An alchemist of time: suspended temporarily in the work of artist Alfons Alt

An alchemist that transmutes photography and painting, Alfons Alt is a German and French artist based in Marseille but currently sharing his technique with Yemeni artists at the French Cultural Center in partnership with the German House in Sana’a. Alt’s work has been exhibited in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Belgium and has been published due to the impact his work has had, mainly in Europe. He received the European Publisher’s Award in 2000 and since 2001 has worked with Leica. Alt is currently participating in an artistic residence with six Yemeni artists. His work, together with the product of this exchange, will be exhibited from 24 May to 3 June 2009 at the National Museum in Sana’a. More examples of Alt’s work can be viewed at http://www.alfons-alt.com.

Yemen Observer (YO): - How do you describe your work?
Alfons Alt (AA): -Abstract art is not always completely understood or shared by everyone. Conversely, photography is something that can be easily shared and understood by people that speak different languages. That is why I love photography, but at the same time photography alone is somehow simple or limited to me. That is why I mix them. I show a fish, a building, a person, and anyone can appreciate the image and understand it in the way they want - which is art, an artist proposes but the others dispose - and photography helps me to do this. I can share with the entire world, it becomes something easy to understand although the technique I use is complicated. When I use and mix my photographs with pigments I can express something unreal, spiritual, a relationship with the past, with other centuries, with the history of art. I dream of reaching new things. What I want to do is to find a really ancestral technique that is also related to the past.

YO: -Why go back to the past?
AA: - In order to search for something perennial. Digital techniques will disappear perhaps not too far from now, and I will still be there. This is very narcissistic, and it is not really my question, but in the end it is related to the vanity of the artist. I think that it is important in a given moment to create things that evolve towards an existence in the future. For me, the industry, the commerce, are not what I am interested in. The industry goes towards what is easy, and what I do is actually very complicated, it is very physical, very elaborate, is like life, like people; is not simple, is not a straight line.

YO: -Is it the complexity that attracts you?
AA: - No, it is the truth that attracts me. I am attracted to something that will last longer than what I believe.

YO: -How did you start being interested in photography and in painting?
AA: - When I was fifteen years old I was already interested in painting. I started with painting before I started with photography. Later on I went to the south of France, where I found pigments in orange, red, and many different tonalities that even Rembrant used to use. They are already fossils and what I do is somehow a ‘fossilification’.

YO: -Is this how your artistic project started?
AA: -No, this came later on. Actually I did not have a project in the beginning, I simply knew what I did not want, what did not satisfy me. With photography I found that the touch is seducing, sensual and I wanted to make something pleasant to the touch.

YO: -Is there something in particular that you want to express through your work? Identity, a perennial sense, temporality?
AA: - What I am interested in is the perennial possibility. I am interested in images that could have been seen, for instance, during the time of the pharaohs, but have been taken in 2001. The same thing goes for the images I will make of Yemen, but that also depend on the opportunities, the timing, and my use of time.

YO: -Your work is somehow between that of an artist and an artisan. Do you share this opinion?
AA: -It is true, some of my work could be compared to that of an artisan because I do it with my hands. The truth is that I am a very clumsy person and for me this is a way to heal this clumsiness, to fight against it. At the same time this clumsiness is present everywhere but I make an aesthetic of that, I try to transform it into something good. It is as if I would work out my own neurosis, it is an analysis…

YO: -A psychoanalysis?
AA: -It is more than that because it is a technique of analysis that deals with how I am in this world. I actually make a living out of my artistic work, which means that I sell my work and I find people that are willing to pay relatively high prices. This is what allows me to live and continue doing things in this line of work.

YO: -What is the philosophy that impregnates your work, and more exactly, what is the role “anthroposophy” plays in your artistic creations?
AA: -It is a movement that was created by the philosopher Rudolph Steiner. The anthroposophers are people that try to see human beings in all of their totality. For instance, when you have an anthroposophic education, everything will be taken into account and there is tripartite view, it is almost like the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit among Christians. There is a theory behind it because anthroposophers think that it is not possible to separate the idea of justice - which is the law - from the spirit -which is knowledge, religion - and from economy, which is the motor for everything. These three things (law, spirit and economy) are one thing and they cannot be separated. The spiritual side cannot be developed if the material side is not solved, and neither the spirit nor the economy can develop if there is no law. Justice, police…when we are a group we need order and rules. The police applies the rules, justice thinks and creates these rules, and all this is fluid, is like liquid. Economy is constantly changing, the laws as well, and for instance if we compare today’s world with that of fifty years ago we would have never been able to say that when someone pollutes our environment they could be punished for it. Since today we see that the earth is in danger, we now need to think about new laws for people that pollute the environment and that need to be punished. Ethics, economy and judiciary are together in this analysis.

YO: -There is a ritual aspect related to this philosophy as well?
AA: -Yes because when the anthroposophers pray they thank the animals that offered themselves to us, which is a little bit like what Indians in South America do. It is possible to find among anthroposophers a sort of communion. I am not an anthroposopher but I have integrated some ideas of this philosophy in my work, but not in a radical way.

YO: -Is it a source of inspiration?
AA: -It is not only a source of inspiration, because I see it as a way to work. I sort of laugh at the sacred aspect given to the idea of ‘inspiration’. In my case, I am awake at 9am, I go to my studio and I start to work. Obviously the idea of ‘inspiration’ is there when you ask ‘why do I do that’ but this, I fix it on my own. I know what I am going to do, what I want to work on. I won the European prize of photography (2000) with my work called ‘Bestiaire’ because I was interested in working with the animal’s realm. This work made me travel to many countries, like Africa or South America, where animals are seen and used in a different way, for example for medicine or food…they eat the grasshoppers. I ate them too, they are not bad, they are like shrimps.

YO: -You also play with animals that appear in somehow surrealist scenarios, like a horse in the middle of a theatre…
AA: -Yes, I love to do this. Overall what interests me about photography is the possibility to create a story. That is my own story. A fiction, an explanation of the universe.

YO: -What do you call your personal style?
AA: -I name my work ‘altotypes’, which is also a commercial matter. The actual procedure is the ‘resinotype’ or the ‘pigmentype,’ which is the name under which the National Library in Paris has registered the technique. At the same time I am the only one that uses this procedure and I do it in a different way because I don’t put the pigment in the resin among other things. Also, today we have different ways of doing this that did not exist in the nineteenth century, because that is the period of time my work goes back to.

YO: -You define yourself as an ‘altotypiste’. What does this mean?
AA: - Altotypiste. I have actually invented this profession. It is my studio, where I create images that were previously created in my own imagination, but it is also my manual possibilities, the possibilities of someone clumsy. It is an abstract issue. This is also related to things we cannot master. With time, I am becoming more and more interested in what I cannot master.

YO: -Is that what brought you to Yemen?
AA: -I think Yemen, the Arab world, other civilizations as well, are related to archaisms that attract me. In an archaic world there is more space for other things different from what is rational, like in the case of what interests the anthroposophers as well.

YO: -How did your relationship with Yemen start?
AA: -It started through an artist, Nasser al-Aswadi (Yemen Observer, 29 November, 2008). He came to Marseille and he met several artists in order to work with them, to find a studio, to find the materials to work. As artists, alone, we are nothing. We need others to hear what they think about our work, we need that mirror. Perhaps the best thing that can happen to an artist is to have a friend that tells you ‘I don’t like this’ or ‘I like it’ and then ‘why’, because this is where the exchange happens. Art is there for that. There are many reasons why we can do art and one is that art takes us out from our isolation, our solitude. Sometimes I also like this solitude because it is then that I fulfill something, that I realize a thought, that a thought becomes concrete through a piece.

YO: -Is this your first visit to Yemen?
AA: -Yes it is. Yemen has always attracted me but as something far that was not possible for me, it was possible for everyone but not for me. I lived in Pakistan for three months while I was working in a paleontological mission, and Yemen reminds me of that experience.

YO: -How has working here affected you?
AA: -I am still looking for the words to describe it, but it is related to everything… the way of living, things that are important, things that are not, and how this differs in relation to where I come from; it is this that I am looking for, another system of values.

YO: -What are the values you find in Yemen?
AA: -The interest for the group, which for me is linked to the twentieth century in the West where a certain individualization started and deepened with time, becoming a fear about the other. I guess this is also entering the East but in general this fear about the other does seem not to exist here. The hospitality is also something that amazes me about this country. For instance, yesterday I was taking pictures of a minaret and when I left a man saw me and invited me to eat at his home. I went and I really found this amazing and beautiful. This is true kindness. In those occasions you really share something.

YO: -What have you shared or exchanged with the Yemeni artists you are currently working with at the French Cultural Center in Sana’a?
AA: -With Nasser (al-Aswadi) I have already done a piece, both of us together, and I am discovering images that I would have never imagined or discovered on my own.

YO: -You are also working with many female artists from Yemen, like Boushra al-Mutawakel (YO, 31 January 2009), Asiah al-Sharabi (YO, 27 January, 2009) and Salwa al-Eryani (YO, 4 December 2008). How has this experience been?
AA: -It is something extraordinary. There are six Yemeni photographers, three are women and three are men…there is a parity. In the West we usually critique the East because we say women cannot express themselves and I find that this is a good lesson because I admit that here, there is parity.

YO: -What have you learned from these artists?
AA: -I think I cannot tell yet. I think I will need some time to realize this, to feel what it provokes once I am at home. Right now, there is already a lot of exchange, we discuss a lot, we spend a lot of time discussing why we do things the way we do them. The everyday practice becomes examined. This is really interesting and it is a new experience. New aesthetics appear. This makes me think of Joseph Beuys, who was also touched by the anthroposophy movement and who also influenced my work.

YO: -What are your future projects?
AA: -I would like to come back to Yemen because right now I am not allowed to leave Sana’a and I would like to work on a complete series about Yemen. I am interested in the architecture and also the people from Sana’a, but I also want to explore other possibilities that I am finding among the artists I work with, things more in the line of abstract work.

* The picture of Alfons Alt and his pieces were taken by photograph Jean-Baptiste Lopez. www.fotozean.com

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