dear reader,

belatedly, elatedly, janus roth presents their interview with artist and photographer maansi jain, procured in the long wake of her show paranoia that was on at das gift’s giftraum from nov 2, 2018 - nov 11 2018, and in case you definitely missed it or never even heard of it in the first place, you can catch up now courtesy of kunsterkunsterlin who so graciously accepted this piece. skim or browse to discover what happened at the opening and what’s next for this young artist.

(interview starts)

hi maansi

hi janus

J: so your show is over and has been since november 11th if i’m not mistaken.

M: yeah that’s right. That was the day it closed and the day the cops were called bc the sound installation was too loud and it was also the day i finally got the stain out of the wall.

J: climactic last day! so annoying how people are always calling the cops. i mean can’t we get along in this life without involving ACAB wannabies ? It’s pathetic. but it does make for interesting journalism. at least i hope this interview will be interesting. So since you’re basically a young, unknown, person at this point in your so-called art career, can you please tell our readers who you claim to be, how you chose photography as a medium and, sometimes we like to pretend everyone is an imbecile, so just humor us and describe your work to someone who encounters it for the first time?

M:  well, my mother took my sister and i to art museums and airports at approximately equal frequencies when we were kids so both became second homes all over the world (we moved a lot) and my dad used to make abstract art around the house out of misc. homewares and trash like those free AOL cds (America online for the uninitiated) that would come free in the mail, so i’ve been actively interested in making “art” since i was about 11. i first started drawing actually because my little sister did it and my whole family oohed and ahhhed over it and i was jealous and thought, i can do that too! but then i guess i kept trying to win people’s approval through art and here i am today, talking to trolls like you, explaining myself…. this really should have gone on your podcast bc i fear our sarcasm will be lost on paper… you could say, i fell in love with making as a child and since then i’ve been tinkering in some form or another. when i first started calling myself an artist (shoutout to ppl who refuse to call themselves anything at all i wish I longed for ur humility but I am too human), i started with digital photos because the start up cost was 0.

also, i figured photography would give me access to the world while i waited for my immaturity to wear off, because i had this idea that making stupid sculpture, which was always an attractive option, was worse than making stupid photography. i think realistically, artists have to just be okay with making stupidity in general for awhile, if not forever… so i’m working on that and my pictures and work are basically a reflection of this effort at trying to become less unconsidered while not drowning in self seriousness, please wish me luck.

J: Right, right, you’re developing as an artist. That’s nice and we, as your audience and critics, do appreciate that. Can you say what it was that began this interest in distortion you have in your photographic work? It’s not exactly revolutionary is it…Dali comes to mind, so does the architecture of that Spanish guy, his work is in Barcelona—

M: Gaudi?

J: Yeah, exactly… not to mention even that Dazed clickbait, Kylie Jenner with AI make up, kinda reminds me of your whole thing. What do you have to say about this and why is the warp mafia growing faster than youtube’s algorithm radicalizes teens?


M: yeah, i think as a tumblr teen i once saved a jim jarmusch quote that was like “nothing is original, you copy and edit and borrow blah blah…” so you can glean a reply from my paraphrase right? like, am i in good company or are we all surfing a trend wave, and if we didn’t well, there would be someone else ready and waiting in the wings, right…? another relevant fact in this discussion is that things like the concept of 0 and how to find the circumference of a circle were discovered separately and in different ways all over the globe. so as a diaspora kid in the west, i have the privilege of knowing in my blood that euclid wasn’t the only one who got geometry and so i’m not the only one who feels drawn to the warp, clearly.  

i will say, my version of finding the warp starts in brooklyn on my friends couch. he has one of these convex mirrors on the wall where the tv should have been. he graciously let me sleep in front of this mirror for a month, and a distorted seed was planted in my subconscious i think.. i decided to digitally manipulate my analog images because… with so many mediums in circulation, being an analog purist felt wrong to me, whereas playing with film scans on the computer felt like an intuitive extension of play; I’m playing with the tools i have, mixing together a cocktail of tropes i have access to and have come across in my unscientific yet ethnographically inspired visual research. at the moment these are the results. 

i kind of love that the warp is spreading but i don’t think everyone is using it the same way… also, as i was developing the post production technique, i was going through massive estrogen and progesterone fluctuations that caused pulsing waves of depression; these hormones affect the same part of the brain as the chemicals affected by SSRIs (the common anti-depressant genre of pill) and the second iteration of the warp, (which was manually done in photoshop whereas the first iteration happened in lightroom)  came to symbolize this chemical fluctuation that causes such a dramatic shift in perception, memory, and general emotional state when it is manipulated, whether naturally or medically. 

but i mean, does it  matter to the audience that this was part of the genesis for me? i’m not really sure. some friends have said the warped images look scary or gave them a feeling of paranoia.. and i think that was the mood i was in and in a way i don’t think the photos look weird at all.. i only recently realized about Dali and i did like his paintings a lot as a kid… i find it kinda scary that i may have subconsciously cannibalized a part of his work but it was an accident and (“what is intellectual property say those outside the Art Market”) and he’s dead and so, for all of these reasons, oh well? 


J: Fair enough. I mean some people even say Balenciaga actually copied you when they posted their first warped photo in 2018. (which makes sense as they regularly rip off artists. And now the likes of Burberry, Boiler Room, and an infinite legion of warp fans have joined on instagram. Whatever. Trends are trends, and they come and go. I certainly think you have staying power beyond this nice photo-gimmick you’re working. What do you find attractive about working in the warp? Does it seem easier to see things through an already warped lens? Do you find your images more honest when they've gone through the filter?

M: actually the lens is not warped. i don’t know if any honest images exist. do any honest people? the problem seems to be that humans are best at lying to themselves and it’s half a defense mechanism or survival tool and half an impediment to engaging with “reality” and perhaps this is what i’m gesturing towards with the warp


J: Aha, yes, I have always found work which makes me think about my own complicity in my own suffering very inspiring. That’s actually why I liked the Paranoia show so much, because getting to see if the audience participated or not was so fun and i also enjoyed getting a little dirty. I know you invited friends to be influencer painters in the show but can you tell me, which artists practicing out of Berlin do you find compelling at the moment?

M: yes, ultimately we are complicit in our own lives, aren’t we? if nowhere else? … to answer your question. i’d say, geovanna gonzalez and claude eigan are two of my favorite artists working out of berlin at the moment. i find their work aesthetically and conceptually compelling. 

somewhat recently claude presented 66 sculptures at motto berlin made in collaboration with alizée lenox and jake kent titled You must give your mind to all the faces that used funnels to symbolize—as i understood it—a kind of madness. the red clay works were all hand molded with a unique expression. i found looking at all the different emotions was like a scavenger hunt; as i’m a mere mortal, i was basically looking for my own face. the integration of “feelings” is occasionally disdained by an art world that lauds form over content, which is better for making money, but not necessarily more interesting. claude’s work juxtaposes a balance between dynamic form and moving content in a fresh way.

geovanna gonzalez’s collaboration with photographer anastasia muna at erratum gallery in berlin I’m Missing More Than Just Your Body was similarly marking and i’m actually curating a show with esben holk for the end of august (25th to be exact!) that’ll feature some of this work.  A neon glow coated the sculptures whose cheeky titles like Ain’t Gotta Be My Lover For You To Call Me Baby go with distorted pairs of acrylic glass. you get to fill in your own blanks in the narrative and the titles of the works feel like a whispered note from the artist, gently guiding the viewer’s daydream.

J: Ah yes, their work rings a bell. so let’s get back to the original point, which was actually to have a dialectic about your show paranoia, which is an interactive installation as I understand it? and, you're even holding the event in a place called poison which is clever and worrying but I do enjoy when a venue’s name can be relevant to work shown inside it. Can you tell us about the show?

M: so lately, i’ve been interested in false binaries; and in how distortions in perception—and the word paranoia is sort of a place holder for this idea as it relates to fear—affect human behavior at large. the resurgence of nationalistic right wing movements around the world scares the shit out of me in a very personal way and yet i try to understand their motivation, what our humanity may have in common; which seems largely to do with fear of the perceived other. i wondered if i could parse through some parts of how a fear is created, visually and conceptually through the works in this show.

the main space is called “giftraum” which means poison room and the sound piece that’s in the hallway was inspired by a sign that used to be in the bar’s bathroom—warning patrons against pickpockets. the sound installation is oppressive and loud, on loop, warning listeners to beware! as they shuffle into the main space.

as you know, during the opening, i invited friends and colleagues from berlin’s art community to participate as “influencer painters” to motivate the crowd to join in the painting of this giant red indian burlap stretched across wooden canvas stretchers. (Nika Fontaine, Alice Jones, Margaret Kollmer, Divina Kuan, Nathan Ma, Turiya Maddireddi, Anastasia Muna, Alexander Norton, Alexander Ost, Linnea Palmestål ) the only color i gave everyone was various shades of red, which actually is a reference to joseph albers’ homage to the square in red:  he wrote in Interaction of Color in the sixties: “If one says “Red” (the name of a color) and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different." which i really enjoyed because during the show no one seemed to fight over which red they got to paint with as far as i could tell…


J: Yeah, the mood was pretty light for a show about any kind of fear! Although, some people seemed to be kind of intimidated by the mess. I remember you mentioning the mirror when we talked about the messiness. You're extending your warped aesthetic to accommodate paranoia via a distorted surveillance mirror. What is the importance of this particular element, since it'll be a witness to the whole activity? 


M: well yeah, i sort of figured not everyone would want to get involved with the drama of the red paint…so the mirror acts as an interpretative surface for the interactive painting and was meant to be an invitation to far-sighted viewers. titled “(public safety/visual aid),” the mirror is an anchor point between the installation at das Gift and the satellite installation at ex-girlfriend where i presented a sculpture and the conceptual photography that led up to paranoia; i refashioned the relationship between das Gift and exgirlfriend as a meditation on paranoia itself.


J: Damn, girl, that’s pretty funny! I wonder if anyone got that. I certainly didn’t until I read the press text you wrote. Anyway, we need to wrap it up so, management is requiring this banal-as-fuck question, what's the most important thing for you about being an artist? and because that wasn’t enough, can you especially explain how it feels inside your heart or brain or body when you use different mediums to express yourself?


M: frankly, superlatives are stressing me out lately, so i’ll talk around your question. with paranoia in particular, i wanted to try to make a show about fear that wasn’t scary to experience but had stolen visual cues from “frightening”. i wanted to reassemble the blood red visual and the burlap and the safety mirror and this warning from the toilet about pickpockets and turn all these elements into a communal meditation on paranoia that took the form of a paint party on a friday night.

id say im not going out on a limb when i say that opening night wasn’t particularly frightening (i think?) and the mood was jovial as you can see in the photos and for me that was really satisfying. at the same time, the bar was afraid there would be red paint everywhere (and they weren’t wrong as some dude did take it upon himself to spray the wall) and not everyone in the audience was as interested in getting stained themselves. as to your question about using different mediums… i find working in an interdisciplinary fashion is a roomier way of thinking. the relationship between content and form is reciprocal and to be a human is to live and communicate with one another through an infinite number of mediums. why should an artist’s trajectory through mediums be any different than any other human navigating this planet? we must all deal with the mediums through which the world views us, whether they be chosen or projected onto us by an unjust and fearful society. i suppose this time i left the photography to my audience and to sarah little who shot the opening with me. it was interesting to relinquish the photographic medium during the opening as i definitely use cameras to cover up my own fear, so in a way letting go of that crutch let me get in touch with my own social anxiety / experience the exploration of paranoia in a more present manner.

J: As we and our readers are always looking for inspiration, and nothing does it quite like bite sized, pithy quotes and because, let’s leave paranoia in 2018 where you put it…if you could sum up your 2018 in a single thought, phrase, idea or quote, what would it be?

J: Wow, sounds like you had some shit going on. I hope you managed to put the fires out. Can you also tell us before you go, what do you have planned next?

M: lol, i know right! i think it was just a quarter life crisis, check in with me again in a few years and hopefully i won’t be dead yet and will have put out lots of fires. i also got into this technique of …well, in 2020 i’ll be releasing some work that involves an institution that has occupied a lot of my visual environment in east berlin but that i have never personally visited (though others in my family have). It is a place that is close to my heart, aesthetically and conceptually speaking. i’m talking about Matrix, the club. late night drunk strolls were my favorite way to encounter the Matrix club poster, as it exists in the wild, usually in a bi-color font-heavy and with a dare i say, appealing simplicity. though i have only been in this city about one-third of the lifetime of Matrix Club, i have finally procured a host institution, ex-girlfriend, that was amenable to my matrix inspired art work and am very excited to describe my favorite type of leaf (the advertising poster) via the matrix metaphor. if this wasn’t clear enough, all i can say for now is stay tuned and keep your ears n eyes n feet peeled for my show SUBJECT TO CHANGE coming in may 2020 to exgirlfriend berlin.

Janus roth is a fictional character living and working in the digital realm. You can see their tweets here

Photos courtesy Sarah Little and Maansi Jain