With humour, the absurd and seriousness I emerged. Bop and bop! – Interview with Kaarel Kurismaa

Kaarel Kurismaa ***Dripping Sounds***, 1975. Art Museum of Estonia. Photo by Helen Melesk

I encountered Kaarel Kurismaa's work for the first time as a child when the Estonian National Television showed his animated films. I was also impressed by the gigantic blinking light object that made an appearance at the finale of Šlaager (1982), a film about the pop music industry of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. Also in the 1980s, Kurismaa's psychedelic objects could be seen as part of studio design for Sven Grünberg's musical performances in television shows. In the mid-1990s, Kurismaa taught us colour theory and a special course in kinetic art at the Estonian Academy of Arts. While the founding of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art created a radical divide in the Estonian art field – the old and the new generation – Kurismaa with his kinetic art exhibitions seemed to adapt to the paradigm shift painlessly. In the early 2000s, myself and many other artists wanted to make music instead of art and the only artist from the older generation we found who could offer us guidance was Kaarel Kurismaa. At the time, however, we didn't know sound art was a legitimate artform and not just a no-man's-land inhabited by a few freaks. In 2001, we established the first sound art platform Metabor and asked Kurismaa to join us. We organised experimental noise and sound art nights, using his sound machines – in a former hospital, abandoned factory, a Soviet monumental park, inside an old ice breaker etc. It is admirable how Kurismaa, who was 60 at the time, still had the energy to participate in experimental techno events in post-industrial dens in the middle of the night with young exploring artists! We were young and anxious and he balanced it out with his unique calmness. We considered him our guru, because this is exactly what his sound and noise machines are – pure magic and vibration that unfolds in the space.

Kiwa: The leitmotif in your art is playful absurdist humour. How did this come about?

Kaarel Kurismaa: Well, I was born with it, I inherited it from my parents. With humour, the absurd and seriousness I slowly, slowly emerged from my little home. Bop and bop! Mostly, I got it from my papa, but also my uncle and my mother, given in her own gentle way. And all of this came together to create my individuality.

K: How did some of the earlier expressions of this come about?

KK: Well, I mean, they came about in the kitchen, in the hallway, in the back room.

K: I think you also made music when you were young?

KK: Oh, these were follies of youth. I have always made music. With everything within my reach – once I had a pan, then a jar, another time I had a waterspout. All these things grew and intertwined and flowed around me. I listened and looked and hummed along when I could.

K: But later, in art school?

KK: In art school I was doing things within an orchestration of a couple of dozens friends. We hung out, had conversations and played musical instruments like the Estonian kannel. We had quite a few of those, we carried them around on our shoulders and hips and sometimes got a pretty good tune out of them.

Artists Kaarel Kurismaa (on the left) and Tiit Pääsuke at the carnival of the art school. Photo: Estonian National Museum

K: What other happenings did you do?

KK: We did happenings all the time. We had no need to take the stairs; we climbed in through windows or crept along the walls. Not to mention the taxi stop that drove us back and forth. We knew all the taxi drivers. I usually rode either at the tail or in front of the taxi, I was a bicycle guy, after all. I had a pale yellow bike that ran by itself, I didn't even need to pedal, Tartu is such a hilly city. I proudly whirred up and down. For my entrance exams to the Tartu Art School, I made a work, where I danced the polka with a teddy bear. The office of the newspaper Edasi was also located in Tartu and I sent them some of my caricatures, which they published, so this was happening on the more literary side. The atmosphere in Tartu at the time was very open-minded. This is where Artur Alliksaar Artur Alliksaar (1923–1966) – brilliant Estonian poet with a complicated life story and Alfred KongoAlfred Kongo (1906–1990) – Estonian painter and professor met. We were all connected to one another.

K: In the mid-1960s, you came back to Tallinn?

KK: In Tartu, Alfred Kongo suggested that I study monumental painting at the State Art Institute. And so, I continued on that path.

K: Did the absurd continue in Tallinn as well?

KK: In Tallinn, there’s the Town Hall Square, where we could take long slides, sometimes it was especially slippery, so our cheeks got bruised. The social circles in Tallinn were nice too. With Heino MikiverHeino Mikiver (1924–2004) – artist and the father of Estonian absurdism we did theatre of the absurd. He had just gotten back from a prison camp in Siberia, where he got to know the Russian avantgarde, which then became a connecting point.

K: Where do you pinpoint the beginning of your artist career?

KK: Probably at the moment I started working at the Teras factory as a metalworker and encountered the sound of metal. This fascinated me the most, there were so many sounds. The large metal lathe started humming, the blades made sounds when cutting metal, that already was calling me – what amazing music! It truly inspired me.

K: The relationship between man and machine was among the core questions in 20th century art but mostly from a dystopian perspective. Your machines and kinetic installations are something out of science fiction or a dream, they are mystical, enigmatic, playful.

KK: On the one hand, that came with the sound of metal pieces against one another and the mystery of that sound; on the other, there was the literary world that also supported it. I read a lot in the 1960s, literature was very important.

Kaarel Kurismaa in his studio. Photo by Mari Kurismaa

K: How did you start constructing machines and combined and kinetic objects?

KK: Well, we could consider which parts I made myself and which parts I borrowed from elsewhere. The first objects were inspired by my papa, a pastry chef, these were shaped like cakes. And uncle Otto also brought different shaped cakes whenever he visited, these included olfactory surprises. At first, machines were supporting art pieces, it was only later that the autonomous smaller machines made an appearance in my work.

K: You used a lot of ready-mades and construction details. In the West, that would have indicated a pop art approach, but here the Soviet poverty required artists to be inventive in the way they combined things.

KK: That's how it was.

K: Alongside everything else, you have always painted. The artist Raoul Kurvitz once said that when it comes to your paintings, the only criterium you follow is having "the right feeling".

KK: I mean, the painting had to speak for itself. In the early 1990s, I started making gothic landscapes and jazz-like paintings.

K: Abstractionism and expressiveness were central to your work but how did you formulate these themes for yourself?

KK: If I only knew how to explain these things.

K: So you just went with your gut?

KK: Sure, it was more about the feeling. Whether the soul was open or not.

K: What about the works for the public space? The ones created for the electrical company Põhja Kõrgepingevõrgud, the Tallinn Post Office and the Tallinn Tram Monument?

KK: Architects made commissions if they saw it fit. At the time, there were no competitions.

***The tram object***, 1993. Located in the historical tram park in Tallinn. Photo by Martin Siplane

**Steam Express and Halts**, 1993. View at Art Basel, 2019. Photo: Justin Meekel

K: In your exhibition pieces, you often used streamlined forms. How did you become fascinated with the Yellow Submarine and space age aesthetics?

KK: That was the ideal Estonian artists were going for. In the 1960s, our pop was tinged with retro. Our pop art was not about protesting against the commercialisation of society. In our case, the aesthetics were a blend of granny's closet and Yellow Submarine. In my works, I used details of early-20th century Estonian functionalist furniture. In the light of the space age, the rounded forms acquired a sci-fi look. I used many found objects.

***Aspiration***, 1975. Art Museum of Estonia. Photo by Helen Melesk

K: How did you end up making animation? Playfulness, movement and childlike absurdism are very much your thing.

KK: Initially, I was invited as a colourist but then started doing animation myself. I found the opportunity and went from there.

K: I think we have discussed all of the more important questions.

KK: That is all I have, not much else I'd like to say, nothing to justify, criticise or praise myself. It is what it is.