I wouldn't say the anthropologists were making art, but they were definitely justifying their practices with very personal reasoning, passion, and they were also experimenting with form. There was a sense of trying to be as sincere as possible, whether you were investigating something far away from you or very close.

Aleksandra Mir

Categorized in : Art Practice Passion

I'm completely uninterested in the origins of Stonehenge. I don't care about the real story behind it or whether it should be saved or not. What I'm interested in is this: in the Victorian era, you could go there as an early cultural tourist and you were given a chisel to chip off a bit of the stones and take it with you. That's what you did in Victorian times.

Aleksandra Mir

care real stones

The moment right now, it's a tragically regressive time we live in, you know. We just grounded the Concorde. Where's the future? We've lost the future.

Aleksandra Mir

grounded moments lost

I've made a poster at home. You know the iconic image of Che Guevara, the black and red graphic of his face? I think it's the perfect graphic, the best graphic ever made. I cut a Concorde out and put it over his head so it's Che looking up and the Concorde going by. Both are dead, maybe obsolete.

Aleksandra Mir

cutting home thinking

Of course, I'd welcome protest. Good criticism is hard to find.

Aleksandra Mir

protest welcome criticism

I'm so extremely well prepared for negative response, I've taken precautions.

Aleksandra Mir

precaution taken negative

"Naming Tokyo" kicked off at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in June, and it's going to travel to various art institutions for years to come. Every time it is shown, I'm developing the research and involving more and more people in it. The final conclusion of the work would eventually be to put up street signs in Tokyo with my names on them.

Aleksandra Mir

june years art

Seeing your work go into storage in an art museum is obviously a tragedy of any cultural product - which doesn't mean I am anti-institutional.

Aleksandra Mir

museums mean art

I think the optimal artwork is in constant circulation with the world around itself.

Aleksandra Mir

artwork world thinking

There are ends, occasionally, with projects. That happens. But they are natural dead ends. It's usually the outside situation that demands an ending. I never really settle for one.

Aleksandra Mir

settling demand natural

"Hello" is pseudoscience. The only smart way to read it is not to believe in it, not to trust it, or to put yourself in it and imagine what's out there that you haven't been told or seen.

Aleksandra Mir

pseudoscience smart believe

I follow these intimate connections of strangers and, surprise!, end up finding even myself in the work at some point.

Aleksandra Mir

connections surprise stranger

In a way I am saying the nation-state doesn't exist, borders don't exist, you can try going anywhere. It is a kind of pre-Internet consensus I always had in me.

Aleksandra Mir

borders trying way

I've gotten all kinds of reactions and it's been used in so many different ways.

Aleksandra Mir

different kind way

I'm depending on other people to take the work and run. And if they run in so many directions, they sort of cancel each other out. So the meaning is always open.

Aleksandra Mir

depending-on-others running people

I'm very jealous of an era where people were inventing something so beautiful as the Concorde and thinking that's the next step. I'm jealous of an era when people thought, "Let's finally go to the Moon."

Aleksandra Mir

jealous moon beautiful

You pick people, and they pick you sometimes. It's especially great to connect with people you think you have nothing in common with.

Aleksandra Mir

common people thinking

I wanted to contribute to the landscape tradition in art. By now I guess we are comfortable with the thought that man has been everywhere or affected everything in nature.

Aleksandra Mir

landscape men art

The space program caused so much future-thinking in culture. People who couldn't go to the Moon were building space-fantasy chairs and corsets and hairdos and anything that they could put their hands on.

Aleksandra Mir

space moon thinking

The plane as an object has been a huge effort to make. It is a sculpture, a technological invention, a piece of aviation culture. But really, it only exists to be inserted into a variety of landscapes, to be a catalyst, to offset them.

Aleksandra Mir

sculpture effort culture

National parks, zoos, protected areas, polluted seas - using the whole world as a readymade, I thought about it as a stage set. To activate a stage set you need a drama, an actor to offset it.

Aleksandra Mir

sea zoos drama