(60) Dialogue with Charlotte HOCHMAN –
What is interstitial creation?
Interstitial creation is an art form that uses interstices as its raw material. Interstices are the spaces between things. They lie between solid ground ; that is, between certainties, forms of knowledge and experience tamed by analysis and by categorization, which we tend to regard as objective and absolute truths about the world we perceive. By defining interstices as a territory, interstitial creation invites us to experience the texture of reality without a fixed point of view.
Interstitial creation focuses solely on the interstices: learning to detect and inhabit them, to coexist with them, to create in relation to them, and to observe new types of knowledge that may take shape from within them.
The aim is to give rise to new forms of life by contemplating the spaces between classified forms of reality. We need this decentering, these embodied experiences, in order to become inhabited by new imaginations and birth new stories that move beyond the exhausted reality of our times.
Do you think this has any real value, or is it just another hazy artistic concept, recycling the same forms of art that increasingly flood us?
Interstitial creation bears no resemblance to the types of art that flood the market, because it is not a tool for art production. The very idea of producing art in a world saturated by production, both of ideas and of objects, makes no sense in interstitial terms.
Only our shifting relationship with the interstices matters—everything else is secondary. The aim is the exploration in itself. Interstitial creation is a state of heightened awareness, a way of tuning in to reality without dominating it.
In practice, any form of exploration, be it through conventionally defined “art practices” such as dance, film or performance can be present in interstitial creation – as can be sciences such as mathematics, neurosciences or astrophysics, or humanities such as philosophy, poetry or history. The point is, interstitial creation is not defined by the form we give to our exploration, it is defined by the act of inhabiting the interstices themselves. That is both the material and the outcome.
Interstitial creation is an artform which aims to transform the world of art, not mimic it. The idea of artwork or production is left behind as a goal. Interstitial creation always takes place between solid grounds- and disciplines and artforms are solid ground indeed. By nature, it is liberated from their diktat. It is indisciplinary.
Not only can interstitial creation not invade us, it also cannot be invaded ; there lies its strength. Because in trying to invade it, we create solid ground, and by definition, its interstitiality escapes us. We can only situate ourselves within it.
What is your profession?
I am an interstitial artist. Like clay for medieval sculptors, I use interstices as my raw material.
Interstitial artists have three touchstones.
First, we create by being rather than by doing ; we do not define ourselves through a performative logic, but focus on a state that then determines our work.
Second, we do not make occasional forays from solid ground into interstices but reside long-term in the in-between – not as a choice but as a fact.
Finally, we do not settle with dwelling in the interstices but aim to create paths for others towards and through them. Paths which remain, by their nature, untamed.
In your view, what’s at stake?
The future of our imaginations is at stake. So it’s a matter of survival.
If we want to support all forms of life, we must find answers to these questions: how do we honor what escapes us? Do we need to control in order to protect?
Interstitial creation calls us to imagine an interstitial jurisprudence—to learn how to uphold rights for what eludes us.
Interstices are subtle alterations in the texture of reality ; detecting them calls on all our senses. Interstitial creation in practice is the act of perceiving and inhabiting these interstices, these minuscule modifications of perception in the material world. That is exactly what we need in order to open ourselves to new forms of imagination and welcome other possible futures.
An interstice is not a category; it exists only on its own terms, and can only be perceived through our own singularity, if we enter a state of radical awareness.
To inhabit the interstices today is to be ready to be inhabited by what may come, without being defined by our past as a species which, brilliant as it may be, is also dominating and devastating towards other life forms.
Can interstitial creation help free art from elitism and make it democratic?
Anything can be freed by its own borders, by its outermost edges that reach beyond itself. Interstitial creation exists at the threshold of contemporary art; it exists only in the passage, never in the center. It cannot exist in the middle of a fenced-in, regulated, calculated territory like the current art world.
Questions of status, market value or external validation do not exist in the interstices ; these are problems of solid ground. In that sense, interstitial creation can make art radically accessible, because fixed criteria have no hold there.
Radical hybridization and perpetual movement are essential to interstitial creation, and they also evade the mechanisms that make art elitist.
In your opinion, what is the most serious problem in art today?
First and foremost, the art market ; the problem is present in the term itself. That human creativity should be a market is absurd, and it spawns an array of issues.
One of them is that themes, approaches and forms are regulated by institutional players. By being in charge of definitions, priorities and resources that support artists, the market shapes the creativity of an era – at least in its visible, accessible form.
This, in turn, encourages the reproduction of what has already been done in order to control risk, and hinders the possibility of true renewal in our ways of creating. As a result, there is a feeling that our imagination is getting recycled rather than sprouting in entirely new directions.
We need to open ourselves to radical risk-taking in line with all forms of life in order to inhabit the world differently. This exploration can only happen if artists themselves decide what qualifies as art, and that institutions follow. ENDA (National Art School of Paris), and the movement of invisual artists, are spearheaders in this respect. But overall, we are still far from this dynamic.
Is there still hope for artists who no longer have any control over the definition of art?
Of course there is always hope, because life and art are constantly becoming. We need to come back to an existential definition of art—not as an action, a performance or production, but a state of being that is radical in what it enables.
I seek an art that is simple and immediate, a direct reflection of my way of inhabiting the world, in a way that a child could fully understand beyond words. This desire to transmit is at the heart of my work, and it calls for new forms.
I seek a non-performative art, in full immersion with reality ; an art that doesn’t separate me from a reality that is considered mundane, in order to “produce”. An art that doesn’t pull me away from the present moment.
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Photo : Charlotte Hochman, interstitial artist, founder and director of ce-ci, Centre of Interstitial Creation, realized as the session project at ENDA (National art school of Paris). – Website: www.ce-ci.fr – Instagram : @creation_interstitielle
Photo credit: Michele Caleffi, 2024