Involving the living directly in artwork opens up creative opportunities that question the status of the author and of the artist. For Michel Blazy, if the figure of man seems to become discreet or even disappear from his work, that of the artist remains quite present. It is less a matter of ceding power to the living, of “allowing it to happen,” at the risk of nothing happening, than of creating the conditions for emergence, of encouraging matter in the manner of a gardener. The artist observes and seeks to understand the living in order to favor its development, in such a way that the form self-generates. In this way, he explores the conditions for a domestication of the living that are symbiotic rather than exploitative. The formal fascination for the living underpins his thinking about the intelligence of survival and the frontiers between the inert and the organic. Living and art have in common the fact that they both escape understanding to some extent; the artist is not trying to deliver an unequivocal message but to share an experience—the struggle with matter in the studio—and to provoke the complexity of encounters.
By yielding formal power on your artworks to the living world, your work questions the nature of authorship; does the decline of the figure of man and the artist in this “laissez faire” approach confer a special status to the mice, snails, birds, mushrooms, or protocellular micro-organisms that compose the artworks?
In reality, I do not leave it entirely to them because this could result in nothing happening at all, which would bore viewers. My philosophy is more about nurturing matter, just like a gardener who would take the necessary measures to ensure that things actually happen, even if they arise from forces far beyond their understanding. Gardeners water or mulch the soil but are not the ones that actually make plants grow; they provide the conditions for the establishment of living systems. Obviously, I am not referring to intensive agriculture or weed control, but rather to the idea of the absence of an obligation to achieve results when dealing with things that cannot be brought under complete control. I am not trying to prevail over things, nor to bend them to my will, but rather to observe them, to understand how they function and what their needs are to ensure that they flourish. I do not know in advance what will happen when I conduct experiments in my workshop and this constant surprise is precisely what I am interested in. I provide the necessary conditions for the form to self-generate, which leads me to replicate things that could happen without me. The human figure fades away and keeps a low profile, but not that of the artist. There is no doubt that I am the artist, and not the mice or the mold, although the result does reflect a form of collaboration.
In my work Circuit fermé (Closed Circuit)Presented as part of Le Grand Restaurant, Blazy’s solo exhibition at Le Plateau, one of the Fonds régional d’art contemporain (FRAC) Île-de-France’s two exhibition spaces., I also touch on predation. A number of people are kept in a glass room where they eat meat and are bitten by mosquitoes. This covers the idea of “giving back.” All my work relates to this relativity of being, to the investigation of the notions of fading away and lack of control, because I puzzle over the power we wrest from the living. All the more so given that we wield that power in an increasingly alarming way, even though we are only one link in the chain of living things. Our desire to protect the planet is quite symptomatic of this extreme pride. The planet doesn’t give a damn about human beings; it started out without us and will carry on likewise. The living has absolutely no need for our protection. Humankind is first and foremost a danger to itself.
Is it a form of relativism to attribute some importance to “useless and disregarded presences” that are regarded as waste or refuse?
I must admit that my work with mold finds its roots in a purely plastic fascination. If you take the time to observe mold, you’ll notice how gorgeous it is: it is fluffy, forms beautiful circles, and the shapes and colors are constantly changing. Mold is nevertheless shunned because it is ingrained in our collective psyche with all sorts of concepts relating to hygiene, death, and control and thus brings together a great number of fears and anxieties. I am involved with this material because it is alive and therefore possesses, like all living beings, a form of intelligence that it puts to use for its survival.
The fact that a germ must move around, find food for itself, and reach compromises with its kind in order to share a constrained space reminds us that all living individuals contend with the same issues, though the solutions may take on many different forms. We are all faced with this issue of self-preservation of the living.
In your piece, Les Nouvelles amibes domestiques (New Domestic Amoebas), you make invisible existences visible and blur the common understanding of what a “living” thing is. How do you differentiate the inert and the organic?
I do not differentiate inert things from living things, and organic matter from what isn’t. In nature, it all ends up being mixed together; and that is precisely the problem. Whatever the material, it interacts with its environment and ends up becoming part of the great planetary body. Although plastics dumped at sea decay and disappear out of sight, fish ingest the particulates and eventually end up being eaten themselves. All matter thus blends together. There is no matter that I don’t view as being alive. I find it hard to understand the boundary that we place between the inert and the organic when everything is constantly changing over time. It’s just like life and death, like movement and stillness. Things are in constant motion around us—the Earth that is rotating around its own axis, a child or a plant that is growing, a micro-organism that is “hunting”—but we do not necessarily notice that. It’s just a matter of perception because how we see things is determined by our time span. If we lived longer than mountains and could perceive their movements, we would maybe consider them more as living things. I am interested in slowness and in movements at the threshold of perception, those we have to get away from for some time to be able to start noticing them.
In the same way, considering that my artworks grow or decay is a matter of perspective. In 1997, I had planted bags of lentils for an exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris, thinking that I would change them when they spoiled. The lentils did indeed spoil and gave place to mold, fruit flies, and their predators, spiders. Although the primary work had decayed, it produced ten times more life than the plain green lentils. I therefore left this apparently dead matter in place. Life feeds on death and beyond our individual identities, I view the living as one large clump of matter that evolves, changes shapes, and feeds on its own death.
People who are concerned with their environment and other forms of existence generally express views that are close to animism. They refer to a certain spirituality, whereas you primarily consider matter, the concrete, and textual content, thus opting for a rather pragmatic approach. Do you sometimes consider the intangibles in the living world?
I don’t believe I am an animist but that does not mean, however, that I am materialistic. I believe in invisible forces but above all I believe in mystery. Matter, the concrete, and textual content do not reduce the mystery in any way. I’d even go so far as to say that they set the stage for it. There is a part of the living, and a part of art, that eludes our understanding, and this is the primary reason why I am attracted to both these things.
Do the buyers of your living pieces become their masters, just as they would be for a pet? Do they have a moral obligation to care for these micro-organisms?
Nouvelles amibes domestiques (New Domestic Amoebas) is a reference to the French acronym for exotic petsTranslator’s note: in France, exotic pets are usually referred to under the acronym NAC (nouveaux animaux de compagnie, literally “novel pets”).. My interest has turned to how the physical and subjective relationship we may have with a pet can be transposed to an artwork. I truly believe that art’s sole interest is to address intimacy. I started working on this subject in a rather intuitive way, perhaps because I felt a certain degree of morbidity in the exhibitions that only presented the remnants of a gesture or an intention. Since then, I try to arouse an affective response to something that is going on. What matters for me, and what I believe makes a moment important, is its scarcity, the fact that we find ourselves in front of something that we feel will not last. I do not only aim to show the process—given that any artwork results from it—but also things in the making.
Too many art collectors are driven to purchase artworks by belongingness and recognition, or see it as an investment, given that artworks are tax-exempt. Ninety percent of the art market occurs outside of an intimate relationship with the artwork though it is, I believe, the only one that really matters. The emotional connection that arises between the buyer and the artwork is what I am interested in, this beautiful melody that uplifts us and stirs up intimate recollections.
Regarding the physical outcome of the amoebasAmoebas are single-cell organisms that are found in all environments, including in treated waters such as tap water, mineral water, and swimming-pool water; they are shape-shifting predators., bear in mind that these are organisms which are endowed with mouths they use to feed. But the fate of the artwork is at the discretion of the collector, who may continue to feed the amoebas or otherwise. Deprived of a water supply, these animals remain “dormant” and only “come back to life” once their environmental conditions are restored.
Either way, the artwork is destined to change. I use food coloring that is similar to the dyes used for microscopy to dye the amoebas that are present in the water. If the plaster substrate that serves as an exoskeleton is frequently sprinkled with water, the colorful halo that reveals the local accumulation of amoebas will have a deeper color. If, on the other hand, nothing is done, the colors of the UV-sensitive dyes will fade away, reflecting the passage of time. To prevent the art work from withering away, it should therefore be fed from time to time; I do not require a protocol of two daily meals to be observed, however.
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