little. It's even enormous.

DM If I understand you correctly, then something is not valid until it happens, until it actualizes itself. And in this sense, are all your pictures witnesses to things that happened, and is painting actually a space of action?

KD Yes, that's right. That's how I always saw it. That's very, very close to it, because it's also the truth. I've always understood the canvas as a site of action. One could even speak of it as the scene of a crime, because I approach every picture with the intensity that would correspond to a crime.

DM I think this energy and intensity is indeed inscribed in your painting, and it remains palpable when viewed and attracts its counterpart. At the end of our conversation, we should briefly talk about a film that you'll be showing at the exhibition in Athens. The work "Die Vorbereitung des Kardinals" (The Preparation of the Cardinal) is a 4-channel video work that you first showed some years ago in Berlin's "Kühlhaus". There, it was shown on four separate screens. Grouped at the same distance in the middle of the room, one screen stood in each compass direction, so that the viewer was never in a position to see all the screens at once. As a viewer, one is forced to move around in the room, to watch, and at the same time always to know that one is missing part of what is happening. You tried to adapt this work for a specific room in Athens and to bring together the four screens that were originally separate. I'm not sure if that functions.

KD You are absolutely right, and I've meanwhile discarded that idea. We are now showing the work in Athens in the form in which it was originally conceived, that is, on four separate screens. Since form and content clearly work together here, there is no other way. "The Preparation of the Cardinal" revolves around a fictional character for whom there are no historical models. His name is Kysifos (Physious) and he's a cardinal who gets up one day and wants to put his life in order. He starts to put his house in order. So, he starts straightening up, and at some point he picks up a mirror. He looks in the mirror, but can't see his face. He searches for his face and realizes that his head is not there. He gets nervous and begins shouting at his guards and all his service staff, ordering them
to search for and find his head. The people begin acting as if they were looking for his head, until one of the guards says to him: But Your Majesty, your head is still on your shoulders, you've merely held the mirror backward. Kysifos (Physious), who is always incredibly distrustful, doesn't believe a word the guard says and orders that the search continue. This ridiculous search goes on for months, and at some point, the Cardinal's adjutant asks how he could convince him that his head is still where it belongs. The Cardinal replies that he doesn't know, because he doesn't even feel his head's weight and thus it is obvious that it must be lying around somewhere. The adjutant then suggests weighing the head. He says he has brought a scale, which will immediately show that the head
is precisely where it should be. And so they lay his head on the scale. But the Cardinal still doesn't believe in the presence of his head, and he comes up with a strange idea and decides to spend the rest of his life not only finding his head, but also measuring it precisely. I have to find out exactly how heavy my head is, the Cardinal muses. And for 519 years, he weighs his head daily and records the measurements in a very large book. He wants to find a measurement that agrees exactly with another one. And only when there is such a concordance would he immediately, in that very second, end the whole endeavor. Of course, it is still ongoing. And that is the story of the Cardinal who was always someone whom not everyone liked, because he was difficult and unpredictable, hung out with prostitutes, and drank like a fish.

DM The video work greatly condenses the action down
to the act of measuring, the meticulous registering of the measurements, and the appearance of the numerals on the scale, and several times a head separated from the body appears on the scale. It seems clear that the only way to reach the Cardinal's goal lies in separating his head from his body, whereby it remains unclear whether he'll really take this step. But what remains confusing is the singleness of purpose with which someone begins a project that will cost him his life one way or the other, although it is in principle clear from the beginning that it is doomed to fail.
KD We don't actually know whether or not he cut off his head. But it seems almost unavoidable. And of course the question is then if one is ready to do so. Are you actually willing to sacrifice your life to complete such a task? It always makes me think of Spielberg's film "Castaway".

DM Unfortunately, that's a film I've never seen.

KD I saw it and loved it. Not because the film was so great; there are certainly better films. But there is a scene in which a character stranded on an uninhabited island (played by Tom Hanks) decides to build a raft so that he can leave the damned island. Of course, he has no idea how a raft is built, but he does so anyway. And he knows he can't get all too far with this raft. He knows the raft can't bring him away from the island. Sometime after two, or three, or ten miles, a big wave will come toward him and toss him back onto the shore, but he makes the raft anyway, even though he is quite aware that it won't help him. He just has to make it. And that's how it is usually, somehow; that's really how life really is.