Hans Ulrich Obrist: To start with, it would be interesting if you could tell me about some of your unrealized projects - projects that were too big to be built, too small, or simply unrealizable or forgotten.

Maurizio Cattelan: Most of them weren't too big, they just weren't accepted. They were rejected. Every project involves an exchange: you win something, and you lose something else. I never come up with a finalized project: I start with an open scheme and I try to scale it to the situation in which Im working. One of the projects that was refused was the Nazi rally in Sonsbeck - that was in 1992. She totally kicked me out.

HUO What happened?

MC Nothing, really. The curator, Valerie Smith started screaming on the phone, saying Do you know what you are talking about with the Nazi? At the time I couldn't really say a word. So I had my knuckles severely beaten. I'm sorry, but that's life! I was beaten up by my mother for twenty years, so I was used to it in a way.

HUO What was the project exactly about?

MC She said the issues were too delicate. Basically I wanted to advertise a Naziskin rally, a fake one. The project was going to be posters, flyers and handouts disseminated all through the city, announcing this imaginary Naziskin meeting. It was a way to use information to spread fear: it was a psychological lab in real life.

HUO Do you have other unrealized projects?

MC: There is the project for Stefano Basilico, the dealer.

HUO That was published in Unbuilt Roads, the idea of a living sculpture.

MC Yes, more or less. Stefano Basilico had worked for Ileana Sonnabend and for her gallery for ten years. Everyone in New York knew it. So the idea was to have Basilico wear a costume for the duration of the show, and the costume would have been a puppet of Ileana Sonnabend. It was a very complicated dress, a sort of carnival costume: it would have seemed as if Ileana Sonnabend was carrying a little Stefano on her shoulders.

HUO: And why did it remain just a project?

MC Basilico said that the piece was too much about him. To me it was more about the idea of moving the office into the exhibition: it was a way to expose the dealer instead of the art. He would have had to work all day in that costume, doing his normal business at the office.

HUO These projects all seem to deal with violence

MC There was another one that was refused. And it was for a group show about violence at Andrea Rosen Gallery. I didnt want to show an old piece, so I said Okay, I can give you something else. Something new. I always like exhibitions to be a public rehearsal, like a trial and error process. So I made a new project, but they refused it. The idea was to have a dog on a
leash: the leash was to be as long as a portion of the gallery, so when you entered the space, you got the impression that the dog was running towards you. I wanted a very mean, aggressive dog.

HUO Was it to keep the visitors out?

MC No, they could walk around the gallery, but they would be afraid of the dog: it was again a form of psychological threat.

HUO So far you have spoken about projects, which haven't been realized because of resistance or rejections. Have other projects been too big or simply unrealizable?

MC It's not about scale. The point is how you can get other people involved. And most of the times these projects are more interesting as unrealized ideas. Im sure most of them would be a total disaster if we actually made them. Once in a while we put a lot of effort into not making anything. Its an exercise in loss.

HUO: Tell me about these ideas then.

MC Well, there was the barking birds: I want to teach Indian birds how to bark. And then there is a project with a small catfish. We're having a two-dimensional aquarium built: the idea is to have a catfish in there since the day its born. So itll have to adapt itself to the environment: itll have to grow as a flat fish, a two-dimensional creature, like a
spontaneous genetic mutation. Its about finding out how far you can go to adapt yourself in a hostile system. Another idea that somehow had to do with hostility was the project for St Martins college, which of course was refused: I wanted all the teachers in the school to wear underwear in public for one day. And the students werent allowed to laugh. There was a system of punishment for the students who laughed at the teachers. It was about the idea of respect and power, like an upside-down day, in which roles are subverted and exchanged.

HUO Are these utopian projects?

MC No, it's more about portable utopias. It's like admitting you can't actually create an utopia: you cant really imagine a brave new world. We are bound to work on smaller systems. The idea of the animal learning to speak another language is simply about survival. Its a test to see how flexible we are: maybe thats utopia today. The margins of freedom are smaller and smaller, and we simply have to adapt.

HUO Why do you say We? Whos We?

MC Maybe my utopia is schizophrenia, enjoying the symptoms of schizophrenia, that's my own or our own personal project.

HUO So that's your project?

MC Well, that's the rumor.

HUO Let's talk about rumors then. You talk about rumors and information a lot.

MC Some artworks come with a story and you never know if the story is true or false. I always tell this story that my pope wasn't supposed to be lying down. He was meant to be standing, and then we spread the rumor that it was a last minute decision to change the position of the sculpture and throw in the meteorite. I dont even know if this is exactly a rumor. It has to do more with misinformation. I like to package artworks with an enormous amount of fake information, so that at the end there is no truth.

HUO Can you give an example of this attitude?

MC Well, my interviews for example. They are often made by cutting and pasting other sources. Actually I never do my interviews myself. I have someone else doing them. So there is no truth, just confusion, or different degrees of interpretation. But the packaging must be perfect: misinformation has to be built very effectively, with the same system that
information itself traditionally uses. We replicate whats already there: you learn a lot from copying. You copy the format, but you slightly bend it to insinuate confusion, and to multiply perspectives.

HUO So we go back to schizophrenia.

MC I dont know if its schizophrenia. Maybe schizophrenia isnt that funny or interesting: maybe its just tragic. I think of this idea of the interviews as a personality made up from other people. Its an exploded personality. Its weaker, and fragmented, but more adaptable.

HUO But how do you spread the rumors on the actual artworks. Lets try to be very concrete. Lets start from an example, like the two mini-elevators for the Yokohama Triennial. Can you tell me a little about them?

MC I always start with an image, never with a meaning. First you have the image, and the image must be strong enough to stand by itself. Then you sit down and try to discuss it. Many of my pieces go through a test before being shown. I talk a lot to friends and other people: we discuss the idea, I show them the image, I think about their ideas, I edit and throw away
lots of projects. And thats when meaning comes in, when people start projecting new ideas on the image. Sometimes when you are preparing the press release for a show, you use the same words a friend used to describe a piece. Some other times you steal ideas from others, you copy press releases or statements. To me content and meaning are constructions, they are built through a process: they are never given.

HUO But what about the elevator?

MC People keep asking about the elevator and I really don't know what to say. Someone said its a house for Mini-mes. Or maybe it's about replicating your own personality in a smaller space. Someone else said its about the fear that elevators stop, or claustrophobia. Or maybe its about an endless replication of what is already there. Maybe its about working without really doing anything.

HUO Which is a very Alighiero Boetti idea. Working without working. Can you tell me about the story of your meeting with Boetti. I heard rumors about this story with you, Boetti and Jenny Holzer in Venice.


MC Yes, that was 1990. I was visiting the Biennial and Jenny Holzer was representing the States in the American Pavilion. She made all these posters with her truisms. I went in and Boetti was there. I loved his work, so I started talking to him, and at the time I had this idea for a form of collaboration: I wanted artists to add new things to someone elses art work. So I told him about it and he picked up a Holzer poster and he just scribbled NEVER SAY BULLSHIT at the end of her truisms. And he signed the poster, as if it were his own work. And that image always stayed with me: the idea of simply appropriating someone elses work. He was a great conspirator in a way. But very generous too. To me, instead, the idea of not working always had to do with the fear of failure.

HUO James Lee Byars created a World Question Centre in which he asked a lot of people to ask questions. Even the Dali Lama wrote one and lots of other people. Cedric Price's question was: How can we make failures? So tell me more about failures.

MC I have been a failure for most of my life. I couldnt keep a job for more than two months. I couldnt study: school was a torture. And as long as I had to respect rules I was a disaster. Initially art was just a way to try a new set of rules. But I was very afraid of failure in art as well. I even wanted to start a university of failure, a way to teach failure. Maybe it was just a way to insinuate weakness in a system that is obsessed with success.

HUO How was the university supposed to work?

MC I dont know. It never really started. It was a failure in that sense, from the very beginning. But there was the Oblomov Foundation, which in a way was an institution to teach failure.

HUO What was it exactly?

MC It was a scholarship. The point was to get money from different donors and trustees and give it to an artist who would accept not to exhibit for a whole year. So you would get the money, but you had to disappear from the art world.

HUO How many times was it awarded?

MC Actually it was never awarded, because we couldnt find an artist who wanted to accept the grant. It was a dangerous deal: we were giving money to an artist, so that he or she could fail. In the end, the story says I kept the money. Well, I didnt keep it: I used it.

HUO What did you make with it?

MC I dont remember. Maybe I bought lollypops, or opened an orphanage Money is not the issue. Its really about what you make with it. Many times these projects generate money that can be transferred and used somewhere else. Like Permanent Food for example: sometimes museums want a show and they want to do a catalogue, and I try to convince them to put the money elsewhere. That can pay for Permanent Food, which is a magazine. Sometimes its Franck at the Consortium, sometimes I find other people to sponsor it. Its all about the distribution: you gather the money in one place and you put it somewhere else. Its a family business in this sense.

HUO How did Permanent Food start?

MC I think Dominque Gonzales Foerster found the name. We were doing it together at the beginning. So she had the name Permanent Food. Sometimes you only need a name: you can do incredible things with just one name. Its like creating an authority or a brand. So we had the name, and then came the magazine.

HUO Why did you want a magazine?

MC I wanted something that I had never had before. That was it. I wanted a magazine.

HUO Did you decide right from the beginning that the magazine would have involved other people?

MC It wasnt really a decision. We wanted to have lots of sources and contributors, as any other magazine. And the idea of asking different people to send us the pages directly was the easiest way to create something that would resemble the structure of a magazine, and still cut down on all the expenses. So from the very beginning we knew we wanted Permanent Food to be a second generation magazine, something that grows by taking whats already there. And I also wanted to have a magazine without personality. So the more personalities were involved, the less the magazine would have looked like the product of a single person. Then the evolution of Permanent, the permanent evolution has been dictated more and more by my addiction to images. Now Permanent is more a collection of images chosen by Paola Manfrin and by myself.

HUO Dominique is no longer involved?

MC She left the magazine after the second issue, because she's more like a start-up person in a way. She has a fantastic energy and she really likes adventure. For her it was more like establishing a trend or launching a firm. To me, instead, its about setting some rules, and then follow them forever. When you find something really good, you have to continue to the end. If you do a magazine, and you only do three issues, it's no longer a magazine. A magazine is something with fifty issues or more. I never thought of using Permanent as a sort of dream: its a magazine, and it must work as a magazine.

HUO It's interesting the way that Permanent was your own but it never really wasn't, because it was made by others. There is always this struggle between what you are and what you refuse to be: you make art works but you don't actually make them - someone else makes them; you do interviews but you always get someone else to do them

MC I don't think it really matters who does what or who signs it. The content and the image are the most important thing. It is more about spreading content, whether it is a rumor, an idea or an image. In the end, everything belongs to everyone.

HUO Is there a link to Boetti here? I see Boetti as the European Andy Warhol. And both were obsessed by the idea of distribution.

MC I would say that Boetti was the physical materialization of generosity.

HUO Is your work about generosity or exploitation?

MC Its more about indicating. You have a library and sometimes you prefer one title instead of another. So everything is already there, and you move things around, trying to come up with new connections. It's about a re-ordination of reality according to your tastes and to your experience - its a virtual library in a way. Also I always thought that in the end
Warhol was producing and instead Boetti was celebrating the end of production. One is a factory, and the other is not doing anything: he is trying to demonstrate that there is no production.

HUO What about Boetti and the Zeitgeist?

MC Those were probably the utopias of the Sixties: either stop working, or just work more and more, till you fill up the world with new objects and new wealth. Even Warhol goes back to that same idea.

HUO You have also worked quite a lot in a collaborative mode, which somehow goes back to the Sixties.

MC Thats because I am like an empty box. I don't know if it's about humility or generosity. I cant do anything without others: Im empty, useless. But I dont know if its a collaboration: its an exchange, a form of editing. I dont think in my work the accent is on the collaboration, its more on the process of exchange. Then the piece is there, and it belongs to
everyone. It's something I do in an intuitive way, simply because I couldnt work otherwise. Intuition is a kind of nose. Without your nose you can't do anything. My nose is a great part of my job, and I guess it shows.

HUO I recently spoke with Philippe Parreno and he pointed out to me that the '90s have been a decade with a prevalence of collaboration. Ten years after there's a tendency almost towards the opposite: there's a lot of individual things happening and fewer collaborations. I wondered what your views on this are.

MC I think that Philippe has always been on the track of collaborations, even in the years leading up to the '90s. I have always been seduced by this idea that together we can be stronger, but every time I tried it, in the end I realized that it didnt really work for me. I never understood the stories about movements or waves. Sometimes I find myself inside a wave, and yet I just know Im in the wrong place. Its hard to explain because I do collaborate a lot, and readjust my ideas when I talk to people, but in the end there must be some control. You need to be able to say yes to this or no to that. I need to do the editing myself. In that sense I feel more and more like an employer, and less and less like an artist.

HUO But you did collaborate with other artists?

MC I did something with Philippe for Traffic. But the project didnt really work out. We wanted to do a TV only for one person, a sort of big contradiction in terms of what a TV means, and the production was supposed to take place directly in the exhibition space. Maybe I simply find it difficult to work with another artist. But I like exchanging ideas and information: there is always someone who can do the job better than you. It depends what you are working on: you have a project and you go out and look for a consultant, a specialist, an architect, a manufacturer I dont know if its collaboration, or just a form of specialization.

HUO It's a pooling of knowledge.

MC Yes, but you try not to come up with just an average of knowledge, but with something more interesting, something that maybe can even be new to all the people involved.

HUO Is it important that you expose yourself in the end?

MC If it has to be the case: it depends on the project. At times it makes sense to leave it anonymous. Now that I'm more easily recognizable, I keep using myself as the face or the signature, but it could really be someone elses.

HUO So you're like the packaging?

MC I go for the easiest solution. There must be confusion and different perceptions, but in the end I always need something quite simple and direct. So I expose myself, because its the most efficient way to do it for the moment, the most direct, the simplest.

HUO When does a piece work for you?

MC I don't know, I can feel it when something works.

HUO Can you tell me how you edit your ideas?

MC If I was really selective, now I probably shouldnt show anything. I always try to resist my impulses, but there is an element of indulgence and thats when the pieces comes out. Im weak, thats when the works are born.

HUO That leads me on to another question: in the nineteenth century Theodore Gericault with the Raft of the Medusa almost triggered a state crisis. I was thinking in terms of this today

MC I did this piece in 1994 which was made of rubbles from a terrorist bombing in Italy. It didnt generate a state crisis but it was attacked by different fronts. And something similar happened with the Pope in Poland: the sculpture became an issue to be discussed in the Parliament. But I think art can no longer generate those crisis you are referring to. I mean I see it in my work as well, there's been a period when my work carried only a single issue at a time. Now the work is more strictly controlled and yet looser. Its coordinated, but more carefree. So what I do now is more difficult to pin down. It doesnt come with a single message or a caption.

HUO Its more ambiguous?

MC Definitely. Not giving a precise direction to the work means you are giving it a longer life. So the more issues it incorporates, the better. Maybe its no longer time to create crisis, but rather to reflect crisis in the piece itself. The piece has to reflect a certain complexity.

HUO Do you think your work was also more political at the beginning?

MC I'm not a political person. I'm political as anyone else. Since the very beginning my work has been about the politics of the everyday, the struggle of getting by.

HUO Do you think the movement from very specific issues to more ambiguous work participate in a larger change or is it just a personal thing?

MC Probably both. I always try to find some excitement in what I do, and Im always afraid of repeating myself. People sometime say that I have no style, but its simply because Im trying to keep up the enthusiasm, and you cant be enthusiastic if you work on a formula. Initially I believed you had to work in a more straightforward manner, like do this, and then get to that, and then move a little further I thought thats the way you are supposed to grow. But then Ive discovered that there is an incredible new power in different form of communication, like in advertising for example. It was something I was attracted to from the very beginning, but I learnt about it very slowly. So now I see that art has a great potential to refer to a broader debate, to go out there and reach an incredible audience. And if my work cant do that, well, its useless.

HUO We were talking about politics and then you start talking about communication: are they related? What's your understanding of the public? Do you feel like you need to talk to anyone?

MC No, you don't have to talk to everybody. In fact, you don't talk to anyone. But even if they don't understand what you're saying, its important to be out there and be present. When you watch a movie, you see it's very easy to talk to people, so why shouldnt we want to do the same with art? For some reason there is always this fear or this need to keep this position of being an intellectual, removed from what people are thinking of or talking about.

HUO What kind of audience would you like to reach?

MC I haven't yet really realized which audience we can reach. But if we have the word audience, it means we can use it. Its okay to try and go out there and talk to everyone. In a sense, the real meaning of your work is simply what people are going to make of it. Art is often a matter of misunderstanding, because people can do whatever they want with it. Ive been thinking a lot about religion: its the perfect communication tool - it can be understood by almost everyone, its often visually striking, and it has no meaning by itself, while it carries an infinity of sense.

HUO Can you tell me a little bit more about this misunderstanding dimension?

MC There is a misunderstanding when you really want to say something, and people dont get it. For me the misunderstanding is much stronger than the idea I started off with.

HUO Its again a way to spread confusion?

MC I just want to offer different points of views and angles to look at my work. Its a trick maybe, to find a personality. My great problem is that I don't have a personality. And I have to find ways to get by. We all read magazines, and if you happen to read an article about someone twice, the first time you read it because you are curious, but the second time you just say Come on, give me a break. I have to change ideas and points of views all the time.

HUO So you create confusion so as not to get bored?

MC Yeah, probably. Its a daily struggle against boredom.

HUO Speaking of boredom, I was wondering if you could tell me a little about the beginnings before the beginnings.

MC You begin when you are born and then you die. There is no great beginning. Every time you try to understand where you are and where you are going. You try to make your trip more pleasant and that's it. The train I was on was going in a terrifying direction. I couldnt control my trip, so I had to step down. Get off the train.

HUO You were working as a designer?

MC I was doing all kind of jobs, terrible jobs. And then yes, I found myself working as a designer.

HUO Were you working in a studio?

MC No, I started making furniture for myself, in my apartment. I was unemployed for a while.

HUO What was this apartment like? You mentioned it very mysteriously many other times. What did exactly happen in there? Were those your first exhibitions?

MC No, my apartment was completely empty and I needed a table, a chair - the basic stuff that you need for an apartment. This was in the mid-eighties.

HUO In Milan?

MC No, this was in Forlì. It was such a big apartment that I decided to close one room with bricks: I didnt have enough furniture. It was human necessity. If you are living in a cave you probably start making utensils. It was a basic need.

HUO When did you first start working with non-functioning objects or non-objects, something that resembled more art?

MC When I went to Milan I realized that I was somehow interested in it. I started to produce different things, and I realized I wasnt that interested in working with objects - it was painful almost. It was like being back to school or just like having another job. And I needed to change that, I couldnt take it anymore: I needed to change.

HUO The theme of necessity is always present. I'm interested in knowing about this.

MC The fear of going back to poverty is a great theme for me: I mean, its not a theme: its pure fear, terror. It's my waking nightmare. I also fear going back to a regular job, back to a world where no part of yourself is allowed to be alive and you are trapped in a process in which you give energy away to produce something that doesn't mean anything to you. Again, with my nose, it took me ten years to realize that the problem wasnt me. The problem was the job.