Even though it might seem weird to you, I would like you to tell me, at first, who is Ulay, because the public in Romania and Moldova might not be familiar with your artistic activity?
When he was introducing me this evening, the director of the Goethe Institute has called me “Mister Ulay”, which is not appropriate. And then he said: “May I mention your real name?” And he did that, and my real name is Uwe Laysiepen. Just a week ago two students of mine in Germany searched about a couple of hours on the Internet for my real name. And they did not find it, because it is not recorded on the Internet. The name Laysiepen apparently seems to come from Lituania.
More or less I have lost my family and my home, I have no family since I was fifteen and there was no reason for me to stay in a place where I once had a family. So I left Germany and I moved to Dane at the age of fifteen. That was like an ancient travelling, because at that time everybody trusted everybody and it was very easy to travel, very encouraging. But I have noticed from the very beginning that people could not remember, write or pronounce my name properly, it was a difficult name, now we use the most exotic names, but that time not. So I have decided to cut my name, to use  “U” from the Uwe, my first name, and use the “lay” from my family name, Laysiepen. I have put them together, and I have obtained Ulay. It was very successful, because everybody remembered it, everybody could speak it out, plus, on my journeys around the world, I learnt that the name “Ulay”, in several countries, meant something. My most favourite is in Hebrew, it means “maybe”, “perhaps”.
So, that’s the way the name Ulay has come into existence.

Your activity in Romania includes a lecture (you held at the Goethe Institute in Bucharest) with the title Performative Photography. What does Performative Photography mean?

I have tried to give a little idea about that. First of all, I like to bridge the words “performance” and “photography”. As an artist I have started with photography. And if I tell you how I started, maybe this makes a possible sense for why I have this urge to combine the words “performance” and “photography”. Of course there is a big difference between performance and photography, but in my attitude there is little difference.
I started photography with engaging a regular amateur Polaroid camera which takes a picture and you peel it out and, after 60 seconds you have peeled it out, you are sure you have this image. There are two things that are important to me, regarding this method. One thing is that when you have the intention to take a photograph, that is the most important thing. If you engage a normal camera, first you have to expose the whole role and then you bring it away for developing and then you pick it up a couple a days later and then you may print it yourself. So the initial moment of taking the photograph has nothing to do with the moment when you eventually are going to print it. There are two different times and intensions involved. Polaroid tried to combine the two into one. So, that it was positive.
The other one is that, because of its fastness and its rapidness and its instant-ness, it worked like a mirror. Because the first 5 years I wanted to have photographs of myself till I was exhaustive. And then I started to basically think about a photographic identity. Anybody can, anytime, manipulate his identity in any direction. So it did not make sense. So I stopped doing these things.
And then, I came into a period of photo death, meaning that I would, in an alternative gallery, have huge portraits of people that I knew would come to the exhibition, very large size, 100 by 120cm, black and white portraits of people. There were about nine of them on three walls. People came in, it was dark, there was darkened light, and of course the images were very dark in this darkened light; when everybody was in, the light was shot out, and the images would have disappeared in about 3 to 15 seconds, to black surfaces. That was photo death.
From then on I have done majourly performances. I have left away the strata of mental image on paper, which is photography, that captures the image of three-dimensional social and environment context, and did performances with my body.
So, what I like is to combine photography with performance, or viceversa. For me, performance is primary, and photography is secondary, but at the same time it has become again obvious that photography is primary and performance is secondary.
So, I have been fluent with these two media and I seek the ideal way with photography. It is always not only making pictures, I am fascinated about the phenomenology of the medium of photography, and I do not think it is really enough satisfying theory or philosophy written about so far.

You consider yourself to be a conceptual artist, and one of your medium of expression is performance. What does Photography mean, in this case, to you – is it a form of art or does it have only documentary value? 

I think that, for me, personally, the question is irrelevant. For me, personally, the question whether photography is art or not has always been irrelevant.

Photography depicts the three-dimensional reality in a bi-dimensional manner. And you often engage this artistic medium. So I want to ask you: can one detect a need to avoid monumentality; are you afraid of monumentality, and this is way you try to reduce it to a bi-dimensional image?

I think that by my nature, the main reason is that I am a reductionist. I like to reduce things to a minimum of physicality. The photographic image is afterall a mental image, and in fact any work of art is primarily a mental image, even if you chisel for years a big piece of marble, to me, the prime message and the prime quality remains the mental image. So why chisel for years a piece of marble, if you can have something similar on a flat sheet of paper, I mean a mental image? It is a microscopic filled layer on a sheet of paper. To me it is good enough. This is very reductionist, radically reductionist. I have got an attitude maybe, but I rather keep as much as possible living space, negative space open to live in rather than occupy it with all kinds of heavy stuff, which primarily function as mental images. So reducing the three-dimensional to bi-dimensional strata, I think that’s fine with me, and it is first a record for getting triggered and dealing with these mental images.
On the other hand, I must say, what I say now is that I truly believe and I intend to do as much as possible, but if you look at these huge, gigantic Polaroid photographs, they unavoidably have a monumental presence. But still it is a piece of paper on which this super-image is showed.

It can be said that Photography lacks the engagement of time. You use Photography very often. Does this mean that time does not exist for you? Or do you try to escape time with the help of Photography?

Well, yesterday at the Art School, at the Art Department of the University, we were briefly talking about time and space. To speak frankly to you I am not that kind of theoretician or intellectual or philosopher who takes the time concept too seriously. I have a particular relation to time and I have a particular relation to space. And I am not an intellectual in that sense, I may be a conceptual artist, but I am not that kind of intellectual. I can tell you something: for me, time is related to suffering, or to pain, if you like, so it has a purely restricted, simple, almost banal connotation to me, and I can tell you why. If I have a good time, I am not concerned about time, if I get a toothake I am very much concerned about time.
Space, she is not asking for space, but space is similar to me, very similar. Space, for me, is that where I can live and move in. That means it is the negative space between things. The more, the better. Negative space that permits me to live, and to breathe and to function. And I think we all are more concerned with negative space than anything else, though we are all naturalistic and we are all object-oriented. But, at the same time, the moment you move you are more concerned about the negative space, than any other object. This is because you need to correlate (your movements) in order to avoid collision, and the faster you move, the more you get concerned about negative space. I like the negative space; it permits me to live, to function. As I have said, I have a very simple approach to these incredible themes or phenomena of time and space. I am not trying to escape time; I cannot escape time, unless I have a good time.

You have often used the Polaroid camera. Why do you prefer this device to the traditional ones?

I have mentioned that before. It is practical and the Polaroid camera does not separate the primary intention of taking an image and the later of working on an image, and crafting an image – in a dark room, for a couple of hours, at least 1 hour. When I engaged the Polaroid camera, about 30 or 25 years ago, I did this because it had a sort of magic to me and I used it as a mirror and therefore it was very important to me. The Polaroid photograph has a very particular aesthetic quality which no other conventional photographic process produces.

Do you use Photography only as an image of the surface of a human being, or do you also try to depict psychological aspects of the human being you take the picture of?

Yes, I am always very interested in the psychological aspects, especially of the human beings, but also of animals. The answer to this question is yes and no. It is inherent to photography that it stays on the surface of something, unless you use medical or scientific devices. You can depict, for example when you take the portrait of somebody, something that psychoanalist can work with; maybe the physiognomy can tell something about the mind or the mood of the people portrayed. Some people pretend they can read this, and I believe they can. During the 19th century, they forced people to be portrayed because they wanted to depict the prototype of the face of criminals. So, they forced people to be systematically photographed with their head locked, they could not move during the long exposing time, of course they had to stay still in order to get a very good sharp,  and they photographed a great variety of people in order to depict a face, a physiognomic condition, in order to depict, prior to the crime, the portrait of typical criminal, which was a typical attitude for the 19th century.
But, as I have said, photography is limited to the surface and I like psychology. I can tell you a story. I have a book here with me which was printed a couple of months ago. This is a book with original polaroids, 50-60 cm polaroids, that I have made for three days in a street market, in Amsterdam. If you want, you can look at it later. I have put this huge Polaroid camera on the street market, I have rented a stand where people sale vegetables and cheese, this kind of thinks. I have rented the stand for three days, I have put this camera there and then portrayed a large ethnic diversity of people; in this area where I have left the Polaroid there live 72 nationalities. I have wanted to picture that by doing portrait of all of them. Now I tell you something. If you look at the pictures, you can see that the people are content, friendly, open and very collaborative. All nationalities, even Muslims, who are not really picture friendly. That has to do with psychology. Because if I would have stood there for three days with a regular camera device, a conventional photographic camera, like the one I have brought here this evening, I would have only taken them something away, perhaps some would have felt being abused, intimidated, because taking the portrait of a person, even in public space, it is not a thing which is easy to do. There are always rules you have to follow, you have to get the permission of the person you have the picture taken of, and the photographs would have been very different if a traditional camera would have been engaged. There is a whole tradition for street photography, and if you look at these photographs, more than 70% are taken without the photographed person being conscious of it, so they are snapshots. Others are taken when those people photographed are aware of their portraying and maybe take position or relate consciously to the photographer.
Well, I have involved the Polaroid camera, because if you involve the Polaroid and you make poster-size portraits, people are fascinated about it, it is magic, because you take the first picture and then you hang up and people look, and you have, in no time, about 30 people standing in a row, wanting to be portrayed, because this kind of photograph is so fantastic and is ready in 60 or 90 seconds. 
But the other thing is, and I think that is the psychology in it, that this process works more like a gift exchange. If you use conventional photography, this means that you take away something and then you walk away. Basically, you only take something, you do not give anything back. If you involve such a Polaroid or any Polaroid camera you take something and meanwhile you give something back. And if you can afford it and you want it, you can make the same portrait twice: you keep one for yourself, and the other one you maybe give back. So, it is a gift exchange, which changes the psychology of the whole enterprise of taking a photograph, I think. And the photographs I have taken for three days in Amsterdam, in that street market, are no special photographs, they are, by all means, absolutely ordinary photographs. The only thing that is special about them is that, in all of these street photographs, the people are content, and collaborative, and they are smiling.
So, photography stays on the surface and I am always interested in the psychology of things.

Many times you are the subject of your prints. One can say that you use this medium to capture for eternity your mirror-image. Is this a kind of narcissism? Or is this a way by which you try to let others know something about you, that you cannot know but hope that the eye of the magic camera can depict?

It’s a good one. This is a little bit similar to the question asked by people after they have seen me doing performances, a particular kind of performances, very auto-agressive, self-mutilating performances. The first question was not even a question; people would have assumed that my attitude was totally masochistic. In respect to many of these performances, there was that masochistic phenomenon, and here we have, because I have done a lot of self-portraits, the narcissistic phenomenon. Well, I guess it is partly true. I cannot deny that the concept of narcissism has never kept me busy, so its involving in my photographs may be true, but for me it was more like recalling my own identity crisis, and that is not really about narcissism. I think it goes deeper than narcissism, it has more to do with psychology, amongst other things. I was depicting my identity crisis, aroused by the fact that I was a homeless and parentless and family-less since my 15s, when I left my homeland and did not want to belong anywhere; I have never served the army and I have never had a bank loan or credit or mortgage, I have never had a religious confession. I have stayed away of these things, maybe “escape” would be a better word to describe this situation. At one stage I have had the courage to ask myself why I have tried to engage the photographic device in order to find out who I am. I have maybe 1000 photographs of myself, showing me also as a transvestite – I walked along, I lived as a transvestite for a year, with other transvestites and transsexuals. I did tattoo, I did piercing, I did transplantations, I did a whole number, which is now a fashion, but I have not come out of it with too much. Because I came to the conclusion that for a photographic identity, and this is the funny thing about passports, one can manipulate the camera in any direction, and at any minutes, at any time. So, I think all of these things were more like a painful failing exercise than staying at the surface of narcissism and trying to like yourself or not to like yourself; I didn’t like myself at that time.
So, I must have been such a narcissist, but I do not agree that this was the main motivation of all: pleasure or exercise.

You have travelled all over the world and you have taken pictures, but also photograms of the people or places you have seen. What is a photogram and why do you use it? Do you try to make the spectator see that there also is another kind of reality, a ghost-like one?

The question about the concept of reality, in regard to photography, has been and still remains a good question. It always has been a good question and it remains a good question. The photogram is a very primitive way of creating an image. I remember that the first time I was in the Australian desert I saw the first odd cave woman paintings, which were of about 40000 years old – because the aborigines have been existing on that continent (according to what scientists say, of the carbon dating) for 40000 years  (they have initially come from central Asia). So, these wall paintings were about 40000 years old. What is interesting is that, although it was the drawing of hands, the hand was missing, that means it was the silhouette of a hand, but the actual hand was missing. They used a kind of white clay, they made that thing with water, they put it in their mouth, they held their hand on the wall and then they spit over it, then they took the hand away and then there remained a perfect silhouette, a negative image of a hand, actually. This is a very simple way of making a photogram – the aborigines knew how to make a kind of pkotogram. You make a photogram by engaging an object which you put against a surface, attach it to a surface, or you make the people stand in front of it. Then you expose it with any light – it can be candle-light, or neon-light, or flash light -, because the light exposes the light-sensitive emulsion. The object, I mean the shape of the object covers a part of that surface, and does not permit light to expose that covered part of the surface, which is very simple. Then you develop it, and then you have the surface coloured in black, and where the actual object has been it remains a negative inprint. This is gosthly; the photograms of the aborigines I made when I was in Australia (for a second time) represent to me the aborigines after-images, especially one image, that of a small woman, who looks like a child on this image. And I know the aborigines concept about spiritual (this has to do with conceptual) – the aborigines have a fantastic concept about spiritual, this reminded me about spirituality.
If you want to project a ghost-like reality or dimension to it, it is fine with me. I myself call these photograms sometimes ghost images. But what I found fascinating about these images, and that refers again to the ontology of a photographic image – it is the only photographic image where actual contact takes place between the object (being a thing or a person) and the light sensitive emulsion, because photography was in a semi-contactual affection by light, and here you have an actual print. Sometimes I reffer to it as a kind of blueprint, made by direct contact, because the aborigines have touched that thing; in away they have authenticized it by touching it, because it is a full contact, not a semi-contact image transfer. I think the aborigines found it a little bit spooky.
If you would have posed that question to an aborigine person, saying “Do you try to make the spectator see that there also is another kind of reality, a ghost-like one?”, I think the aborigine person would have said that those were ghost-like images. They were, maybe, a little bit scared. After having seen the photograms, they wanted to paint over them (which would have been nice; and this really was a great compliment to me).
By Radiana Folescu
© ART-hoc, 2000.