Nigel, your performance practice spans over many decades. How would you define performance art?
Nigel Rolfe: I remember being someone making this kind of work before the word “performance” was even used to describe it. I come from a generation where actionism and similar movements weren’t labelled in the same way. Action art probably followed me for the first ten years. I also happened to know the person who first wrote about the notion of it being a performance, an artist and critic from England named Mark Camille Chaimowicz. He worked on this phrasing. Chaimowicz wrote for Studio International, and that was the first time I ever saw the word „performance“ used in this context. It’s a problematic term in some ways.
For me, the point is that we’re visual artists making visual images. The politics of it, in a meta-social sense, not in party-political terms, is that performance is not different from any other art. It just happens before the eyes, in the here and now, not the there and then. It’s not made in a studio and rehearsed for a year.
All art-making is, in a way, a live endeavour, but the deception is that most of it happens privately. The painter can change their mind: “I don’t like that bit of the painting; I’ll paint it out and start again.” Performance doesn’t allow that. Whether you’re on the street or in a gallery, you’re making the work in that moment, and what you’re doing is it. That’s where my expression “Work Made Live” comes from; it’s made live. Afterward, there’s residue, there’s documentation, but the most precious thing is the moment itself, witnessed.
The audience bears witness to the here and now in its moment of doing. Perhaps more disbelieving than curious of what they are seeing, the suspension of their disbelief is what significant work seeks and may achieve. And then something turns, and belief happens. That’s the privilege, to turn disbelief into belief.
Robert, how did the idea for the Parole of an Apparition event series originate? What were the first steps, and how did you come into contact with artists Paula Fitzsimons and Nigel Rolfe?
Robert Gruber: gottrekorder e.v. has a long tradition of creating immersive shows, more than what is usually presented in a conventional space. The live moment is always there, of course, and because “live” is live, it’s unpredictable. Even failure becomes part of it. And I like that idea: that failure actually belongs to originality. To bring that in as part of the work.
The idea for Parole of an Apparition really came out of the work itself. I have to be very precise with terms, both in the text and in what the idea and the work are. Usually, all work leads to some kind of alienation, even before Marx came up with this confusion. What we do, though, is basically the opposite. I see my work, creating and executing projects, as a form of performance itself. That’s also what led me to meet Nigel at work for the first time. The title of the show was Ephemeral Self. I think that was in 2013, in Prague, at the National Library of Technology (NTK). That’s where we first met.
Can you tell us more about your curatorial approach and the text following the events?
Robert: The text explores several concepts, not in the usual sense of “this is how it should be understood,” but rather in a way that lets terms dissolve. Like in philosophy, a question isn’t meant to be answered but to be dissolved completely, which is difficult to achieve and rarely fully succeeds. The word „parole“ is used here more as a frame. You can try to get close to these apparitions we present—they’re ongoing, never fully defined. There’s no deterministic success in life or in art. Things just keep going.
The process of curating is the work. The curatorial process isn’t about getting an idea and then executing it. Ideas arrive all the time, day and night; what also matters is the place. That’s something that has followed me for a long time. I started as a stage designer, also for film, so the awareness of space, of site, is deeply embedded in my practice. This connects to our current project as well. It’s not about saying, “These are different places” or “These are different artworks.” Of course, in some way, they are. But the contingency, that thing that brings it all together—that’s what matters. There must be a reason. It’s not about difference for its own sake. That, to me, is curatorial praxis. It’s also a process of intuition. Like in performance, you’re always negotiating, sensing if something can work.
Hema, let’s talk about the different locations where the program is happening. Each location has its own history, atmosphere, and audience. Could you tell us more about your thoughts behind choosing these sites?
Hema Makwana: The selection of locations and the whole thought process behind them was something we, as a team, especially Robert and I, discussed in depth from the beginning. We had long conversations about potential sites, bringing examples to the table, comparing ideas, and refining our choices together. We were very selective. We looked closely at the history of each building, its architecture, its energy, and its audience. Every location has its own atmosphere, and that was crucial. Also, practically speaking, some of these spaces aren’t easy to access; many are not public, or you need special permissions, so it’s never guaranteed. Getting those confirmations took time and persistence. The locations are very different. And that means very different audiences, too.
Robert knew Paula and Nigel’s work deeply, and it was important for both of us to give the artists different energies where they could create something new. For the Vienna audience, I wanted to connect these unique locations with a new kind of encounter, introducing two artists who hadn’t really been shown in this context before. Each location has its own teams, too, those who run it and those who care for it, and they were all very engaged and open. It wasn’t just, “We want to rent this space.” It was a conversation, a collaboration. Every decision was made together with them. Both artists needed to have a special site, something new, a place where architecture and live performance could meet.
Paula, how do these different locations affect your performances?
Paula Fitzsimons: It’s interesting hearing how Hema and Robert negotiated those spaces. For me, connecting to what Nigel said about work made live, coming into Vienna, a city I didn’t know so well, it was exciting to respond to these sites. Hema and Robert suggested three of the locations, and each had its own feel and its own demands. The difference between them allowed us to think about different works to make and different ways to work. I wouldn’t even call them “venues”; they’re cultural spaces, and for me, that means a live response.
You arrive, you sense the place, and the work begins from there. I can always bring ideas, I can bring materials, and I can bring my own thoughts in there. Then, really, you get there and it’s on, all these elements talk back.
I am often thinking about other elements as well. Would it be too cold? Would it be raining? And then there are the different types of audiences that inhabit these spaces; they engage in such different ways. For instance, the castle drew a very intentional audience, people who had to make an effort to get there. Whereas the church attracted a public audience—people moving through the city, entering the space, and then suddenly encountering something unexpected. Maybe, as Nigel mentioned before, they were asked to suspend disbelief for a few minutes and engage with something they didn’t fully understand or anticipate.
I think our job as artists is to work with that, to meet that audience in an immediate, live way. Nigel and I have often gone out into landscapes in Ireland and across Europe to make work in response to natural environments. So it’s quite different to come into a cityscape and to respond instead to historically and culturally significant buildings. It’s always a lovely new experience for me.
What role does the audience play in that live moment?
Paula: It’s always very lively, your body in space. I would say one brings an idea and a set of materials, but the nature of performance is that you’re negotiating all of that live, just as we’re negotiating this conversation right now. You bring your thoughts, your materials, and your body—and the audience brings theirs. They are bodies in the room, too.
Sometimes it’s appropriate to move those things around, to shift the dynamics, and to allow the audience to come in and out. In social or cultural contexts, people often come with fixed expectations; when you enter a concert hall and see chairs, you sit, you face forward, and you know what to do. In a performance art context, you can change that.
You can shift people, change their orientation, and they themselves become part of the experience. Some people are open to that; others resist. If you ask someone for their chair, they might simply say “no.” But that’s part of it too; it’s a live negotiation.
Nigel, I noticed on the last performance, you often held eye contact with the audience during the performance. Can you elaborate on that?
Nigel: I was actually thinking of a good answer for your last question about audience and spaces. You know, Jean-Luc Godard once said the three most important things in film are “location, location, and location.” And that’s the perfect answer to where we are, because where you are is always more than what you see. It’s about discovering what lies beneath. For me, meaningful work is not spectacle. It’s easy to make a spectacle or shock people. What’s hard is to make something that touches depth.
Looking at the audience can either show your ego or your humanity, and the difference matters. There’s a lovely thing that happens in my work: sometimes people forget that I’m there. They start talking about me as if I can’t hear them— “Oh, now he’s getting the flowers out.” And I’m sitting right there, listening! That’s when I know something has shifted. For them, I’ve stopped being a person, and I’ve become art. What I try to locate in that moment is quietness, presence—to say, “I’m with you here.” And often it’s the very old people or the children who get it; they don’t have art manners.
When you capture someone’s attention for an hour, something profound is happening. The performance becomes something slow, deep, and human, not just a visual event but a shared sensory experience. We feel the cold, the wind, and the sound; we’re present together. That’s the navigation of human relations, of being a group, of sharing something. And that sharing—maybe it doesn’t belong to the art world at all. Maybe it belongs to the village. I’ve worked in real villages, in different cultures. You start with six people in the square, and twenty minutes later, there are two hundred. Everyone has come out of their houses to see what’s happening. And that’s when you realize art isn’t a corporation; it’s a village.
I also noticed that when the performance ended, something in you seemed to shift.
Nigel: Henry Moore once told a group of us (we were young sculptors visiting his studio), he pointed to a door and said, “There’s the door. You can see it, can’t you?” And then he said, „Most people go to the door, and they think—’I’m going to go through the door. You are artists; look at the door, and then look beyond the door, and then look at the edge of your hand, and then look where you can’t see your hand. That’s where art is.“
And all my life, I’ve reflected on that the whole time. You know, I can see how to go through the door, I can see how to kneel, and I can see all those things. But somewhere just out where I can’t see is where work lies, and that’s how I prepare. I’m in a place where I’m trying to search for something that I don’t know.
That’s beautiful. Hema, could you describe the performance that happened at the Votivkirche from your perspective?
Hema: It was powerful on so many levels, addressing very current topics, on point, and it didn’t need words or text. It was captivating, a unique experience. I didn’t just see it; I felt it, with my heart and my soul. Paula covered the middle of the church, while Nigel worked in the left wing. It was an interaction—subtle, but very present. When Nigel put on the Black Crows Wings and Paula sat in front of the church, not facing away and Nigel facing toward her, it was a breathtaking moment, quiet yet charged.
Nigel, you mentioned before that when working live, it takes a long time afterward to process what’s happened, to really understand if you’ve “done anything at all.” Could you expand on that feeling?
Nigel: I think that’s one of the complexities of live performance. You’re contending with what it means in the moment, and it takes quite a long time afterward to even begin to work out what it was, or if you’ve done anything at all.
You could talk about what you do, but what we’re really talking about is the spiritual territory of longing—the longing to discover something. And discovery, of course, doesn’t exist if it’s already known. If it does exist, then you’ve already done it—so what’s the point of doing it again?
That’s the paradox we live in as artists. What kind of statement do you make while using almost always natural materials in your works? Nigel: I think through a purity of simple things, never changed. My mother was a baker; she used to dust the table, a wooden table, which I still have, with flour when she was making bread. And the flour lifts off the table. It’s still in my guts. Still, you know, I like metal buckets, not plastic. I like natural things.
You’re often engaging with political subjects in your performances. Do you see your work as being in dialogue more with history or with the audience?
Nigel: Both. Culture itself is deeply invested in the problematic. As Robert said beautifully, “It’s a dirty business being alive.” It’s not a polite affair, and I don’t like so much fake politeness. The context we’re living in is very direct. If you’ve been seriously ill, as I have, the question of what that means becomes immediate and profound. Work should be like that. Culture should be like that, a place where the difficulty of living is present. I think we’re living through a serious moment, maybe the end of liberal democracy as we know it. The rise of the right, of monetarist greed—it’s all part of that. And look, a politician lives in a palace. He doesn’t live in a small house on a regular street like I do. So the old binaries of poor versus rich, or first class versus second class, aren’t even the same anymore. The structure itself has shifted.
Do you feel that your work encourages people to reflect on these realities?
Nigel: I really hope so. But I also think it’s a collective effort. There are so many good people doing important things in small ways, and it’s the accumulation of all those small acts that actually changes something. What’s important is staying humble. Not joining the moneyed class, not having personality. Remaining grounded in the condition of being human. I think that’s what moves people, seeing others who are still trying, still struggling, failing, and sometimes succeeding. Whether in art, in music, or in life, it’s all the same kind of movement. And I do feel privileged to work in a place where politics are so present. It’s a small country fighting for its identity, and that struggle feels alive.
I’ve also been in the “wrong place” for a long time, and I’ve learned that being in the wrong place is often the best place to be. You know, all the artists fight to get their work shown in the front halls of the big museums, with the columns and visibility. But for me, there’s always this little room at the back—broken, forgotten, and so much more interesting. That’s where the real history is. That’s where it hurts. And that’s where I want to be, lying in the dust, feeling it.
How do you prepare yourself, mentally or physically, before a performance?
Nigel: I think it’s just life. It’s a constant way of being. You live in it. You stay ready. You have to be able to lose yourself in the moment. To forget yourself. It’s not about you; it’s about what’s happening. I’ve been an athlete, a runner, a builder, and a gardener—and all those things are about getting lost in doing. If you’re always thinking about yourself, you can’t really do the work. And yes, my body is my instrument. You have to look after it. You can’t be drunk the night before; you have to stay clear. When I was preparing for this project, I spent at least ten weeks inside that dreamscape of possibility—trying, changing, doubting, and starting again.
For example, once, in Sweden, I found some berries blown off a bush by the wind—purple berries. I picked them up, put them in my pocket, and later used them in the performance. Suddenly, they became blood. It was extraordinary. A tiny found thing that turned into a revelation. That’s what happens when you stay open.
That’s the same feeling as in a live performance—you’re holding many things at once, and you have to decide: do you pick something up, or do you leave it? That choice, or this hesitation before choice—that’s where it gets interesting.
Robert: Yes, and that brings us into a philosophical space. The question of ethics and aesthetics. If art isn’t connected to ethics, it’s nothing. That’s where art truly exists—in the tension between those two states.
That makes me think about the anxiety of decision-making you mentioned earlier—the tension between acting and not acting.
Robert: Exactly. Managing opportunities is about accepting that anxiety. You can’t take every opportunity. You have to choose—and in choosing, you lose something. That’s always been the case, even in the oldest philosophical and religious traditions. So much of what we do now is about managing lost opportunities. Not the ones we act on, but the ones we let go.
Paula: The curatorial relationship between artist and curator shouldn’t be about management or control. It’s a dynamic relationship. Things come together, they shift, and they respond.
I would love to talk about the authenticity in art and this question of what remains.
Nigel: Yes, I often think about that moment when you look back at something you’ve done, a performance, a work—and you can say to yourself, “That’s okay.” Not “that’s perfect,” not even “that’s successful,” just okay. Because you’re dealing with something very obscure, very abstract: a body crawling through pigment for an hour, rolling, sweating, whatever it is. What matters is that what you left behind was better than nothing. That’s the measure. And “better than not” is a fragile thing, because most things in life are not.
Paula: When I worked in the church recently, that question haunted me. I was responding to this massive structure—a physical, sculptural, and cultural presence. In Ireland, the church has such a particular history; it controlled the lives of people for generations. So to work outside that space was to confront not only the stone but also the mechanism behind it, the system, and the ideology. I tried to shift the temporality of the place. My body heat against the ice—that became the dialogue. Someone asked me if the ice was freezing me, but the answer was no. The temporality had shifted; my body and the ice met each other halfway. The ice warmed. It melted. And that disappearance—the moment when it turned to water and was gone—that was the most interesting moment for me. It’s the same temporality that defines us culturally: we are melting, leaving traces, marking the earth.
Nigel: And symbolically, the ice carries all that weight of temporality. It’s a construction of time itself—frozen, then released. The church’s massive stone forms hold centuries of weight, reaching upward toward the divine, while the ice pulls everything downward—gravity, melting, loss. That’s a powerful reflection.
I’d like to close with the final question, Hema: what comes next? How do you see the continuation of this project?
Hema: On a practical level, there’s already video and photo documentation of the performances. But more importantly, the series will continue. The collaboration with Nigel Rolfe and Paula Fitzsimons is ongoing, and we’re exploring possibilities for new sites, new countries, and new institutional partners. Because ultimately, this project is about truth to power, as Nigel would say.
More about Parole of an Apparition: www.paroleofanapparition.com
Paula Fitzsimons is an Irish visual artist using modes of live performance art, photography, moving image, sound, text, and expanded drawing technique to make time-based works of art. She works with ephemeral, natural, and found materials. Her art practice is informed by movements such as Fluxus, Gutai, and Arte Povera, in a world of things, to convene and orchestrate a weave of material crisis as an art practice without edges. www.paulafitzsimons.com
Nigel Rolfe (UK/IE) is considered one of the pioneering artists of performance art and has been one of its most active and prominent practitioners since the 1970s. From his early works, which he described as “Sculptures in Motion,” to politically engaged performances in the 1980s, movements into photography, drawing, video, and sound, as well performances made live in the landscape, he has profoundly shaped the history of performance art. His work has been exhibited in museums, biennials, and retrospectives around the world. Grounded in the belief that all art- making is a live and vital engagement, Rolfe’s performances involve interactions with raw materials, natural elements such as water, fire, air, and earth, as well as environments, in what he calls “Works Made Live”. www.nigelrolfe.net
Robert Gruber (b. 1979 in Rottenmann) is an Austrian artist and curator based in Vienna. His interdisciplinary practice bridges scenography, visual communication, and music theory, exploring the relationship between space, perception, and narrative construction. Gruber has exhibited in renowned institutions such as the 21er Haus and the Neue Galerie Graz, among others. In addition to his artistic work, he develops and curates projects that engage with collaborative, site-specific, and cross-disciplinary approaches. www.robertgruber.net
gottrekorder e.v. is an international association of artists based in Graz and Vienna (Austria) founded in 2002. Since 2015, gottrekorder has curated numerous art exhibitions and collaborative projects, including visual arts, sound, music, literature, installation, and performance, with both Austrian and international artists. www.gottrekorder.com
HM Communication was founded by Hema Makwana and is based in Vienna/Austria. For the past fifteen-plus years, Hema and her team have been trusted and close advisors to collectors, providing personal and bespoke collection management services, and working directly with clients on the implementation of ideas primarily in the DACH region and the UK. Independently, HM Communication is also a supportive companion for contemporary artists and creatives from various fields. Hema brings exceptional ideas to life by guiding and assisting the artists and creatives in expanding their careers. www.hmcommunication.eu