Mire Lee’s kinetic installations are noisy. They emit distinct smells. They drip and turn, resembling unwieldy bodies or disassembled body parts. They are not alive, but nonetheless appear to possess something akin to agency. Made from found machine parts connected to motors, cement mixers, PVC hoses, silicone, glycerin, and discarded car oil, among other materials, Lee’s oeuvre has a distinct industrial feel. Yet if we think of factories as places of production, and bodies as reproductive entities, Lee’s works also decidedly resist any imperative to functionality.
Incorporating references to pornography, scatology, and BDSM with theories of language and speech, Lee contends with the boundaries of the sayable. Experiences with depression led Lee to an interest in the limits of communication, in entities that cannot or do not want to speak, like her rumbling and turning machines. In her hands, poetry serves as a conduit for transgression, where words flow out without regard for grammar or convention, like other kinds of bodily discharge. Lee’s machines, then, befittingly spit out inorganic matter resembling such fluids, while taking the shape of the letter O to resemble a sphincter.
In this cybernetic moment of simultaneous biological-technological optimization and ecological collapse, Lee’s works occupy the liminal space between breakdown and renewal. In an overheated loop, her works either cannibalize or collapse back in on themselves, defying normative notions of forward and upward movement to remain ambiguously unresolved.
Stefanie Hessler: I would love to know what you’re dreaming. Did you have any dreams last night? Do they ever form part of your work?
Mire Lee: When I’m in production or very stressed, I transform into the sculpture that I’m working on. There are typically repetitive, small actions that I’m doing, like brushing silicone to build a sculpture. And that leads me to thinking I’m this shape—this thing— while I’m sleeping. It’s not really a dream, but similar to lucid dreaming.
SH: I wanted to ask you that because there’s this surreal, dreamlike, sci-fi quality to a lot of your work. It’s interesting that you dream about the work and imagine yourself as the body of the sculptures.
ML: Yeah, I think it’s because my process is heavily physical. If I’ve done something repeatedly, the labor stays with me and gets into my dreams. It’s similar to Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis—because I’m in bed and immobile when this happens.
SH: That’s fascinating because I always think of your sculptures as having so much agency. They do so many things—they turn and they’re propelled by a motor. They drip and splash. They emit a smell. They’re moving, living, loud, noisy. They change over the course of an exhibition. The repetitive movement of the motor itself is somewhat limited, but you can’t entirely control what they’re doing and how they change.
ML Yeah, totally. I use very low-tech, simple, mechanical operations. They deteriorate, which makes their movement become less and less fluent because of the accumulation of liquid or simply because so much time has passed.
SHI: remember your exhibition at Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in Frankfurt, where the works carried the distinct smell of a construction site. It was a very visceral experience. You worked with glycerin to create liquids that look like blood. Could you speak more to how you create work with this physicality that feels so alive, but isn’t?
ML: I have always had some affection or inclination toward industrial material. At MMK, I did use glycerin, but also black liquids from discarded car oil. My affection is linked somehow to dreams of industrialism or futurism. It’s not that I support these dreams, but I love them for their mess and failure.
When it comes to the usage of liquids, pigment, or organic substances that can be used in a functional and visual way, I like to overdo it. I apply a lot because although I always try to make things work, I also really like losing control over the reactions between the materials. It has something to do with how I work. I tend to come up with ideas that are more ambitious than what I can realistically accomplish. At first, I think it’s possible, but as the process goes on, I realize it’s too much.
Through that process, I got addicted to seeing things that were not what I intended to see. I like it when things become wild or dirty. It alarms or shocks me. At first, I think it’s going totally wrong. But then, later, I realize that this is bigger than my intent. There’s an aliveness in the relationship between me and my object or the environment I created. I’m its servant; I work in service of this thing. It governs me because it becomes something that I don’t have full control over.
I really enjoy this feeling because with art, I always wonder, What am I doing? Am I creating things to please or fit in or get more opportunities? I want my work to impress. But when it turns out uglier than I imagined, these moments of failure make me feel good.
SH: I like this idea of creating something that you then serve or lose control over. It reminds me of the references to BDSM in some of your work. I wonder if you could talk a bit more about that, or the video with the sex worker in your MMK exhibition, for example.
ML: I’m generally quite envious of BDSM practitioners, especially ones like Veronica Moser. She was a scatology specialist. I am envious of the fact that she crossed the line, and that we don’t have any societal language to contain what she did.
SH: What you just mentioned about how BDSM can’t be contained within language is fascinating, especially since I know that language is really important for your work and poetry.
ML:The poems I sent you by Kim Eon Hee I like for the same reason, actually. With my art, I always have a desire to make something that goes beyond form, that cannot be contained within its form. I feel a lot of limitations because I have a taste for formalism and, at the end of the day, my work is formalistic. If what you’re doing is really that unconventional, you cannot be contained. You wouldn’t be making things that can be shared with general audiences.
I am super interested in the unspeakable. This is why I’m interested in the anus, or genitals more generally. I had a phase where I was also very into the ends of amputated limbs that heal into a round shape. With hands, you can do so many things, like shaking them. But when you meet people without hands, what do you do? So many people, as well as nonhuman beings, don’t have the means to speak or communicate, at least not in normative terms. You shouldn’t approach them with your typical means of communication. It’s not going to work, and it doesn’t make sense.
As an example, when you’re experiencing deep depression, there is no language to explain it and no way to communicate it to another person. It’s pointless because you’re totally sealed in it. But I also see depression as clarity of mind. There’s no point in talking, letting other people know how you feel, or doing anything productive. Everything is meaningless, and you are the only holder of this truth. I’m generally interested in different entities that cannot or don’t want to talk.
—Stefanie Hessler
