From Our Archives: Illusion of Permanence - Mishka Henner

© Mishka Henner

This interview originally appeared in Musée Magazine’s Issue No. 15 - Place

MUSÉE MAGAZINE: As a French-Belgian, how do you relate to America?

MISHKA HENNER: I was born in Belgium, have a French and British passport and live in Manchester, so it’s complicated. I think I’m playing a trans-Atlantic game of ping pong with America. It sends a lot of stuff my way, I process it, and send it back.

MUSÉE: In your opinion, what is the role of an image?

MISHKA: I think images are another language. They’ve been compared to mirrors, windows, tabletops. I like to think of them as a crystal lake.

MUSÉE: What was the impetus behind your project Less Américains (2012)? Why this work by such an iconic American photographer? I read that you were initially inspired by Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953).

MISHKA: I was interested in the process of erasure. Rauschenberg’s gesture was one of several I’d read about that influenced me. The work of John Cage, too. But also the defacement of adverts, the degradation of Jpegs, architectural and ideological ruins. There was a lot of mythologizing and fetishizing of The Americans going on at that time and I think I was reacting against that, but it’s four years since I made the work, and I still struggle to come up with a definitive interpretation of it.

© Mishka Henner

MUSÉE: Was there a specific current event that inspired this project?

MISHKA: I can’t say for sure, but maybe the memory loss one experiences working with digital media. I’ve dropped too many hard-drives in my time, and your relationship to permanence changes radically with each catastrophic memory failure.

MUSÉE: It took Robert Frank years to photograph and culminate this work into a photobook. How long did it take you to complete this project? In these comparative time frames, can something be said about our relationship to images today versus when Robert Frank was photographing?

MISHKA: It took me about a month to do. “The Americans” was an epic tale, and it influenced me a great deal when I was younger, but I think our relationship to images has changed in recent years. The image is so much more malleable now and it circulates around the world at the speed of light.

MUSÉE: I am curious about your opinions on identity, especially the national identity of a country. It’s as if this project aims to delete history. In your words, what would you like this project to say?

MISHKA: That’s not for me to say. I have so many takes on it that if I went through them all I would bore your readers to tears.

© Mishka Henner

MUSÉE: It’s interesting that Frank’s book was first published in France in 1958. You reference and tweak the original French title. How do you feel you’re regaining this interplay between cultures?

MISHKA: A friend of mine came up with the title. It was genius, really, and the moment he said it I knew that had to be it. I experienced a rupture with language when moving from Belgium to England as an 8 year-old, and I’ve thought a lot about finding ways to introduce French into my work, but it’s not been easy. It was more by luck than design that “The Americans” had such a strong French connection.

MUSÉE: The book shocked the public. The Guardian said it was on the verge of insulting, Lens Culture said it was mechanical and glib. I feel that the works’ intention was to be mechanical or glib. That was the point; it wasn’t accidental. How would you respond to those reviews?

MISHKA: I’ve learned over the years that some people who occupy positions of authority really don’t have a clue, which would be fine if they didn’t pretend otherwise.

MUSÉE: In an interview you said you are interested not in narrative, but in seriality: the ongoing sequence of images. Could you speak about this in regards to Less Américains? Does this idea pertain?

MISHKA: Well, I listen a lot to musicians working with loops, remixes, beats, samples, and so on. And that’s how I like to work with images. With “Less Américains,” it was really about diving into each image and carving a new landscape from it. The material was already there; I just had to reshape it.

© Mishka Henner

MUSÉE: Could you explain the software or process you used to delete the data in Robert Frank’s images?

MISHKA: The eraser in Photoshop.

MUSÉE: Were the deletions of data spontaneous or calculated? How has your relationship to negative space changed as an artist?

MISHKA: Spontaneous. I’ve learnt that there is nothing negative about negative space.

MUSÉE: Did you discover anything new about Frank’s work through the process of isolating details?

MISHKA: Only in the visual patterns and geometric shapes I’d find myself revealing over and over again, but that might have nothing to do with Frank. That could just be me.

MUSÉE: Less Américains is shown in both book and print form. What is the ideal mode of viewing the images and why? Or does it not matter whether they are on the wall or in a book?

MISHKA: Each iteration is very different. I think of the individual prints as landscapes, whereas the book is more of a composition, and the complete portfolio of the smaller prints is sculptural.

MUSÉE: Would you consider the work constructive or deconstructive? I feel that it has elements of both.

MISHKA: I don’t think one can exist without the other.

MUSÉE: In regards to utilizing the work of another photographer, what do you think of the term ‘unintended collaboration?’

MISHKA: I like it. I think if you’re making art you’re constantly doing that with your peers—those that have gone before, and those that are yet to come.

MUSÉE: Through Less Américains, you have simultaneously disrupted and inserted yourself into the classical canon of photography. How important is the presence of your ‘signature’ within this work and your work in general?

MISHKA: I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about appropriation and originality--especially in Photography: the one art form that relies entirely on capturing what’s already there. What I’m interested in isn’t the image, but how it’s read. People get too hung up on the authentic status of the image and forget that without the eye of the beholder, an image has absolutely no meaning. The image comes into being only when it’s being observed, and of course we all bring different readings to images, especially when they’re ambiguous. So “Less Américains” is really an attempt to capture one such reading, or 83 different readings at a given moment in time. If I hadn’t made “Less Américains”, it would never exist. Or it certainly wouldn’t exist in the form I gave it.