The Designs For Motion

of Jean Tinguely- A Portfolio and an Interview

 

Interviewer.   If you were in my place, what questions would you ask?

Tinguely. Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t want to be. I would find it hard to do; I would refuse to do it. But if I had to, I would ask first of all: why do things move in your work? It’s the most simple, and also the most complicated, question. And I answer: things move because if they didn’t move, they might move; that is, in trying to make static things I have tried what everyone tries, and I’ve found that one petrifies situations, the phenomena that one is trying to seize. And finally one finds that as you try to seize these things, the things tell you something. In our time, things race and revolve automatically; industry and automation dominate us and impose a rhythm on us. Faced with that kind of thing, my work must to remain vital, to avoid obsolescence. That doesn’t mean I’m afraid of being obsolescent: I agree with life and the idea…