Herakut! Answers FAD’s Questions
1 If you weren’t an artist, what else would you be?
AKUT: Not sure. Hopefully something useful.
2 Name 3 of your least favourite artists.
HERA: First: Pierre-Auguste Renoir – his colors were too soft, his strokes too sketchy, his figures and backgrounds were neither connected nor graphic enough to be standing separately next to each other. I hate his indecisiveness! Second: Lucas Cranach the Younger – all he did was take over his father´s little sweatshop where they did nothing but reproduce on demand. No real creation, only plain economic production. Hate this!
AKUT: I don´t have a least favorite artist but I definitely have a least favorite art movement with one particularly hated piece: Picasso´s Guitar Player. Cubism just feels weird to me. I like to put things together and not take them apart.
3. Anytime, any place – which artist’s body would you most like to inhabit?
HERA: From what biographies teach us, most of our favorite artists suffered from malnutrition, some sort of anxiety, instable political circumstances, egos and drugs or some other kind of prison. Artist´s bodies do not appeal to me as a great home, really.
4 What is your favourite ‘ism’?
AKUT: Surrealism.
5 What was the most intelligent thing that someone said or wrote about your work?
HERA: A really kind English speaking blogger once called our work “street-smart”. Love it!
6. And the dumbest?
AKUT: “Berlin based”. People repeat it, but it is wrong. We have several homes. Hera lives in Frankfurt and Heidelberg, I live in Munich and we work in a studio in Schmalkalden, which is a tiny town that could not be further away from hip and urban. It is our sanctuary. The perfect place to think and stay focused.
7 Which artists would you most like to rip off, sorry, I mean appropriate as a critique of originality and authorship?
HERA: Poet Jeffrey McDaniel has written some of my favorite lines. We have already quoted him in our work a bunch of times, but I would like to take one of his poems and base a whole show on it … or a children´s book. But I should definitely ask him first.
8 Do you care what your art costs? State your reasons!
AKUT: Of course we do. They take a big part in the way your audience perceives you, how you are being rated. It needs to match your experience, your working hours and your “art-world neighbors”.
HERA: We only work with galleries who we trust with their price decisions. When we get to decide, like when we were putting the Herakut book together, we made the choices on paper and printing methods based on what we knew of our biggest fan group: keep materials costs low, have things less glossy – but therefore have more pages, more content. More art for a wider audience.
9 What are the three big ideas that you would like your work to express?
AKUT: Here are the two main ideas: A. There is no light without darkness.
HERA: B. Beauty does not need perfection.
10 Are you a political artist?
AKUT: Socio-political.
11 How do you start the process of making work?
HERA: We have coffee, talk, I sketch out the first-lines that build the bones and Akut adds the flesh and the texture.
12 What next?
HERA: After Moniker will return to a project in Germany. Over the past three years we have worked on several commissions for the city Bad Vilbel. It is nice that this city includes graffiti and urban art in their cultural program on a regular basis.
13 If Moma and the Tate and the Pompidou wanted to acquire one of your works each, which would you want them to have?
AKUT: We would ask them to give us a room, spray-paint and a week of time.
14 Complete the following sentence “Blessed are the artists, for they shall……”
HERA: … give people an idea of Creation. Just time-lapsed.
15 Complete the following sentence “Blessed are the curators, for they shall…”
AKUT: … give artists the bubble in which they can create safely.
16 Complete the following sentence “Blessed are the art critics, for they shall….”
HERA: … find the right words to raise people´s attention.
17. What is your favourite cheese?
AKUT: Spray cheese.
HERA: … but lactose-free.
18. What’s next for you?
AKUT: Shave my beard.
HERA: Watch him do so.
Herakut
