 OK, now the last part of this conversation conference today. At first, a big, big thank you to all of you. It was so interesting, and it was such a good mix. And it really showed quite some facets of the work of Michel Magyros. And I mean this, Corey, you are here, right? I am here. I've chosen not to be 10 feet behind you, so I will just be here in audio. Oh, it's good. It's a bit like God watching from here. But good. I just wanted to know before. So it was, I would like, with this last panel, I would like to wrap it up a bit. And I would also like then open it to the audience for last questions. And since Motoko, I'm going to start with you because we didn't have any questions for you and the Q&A. What I found interesting, I thought about Michel and also Japanese cultural history when I saw the show at the estate with Murakami and Magyros curated by Tobias Belge from Hong Kong. And it was really interesting because for the first time I realized it. And I knew that Murakami also didn't know Michel very much. Could you tell us a bit about your approach towards his work? Name Magyros. Magyros, I just discovered Magyros's work. I go really into it. And it's for me, like, in the talks, we kind of talked about, like, it's not somehow outdated. And still, you can kind of have this conversation like right now, like his styles and like the use, the way of using images and so on. So I just kind of really, when I was doing BA, I was really inspired, like, really painting can be anything, like, open, pop, fun. And your performance, also the two performances you showed here today? Yes. How do you connect it? How do I connect it? Yeah. So I thought that he used, like, a Mario Kart or these pop images, which I think the way that he, I thought his style was new back then, or, like, unusual or something. But I felt the character or the way he used or the character themself were already probably nostalgic for him as well, like, probably this rabbit or Mario, these, like, maybe he wasn't, maybe, like, I don't know. I think he had a mixture of, like, iconologies back then, but also, like, he's more older date, like, this, like, table game kind of, like, symbol. So I thought, for me, this karaoke is kind of always, like, a nostalgic thing. And also, this is also a question to Corey from an artistic practice. I mean, we talked a lot about performance today. And you both, I mean, you did a performance. Corey, I think you also, you called it lecture performance. I mean, what is, what makes the performance aspect of Michelle's work interesting? Or is it rather the painting? I mean, I find him utterly performative. Yeah, I agree. I also think that the work is, works on a performative meta level. I don't think of him as a painter really at all. I don't, I'm not even sure. I think installation artists is also maybe a bit too limiting, but I think that it's, he's performing as Mejera's, as he's, he's, I don't wanna say as a character because that's not quite it, but he's really aware of what it means to be a painter and to have a name. And I mean, painter in quotes, but to be a painter, to have a name and move through the art industry. He's so aware of it that it, yeah, you could argue it is a performance, although when you start using the word performance, people think there is, people clearly, you have to kind of qualify because people think someone's standing around doing something in the gallery. Oh, okay. I will say over and out when I'm done. Do you also have an answer to this or is it, was it for you more as a painting aspect of his work? Not, not painting for more like how digital or the way, like the images or techniques he used were, my question, like all the time, like when I look at his works, like how, I don't know, like new it was or like. And do you see a connection to Murakami? Some parts of it is the way, like a flat images. Yeah, but Murakami is more, I think push the anime kind of side, like, you know. But I think Majira's more like connected to history of painting and the like styles of like abstraction expressions and like poke and stuff. Yeah, I mean, I mean, he's really in between. I see him also as a type of an artist that is now completely contemporary in there. And he started, I mean, coming from the painterly 80s in a way in Germany and then changing something in his own practice. But when we talk about, I mean, when we talk about or having a panel like this, it's also about history building in the end. I mean, we all the time do it. And most of the most effective is 100 years after an artist died in a way, because that's the easiest and you see the big picture. And we are trying it also here today with the talks, there was a lot of thinking about what he would mean today or what he meant in a way. So can I ask a question about the relevance today of Majira's? Is there somebody who wants to answer? I mean, you answered this already. And I think Corey also answered it in a way. Is there something that can be made of use for today's art practice, for today's curatorial practice is really important in a way? I guess I can take that one. I also wanted to just start by saying that I personally don't find Majira's work as performance. I think it's performative, but I don't think it's performance. And as someone who works with performance, I think that the use of the body and performance practices comes with its own history and is incredibly important as a history onto itself. So curatorially, I would make a distinction between that being a performative painter or a performative artist, but I don't see this as being performance myself. I know that Marchfina Hayeda, for example, is written about his performative character and Corey has spoken about that, but I would politely disagree. But in terms of his relevance today, I think that what's been a little bit the elephant in the room that Fabian kind of, you know, talked about and this gentleman in the back, it's the Luxembourgian artist. There was also someone who was asking, okay, but what's the political merit of the work today? And it kind of feels like there's a ticket to entry in the art world right now in terms of it needing to be political. And I think that that begs the question, what is political art and what is it doing and why? And I think that what is really interesting about Majeros is that his politics is embodied. It's not something that he's making a declarative confrontational statement about many things, but he has a politics that is kind of existing within the kind of body of his work. It's in his production practices. And I think that that's interesting to look at. I think that that's a huge discussion point right now of how do we look at works like this? How do we look at someone who has also a very internal practice and internal logic? One that's looking at sometimes problematic history of a very male dominated history as well. But how do we make sense of that? And also is there room in an industry for this kind of work that doesn't necessarily have a very clear political stakes when we need to make so much progress on a social front? So yeah, I see it as a huge discussion point. And I guess I would push back on the idea that his work has to be contextualized within the sphere of politics. Fabian, do you wanna add on this? I mean, you also started the discussion on politics in his work. Thank you. I mean, yeah, I think it's interesting what when Corey talked about the perception of the work or like his very personal approach to the work and then we looked at this one favorite painting of his with all the text elements amongst others burn out. I think there's an element in it which we often as perceived as like cool statements, but like then this is an aspect that I find super interesting if you would like dig deeper into this meaning of the actual words used. And I find that I know what you mean with there is this kind of like need in the art world today that everything needs to be political somehow to enter. But then this kind of curiosity that he had in looking around, adapting, using, mixing, trashing it, reusing it. And again, I think this kind of curiosity is something that I find highly political on one hand side, but then also just human in nature. Yeah, I think that's the relevance. I mean, it's interesting, Tim Neuger just pointed it out that it's political and non-political. It's, now I forgot about the best part you said. It's performative and it's not performative. It's painting and it's discussing painting in a certain way. So it's both, there is a certain complexity without choosing the direct paths, but also accepting and respecting the complexity of it, in a way. Yeah, maybe to add to that and to also like the performance discussion we had here. I'm also not necessarily thinking there is this kind of like performance within the work, but like if you would look into the history of performance art as such and just use the term of performance as something that kind of like opens up very kind of stuck art world in the 70s, 80s. Performance was the medium that kind of like brought together suddenly all kind of different areas from the visual arts, from dance, from music, from literature, and so on in a kind of radical manner. And this kind of like, if you use that term to apply it to materials, then I think there is this performativity based on that idea of mixing suddenly visual languages from all over the place. There's another question that popped up the whole time and now I remember what Tim else, what else he said, it was on the one side it is dystopian, if you really look at the language and on the other side it's extremely light. And I never had this dystopian, I never saw this dystopian aspect in the work so much. But Corey, maybe you wanna say something about this? Yeah, it's, excuse me, it's interesting because I had exactly the opposite. I never saw the work as light at all. And it's only today that, yeah, that was mentioned, there was a kind of light criticality in one of the presentations. And so it's only today that I've even been introduced that his work is light. I mean, maybe, yeah, and why is that? Yeah, and why is that? I mean, maybe it's because my in was the later work, and that is the work that I actually saw. But yeah, I mean, just the phrases in that painting, the means of deception, there's something about detonation. I mean, we're really talking about explosives, you know, deception, war, fire. So, yeah, I'm very thankful for this day today because now I have to revisit everything and think, well, maybe I'm not even seeing a whole half here, you know, over and out. I always thought his works were light. It was for me, like when I saw his work at the first time, it was like, ah, this is really so accessible, so familiar because of images, cartoons, like will feel like, I mean, you feel the vibe of 90s or something, but like you still like feel like, ah, my generation's kind of painting, like, you know, grew up with games and things like that, so, yeah. I may just add to that because I think it's very interesting that you say you felt very familiar with it. I myself had to Google image reverse search some of the pictorial elements because I first thought I would recognize them as we said often like techno font or something like that, but I didn't actually know where it comes from, I didn't really know what it was, and it was quite a bit of forensic work from my side to retrace it, and I found that was actually interesting to see how there's this, and that's why I brought up this term of the cultural unconscious, there's this feeling that we are familiar with something like the Busy Bear or the Super Mario or whatever, and we have, it looks friendly, but then there's also a sinister side to it, so I do definitely see what Corrie mentioned, I think the ambiguity is very much there, it's like there's multiple levels of alienation, but also being alienated from something that you're sort of enclosed in, or that you're immersed in, and I think that's something that the work really, it crystallizes in the work. Yeah, I would say actually I feel like it's, the works are all like a mirror, and it's really, I think it's really not so much a layer where you would go into depth and analyze certain strata of images, but I think there are relevance and also why they can feel this topic, it's exactly how you are looking at them that is sent back to you, and I feel because of this cultural unconscious aspect maybe, it is why it is so present, but not in a light way, in a way that if your time is a dark one, you are going to see that directly, and you are not, and you are going to have your guard down because you think it's something eternal, it's something light, it's something purple, it's something universal, so you are not really going to see an image that is connotating, oh, this is, and this reality I'm living in, or this is political art, and I think the fact that it's not showing that it's either political or light or speaking about this or that, it is this moment when you have your guard down, then actually if you are living in an optimistic time, if you yourself have this vision of the world, this is what you are going to see, and I think for me it was something that became very clear when we were all doing our presentations, because I felt they were all very much more personal than what you would usually have at this kind of symposium, and I guess it's really you are just, it's like a mirror held up to everyone and every time. Yeah, I think this is a very, very good point because also today I looked at all the presentations and I had this feeling of really Berlin, also a mirror of Berlin of the time, and it was political and it was light and it was techno, and I found so many things I wasn't aware about, but it felt like a completely familiarity with what was happening at that time there, and it's really, yeah, I also agree, it is a certain mirror of something that speaks to too many people like on a very, very personal level. I keep thinking about the fact that I find Majeros's work quite reticent, like as a maker I think that in, I know that's like a million dollar English word, it means like hesitant to speak, and I also find it to some extent, him as a maker quite anonymous, and I'm wondering, we haven't really talked about authorship and his relationship to authorship, and we've talked a lot about this idea of sampling and how he acts almost as like a filter, and I wonder if that's an intentional strategy that he has to kind of remove himself as a kind of, in this very German painterly male way to remove himself as this kind of character as a maker, and to use more of this kind of function as almost like a sieve within his work. But I don't know, I mean I also talked to Tim a little bit about the fact that he was quite an introverted person, the talks that I've seen him give that are on YouTube, he seems like very hesitant to make these kind of grand pronouncements, and that all of that thinking was in this, the format of these notebooks, which are so incredibly crucial to understanding his thinking and his work. But yeah, I guess authorship really popped up for me in terms of thinking through his kind of methodologies and strategies, just as we've been talking right now. Can I pass this question on to Corey maybe? I mean, I refer also to your presentation and the mix of different references to your brought into this presentation. Corey's really the person who made me think about this, because it's also within his presentation. Corey, you were talking about how he would appropriate the styles and also even like directly the work, right, of like Warhol and Basquiat, and that takes quite a really unique personality to be able to just, it's very like cheeky on one hand, and it's also very, you have to really kind of not have an oversized ego to be able to do that. But yeah, I'd be curious to hear Corey's thoughts on that as well. I mean, yeah, I agree with it, it's wild. I mean, I think some of the things he did are absolutely to have, I mean, I could speak from my own experience as an artist, there's a, but like if I were to try to do some of the things that he did, I would feel almost ill, like trying, like the day of the opening, I would feel kind of sick in a way because they're so nervy, you know, and they require such an amount of confidence, right? And you know, it's mystifying to me that he was able to do some of these things, like yeah, the Warhol basket thing with the lines. I mean, it's, it's nervy, it's intense, and it does make sense to me that he had a kind of rich, introvert life, you know, because I think otherwise you would, it just seems hard to imagine. In terms of authorship, I mean, yeah, it's hard. I don't have a great take on it other than during those years, in symposiums like this, which I was, had started to get invited to, there was always this idea of the remix, which kind of always drove me nuts, you know, like everything was a remix, everything was mixing. So the only thing that I would say is it might be interesting to go back and look at some of those ideas now and see if there's anything worth salvaging from that kind of dialogue, you know? Because of course you could, you could see how easy it would be to apply something like that to Mejeris, but I wonder, I wonder really what was happening, you know, during those years, like, what, what really, anyway, so that's a kind of non-answer, I would say. Okay, but, but, but I would. I don't know. Yeah. I'm insisting because I just have another thought about this authorship part. Isn't it also the question of what you're dealing with? I mean, if we look at Warhol, Warhol also played with authorship and he used also all these commercial images, signs and what so on. And Michelle also when he used the Nike sneakers and so on, and you as well with Pac-Man and all the other figures you took from these gaming, gaming sphere. I mean, do you have, isn't it also like the moment you take and you remix, isn't it a different authorship in a way? Yeah, I mean, I guess, yeah, I guess of course, I think it's good that you're pushing on me a bit because of course I was doing this in exactly these years, you know? So I should be able to answer it. I mean, for me, it's material and he used both material like logos and things like this, but also artists as material or entire artists or entire movements. And it's, yeah, it's simply just another material, really. I mean, that's how I looked at it then. And it's another material, but it's also another context. So when you do something with a video game or take something with a video game, you also have to wrestle with how that is perceived in the world and you have to wrestle with what it means when you bring it into the context of fine art. And so he of course was aware of all of this, you know? So there's a lot, it's maybe a bit more than just then re-authoring. It's like a, what do they call, like a 360 degree shift when you use these items and then drag it into the fine art world. And you could even see how I misread it when I was a young artist. And I should have been the person who exactly knew how to read it, you know? So it's complicated, yeah. But I think what's unique also about his kind of sampling and references is that, you know, in comparison to Warhol who was appropriating from the commercial sphere, Majira's also brought in art historical moments and painters and directly took certain painters' work alongside pop media. And that requires a certain sense of humility, I think, and also confidence, as Corey said. No, it's great. And they're related, they're exactly the same thing, humility and confidence, ego, and you can't have one without the other. Yeah, I mean it's interesting, in Zinn Machine is this big installation we're also gonna show next year. It's like we have Kraftwerk, we have an abstract painting of Gerhard Richter and we have the test image of German TV doing The Night. I mean it's quite an interesting mix of references, but it shows pretty well that contemporary, contemporarity of that time. There's another aspect I was thinking, while especially listening to Sarah's and Ingrid's talk today, I haven't thought about Virilio for a very, very long time, but it came up, especially I was thinking of the books the year 2000 will not happen. I just know the English, the German title, so I think the English title is different. But it is also, for me, he was a very fast artist and there was a certain pace in everything and this pace also informed his artworks in a way or that's also why these artworks look like they, like they turned into their specific look. Do you have, Sarah, could you again talk a bit about acceleration, about the acceleration part? Sure. I think somebody earlier asked the question about the way of production in the studio to Fabian and maybe I can add to that from speaking to Bastian Krondhofer, who he worked with or who worked with him with my years in the studio and specifically talking about this popist terror series of paintings. He mentioned that they would paint sort of against each other, like to see who could do it faster and this was actually part of the practice, right? So this was, it was like a strategy in order to produce these kind of paintings and to make them, as you said, look the way they look and I thought this was interesting also when thinking about this question of animation and how you bring this like flow or this idea of flow into this two-dimensional painting plane. I would probably pass the Virilio question on to you because I know that had been referenced quite often by critics, but then on the other hand it said, or I read that Mayores himself would reject the references to acceleration or speed. Although of course we see it a lot in the, you know, the letterings and everything that he uses but they're also taken from a cultural underground that was obsessed with speed. Yeah, I also find it complicated because for me Virilio is very rooted in a certain university and academic French lineage and if you add to that, that it has been mistranslated and it's only through mistranslation that it has entered more pop cultural spheres. I find it very difficult but maybe what I could add to this question would be maybe less about speed that about a certain texture of anonymity which I think go together and maybe the fact that the paintings and their imagery appear so smooth and to me smoothness is correlated with speed in a way. It's also because you have this very 90s idea which is anonymity which will become collectivity afterwards but it's still about dissolving oneself in this texture and it's a bit the way it's interesting to me that he's also still a painter where he could just have been a collage artist or like if you want to follow this strand of speed and I feel it's a way of how do you remain a subject while still being conscious of existing in this sphere that is pushing you toward anonymity. So I feel that there is still actually an attempt maybe not to go with the speed but retain a little bit from that and this also has to do with this idea of paranoia that I was speaking about in the fact that for me the fact that he's painting is a question I was asking myself why did he need to paint because his images don't need that it could have been the same as collage for instance and I feel for me it's really there is this aspect of not going crazy and you need to understand where you are and the act of painting and when you see him in his studio and he was a conscious judo artist I feel that there is this double edge actually and trying to remain someone painting in a certain frame of reference while still acknowledging the speed and the multiplication and the fact that he is remaining anonymous but still performing. I mean it's totally interesting that he's touching so many buttons. It's like I also I would say yes it makes completely sense for me he's in a painterly tradition. When I look at the history of painting for me it's totally clear but on the other side there are people who are not like Corey and maybe also you why did he do painting? Corey says I don't see him as a painter. I mean this is also this is like the complexity he was based in and what I also like I'm jumping now is that you turned to the Berlin Biennial. It is so interesting for me it was the last really interesting Berlin Biennial. There were many interesting works in the other ones as well but as a statement and it was not a very successful one a lot of people didn't like it but there is a certain culture there's a certain digital culture that was played out and nowadays we have a culture where painting is completely important again. I mean look at Paris Internationale was almost only painting. You know it's I think this is also the complexity he was dealing with. Yeah it's a bit I mean we were speaking very briefly about this but I think it's also something that's reverberating a bit in all the intervention I was thinking especially about yours Fabian saying that you need to be time specific to look at his work and it's a bit what he's learning us as well. I think that the fact that we are living in harder times today it's a bit why we turn to painting maybe as a frame but smaller paintings and things we can maybe more control because the Berlin Biennial it was maybe the last moment where there was still enough hope to indulge in this kind of practice. So yeah that would be my. Yeah to add to this I agree it was the kind of like in its form as a biennial it was probably the most radical version of such a big exhibition since a while not my cup of tea probably but like in that sense of what it did it was super interesting because it was bringing together all these voices of this kind of like seemingly huge kind of like post internet generation and then to look at it today there's so many of these artists that actually not working as artists anymore that just stopped but it reflected so precisely on this time. And now we live like almost in a kind of Peter Meyer re mural where like you go back home to your studio you lock yourself in and you paint and read poetry and then you drink a cup of tea. Well it makes me think of also of Maximiliano Gioni's Venice Biennale which was this return to the haptic and this return to handmade objects and craft and outsider art and it had this completely different I mean this was also I think before I think his Biennale was maybe 2013 but of course post internet had been you know a really prevalent aesthetic for a very long time and I'm trying to trace some thoughts together but what I find interesting about the dis biannual is that it was very sculptural you know they really really worked through objects like a lot of these artists and also installations and you know billboards for example and there wasn't a lot of painting so it's interesting to think through how these things are connected especially with Ingrid's presentation and I just am reflecting back on what Bettina has said about how for her it's so clear that he's a painter in terms of how he fits into painting history and that's also how I feel and when I think about the speed in which he worked I also think about de Kooning for example and de Skilling and the idea of jamming and working with your left hand because you've become too good at painting with your right hand I mean these kinds of games that painters play in order to kind of work through a certain vernacular and yeah it would be super interesting to see what also he would think about the Berlin Biennale and how his work would fit into that visual language and what painting does in that kind of you know rubric yeah but it's interesting like I think it's also like a lack of vocabulary that we have at hand to talk about it at some point I sometimes feel like as Corey said like when he worked like as a internet artist the idea of internet artists and always like it's something that happens on the screen and it's looking it looks strange and then it's internet art and then museums like adopted it and they showed it like in the basement under the stairs in a dark corner on a computer connected to the internet to the world like vocabulary in terms of like how you talk about the practice like Maciej was coming from Luxembourg studying in beautiful Stuttgart and then coming to Berlin and suddenly Berlin is this kind of like the internet alive somehow everything happens at the same time but like then you have the institution and the institution usually shows artists and their work but also institutions are limited in this discourse and like try to like slowly slowly kind of like extend their own vocabulary slowly becoming something something different and I think it's it's going somehow it should go like hand in hand that we kind of try to extend our own at least as curators extend our own vocabulary of like understanding artistic practices in a wider context while everything else at the same time is developing further in some way. This is a difficult statement also a question to myself. Sarah, can I briefly add to that? I think that's a great thought that you just shared and maybe this also goes back to the question of the political and I would say for example that the rave culture or the club culture in Berlin was pretty political and maybe it was in these terms actually political in a sense that it was really a broadening of like terms such as like painter or installation art or whatever and maybe we should think of my heuristic work more in terms of environments than like not as like single individual works or like discreet entities but more you know the way he painted in these like modular way like making small parts that together they would form a big painting and I think this together with like the floor that makes a sound when you walk over it and so on and so forth I think you should kind of think of this more in terms of environments maybe. I think that is also a very good wrap up. Are there questions from the audience? Nothing. Okay, before I say very warm welcome to Semton Song. Merci pour d'être ici. And thank you to all of you. Corey for you have a fantastic opening on Friday. I'm gonna think of you. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Thank you for this very interesting discussion and the wonderful talks and maybe we stay here and I hand over to Madame Tanson. I have to catch a cab. I'm so sorry, but I have to go to the airport. I take your seat. Thank you. Be part. Yes, I prefer that. Then before you leave, thank you for having been here. I just had the last 30 minutes I think of your talk that I could listen to and it was really interesting and I'm a little bit sorry that I did not hear all of it because I even understood everything even if I'm not an expert but just a minister of culture in Luxembourg. So first of all, thank you for being here. I think that it is a hard time also for you as a family because as you might know only four days ago we thought about a lot about the crash that has just happened 20 years ago. So as someone close or family member, friend of Michel Margeros, I imagine that it is specifically hard time for you now. So thank you for being here. And supporting this really precious initiative. But it is also a very relevant time to discuss this because from what I remember, Michel Margeros was mainly discovered of the larger broader public in Luxembourg after the accident, after his death when there was a lot more talk about him at that time. And he maybe has never had the recognition that he has now here in Luxembourg. So it is really great of you also, Bettina and the Moudam team to organize this symposium today in being part of this German initiative of the Michel Margeros 2022. So I think it's really important to have talks about Michel Margeros's work and his relevance here in Luxembourg to also remember. What important artist he has been and is still is. And remember that he comes from Luxembourg and what perspectives this also gives to artists from Luxembourg. Then one last word because I have been to the estate of Michel Margeros a few years ago and I was really impressed by the work that is done there. And it also really helps to understand for a non-professional in the work of Michel Margeros. And I don't remember now who talked about the notebooks of Michel Margeros, but that really gave me a new perspective of his work and the way he approached his artistic work. And I was again then impressed by how contemporary his work also is. So this just for my small perspective thank you really for being here and for putting this on the agenda. Thank you. Okay, for me a last word. Thank you again the estate. Thank you again the family. Thank you again all speakers. Thank you again Clementine Isuel. You did a fantastic work on this. And we're gonna have drinks at our bar. So you're all invited and we can continue the discussion. Okay, thank you very much.