The connection between artist and warrior.

Question: What is natural reaction?

Fritz Haeg: Someone wrote that in some story, they wrote about me I think. I forget what it was, but I think work came up. So I know invented word by the writer, I don’t I really know what that means, I think is pretty fascinating. I forget where it was. I think he was referring to these edible estate project in the project coming up animals estates in the way. It also came up actually the other day that’s thought with Peter Sellars. He is a great theatre director who is under panel at that for the kick off Animals Estates, but then your public library this past Friday. He made reference to this idea that I thought was really interesting that I hadn’t thought about so much with my work that, the term avantgard as we understand in the art world means that out of friend edges of a movement or the discipline of art, which is a term that comes from war. He made this connection between artistic and a warrior and the provocation or not necessarily the violence, but the provocation and the desire to shake things of up that exist in that term and in that thought of what avantgard artist does. He made this connection between those two things and specifically to something like edible estate that is provocative in your face, on the streets and really speaks to shake things up and to really provoke, but with the garden or in the case of animal estates with the animal home or in the case of other projects I have done with dance and movements. So, I think it is this interesting fusion of things that revealed it self to me with these projects. It is very alienating and uninteresting really to provoke people in a way back and turns them off or put something in their face that you don’t want to see and it is very easy to turn your back on that and not really think about it anymore when you are provoked in that kind of work, but what happens when your provokes with something that is so benevolent or non-threatening or old school grandma like a garden or a bird house or a dance. These are things that I happen to be really interested in. May be I am interested in them, because for those reasons or something so severs of it I think about taking something like that, some lost basic human activity and putting it in a place where it is threatening or where it causes some real disruption or it makes us understand how screwy our world is in the way with I think today.

Recorded On: 3/10/08