Collaboration Peter Hill and J.J. Voss (Photographer)
S U P E R F I C T I O N S
The Manhattan Archive
The art theoretical component within
The Museum of Contemporary Ideas.
Much of it is comprised of interviews with artists critics and curators.
Collectively they illustrate recent paradigm changes in the visual arts with a
focus on neo-expressionism through to neo geo and into the areas of deconstruction,
appropriation, neo-conceptualism and superfictions.
Those interviewed for the project include:
Jorg Immendorf, Artscribe No 43, 1983
Komar and Melamid, Artscribe No 54, 1985
Ian Hamilton Finlay, Studio International, No 1004
Bill Woodrow, Artmonthly, Oct 1986
Steven Campbell, Alba, No 1
Krzysztof Wodiczko, Alba, No 2
Richard Wilson, Alba, No 2
Documenta 8 interviews with Fumio Nanjo, Dr Wolfgang Max Faust, Michael Archer, Mark Francis, Marjorie Allthorpe Guyton, Alba No 5
Achille Bonito Oliva, Alba No 7
Adrian Wiszniewski, Alba No 8
Jeff Makin, Alba No 8
Dan Cameron, Alba No 10
Rosemarie Trockel, used for background information, Alba No 10
Sjoerd Buisman, Alba No 11
Andrew Nairne, Alba No 12
Res Ingold (unpublished), Cologne Art Fair 1989
Thomas Sokolowski, Artmonthly Australia, June 1992
Sydney Biennale, Boundary Rider interviews include: Tony Bond, Wim Delvoye, Ashley Bickerton, Mark Quinn, Nigel Helyer, Guillaume Bijl, Hany Armanious, and Haim Steinbach
Dr Sunday Anderson, Broadsheet, Adelaide, 1991
Achille Bonito Oliva, World Art, No 1
Martin Kippenberger, interview towards article in Art and Text No 44, 1992
Full texts of these interviews can be accessed if your are reading this from a
digitised tape or interactive disc. They appear in alphabetical order
starting with Dr Sunday Anderson.
Dr Sunday Anderson, foundation director of the Museum of Contemporary Ideas,
interviewed by Peter Hill.
PH: You have been with the museum since its inception. Indeed, you had much to do with its structure and the formation of its policies. What is the philosophy behind the museum?
Dr SA: We exist to explore and present the ridiculously broad area of contemporary
ideas. Our budget, thanks to Cameron Oil, is in excess, say, of an emerging African
nation.
If we go back to one of the founders of the American educational system, John Dewey,
then the museum's aspirations may be found in the writings of his My Pedagogic Creed
(1897) where he states "Education (thus conceived) marks the most perfect and intimate
union of science and art conceivable in human experience".
In a real sense we are generalists rather than specialists and we feel a greater empathy
with the thinkers and movers of the early Renaissance than we do with the techno-academics
of the first three quarters of the 20th century who rationalised themselves into ever
smaller pigeon holes and who were happy to search for a small but definite space within
an orderly universe."
