SPREAD | ArtCulture

Cloaca Professional: Media: Mixed Media Dimensions: L 710 x B 176 x H 285 cm Date: 2010 View: Monasism (22. 01.2011 – 19.07.2011) at MONA ,Tasmania, © Wim Delvoye

By Kiša Lala
Interview Wim Delvoye Part 2 ( Read Part 1)
The Shitting Machine: The Cloaca Project

Recently David Walsh had purchased one of his pooing machines for his MONA space in Tasmania where Delvoye is due to have a solo show this Fall. The subject brings out Delvoye’s science-nerd-enthusiasm: “I always wanted to do a shit machine…you know I saw the film Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as a little boy. It was like thinking about what it was like being a boy. Tracey Emin in every work from A to Z says she is a girl – there’s not much else in her work. I think it’s great, but what you read is, I’m a girl, I’m a bad girl, a funny girl… In the nineties [my] work was more about being a boy, now it is much more eclectic. The debates were coloured by identity, what subgroup you belonged to. It was about separation. The New Museum [exhibition of 2001], had been the temple for all these discussions; the debate about the Other.”

© Wim Delvoye

By Kiša Lala

Tour - Brussels: Media: Laser-cut corten steel Dimensions: H 1700 x 260 x 260 cm Date: 2010 View: Knockin’ on heaven’s door (20.10.2010 – 23.01.2011) at Bozar, Brussels, © Wim Delvoye

Self described architect, prankster, farmer, megalomaniac: Wim Delvoye is an extreme artist, willing to chase an idea to its unsettling conclusion. To make his point Delvoye has mastered not only the skills of the traditional artisan – from weaving, tattooing, ceramics, stained glass and steel – he has also engineered the most perfect shit.

Delvoye often triggers controversy but he is a stealth artist, astutely exposing all the finger-wagging snobbism about his art. He was in New York recently during Armory week, noting the changes in the Meat Packing District where he once lived in the late 90s. In 2001 he showed his Cloaca machine at the New Museum. “I thought it was going to be a disaster during the anthrax scare. It was a bio-machine making shit,” says Delvoye, in a thick accent with a hint of mischief. During our conversation he frequently had me in titters over his escapades – he knows the common notions people have about his art and will happily play up his schoolboy antics. Settling down to chat, (with a coffee, after toilet and squeezing blackheads – he volunteers to add) he takes me on a journey into his cosmicomical universe – being on the run from the Louis Vuitton police, his plans for a Gothic wonderland and his friendship with Ai WeiWei. I listen, as though back at school again, squeamish and awed by the nerve of the schoolyard’s most notorious prankster.
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