How did you get into art?

My parents gave me this little box of quality grease-markers (I still have the box somewhere, it is made out of metal and has a pelican on it). In kindergarten, when all the other kids would have started drawing stick-people, I was still drawing “krimskrams”, mad non figurative colourful mess. The people working there notified my parents that “it was about time that I started drawing things that actually looked like something”. This led to the raising of voices and angry phone calls. I always had a very supportive family. But the pressure put upon me by the kindergarten troubled me. Then one day my mom took me to see Per Kirkeby, and with a song in my heart and all the joy of a five year old I yelled “look! All he draws is mess as well!”

How do you get inspiration for the pieces you produce?

I try to walk through the world awake. I think inspiration is a hard term to define, since it is found in everything that surrounds us. I think it is about focus, what you learn and chose to aim your eyes at, how you perceive and interact with the world. Drawing is for me a way of visual orientation and processing. But the inspiration to “go and keep going” comes from all things. The beautiful, brutal, grim, devastating, fascinating, all.

What has been your best creation to date?

It must be a collaboration. In context of the project called “city of names” in Berlin 2005, my friend, freaksgallery and me build a series of mobile multifunctional barricades. Among them was a fully functional kitchen build out of found wood and stolen shopping trolleys (taking a metal saw to those things actually made out the whole “mobile” part..)one of them was a garden, one was a foldable sentence, one of them you could even sleep inside. The whole thing was such a crazy beautiful summer, trying to redefine the terminology of public playgrounds, not wondering if there would ever be time to sleep, shave and shower.

Right now im dreaming up plans for a 20x20 meter pop-up-book and contemplating if I should install a birdhouse outside the window im looking through right now.

How much do you think hype affects the public perception of what good art is?

I think we live in a hype-culture, where extremely high paced passing of what is “in” or “good” is largely defined through cash-flow. If it cant be bought or sold it might as well not exist. But this is a dead culture, it cannot survive on its own, so it feeds on those things that breaks the frame. The process of how something beautifully free and innovative is made wing-shot, harmless and sellable is really very frightening and in the long run not sustainable at all.

But I think that history also proves that the things that last was not necessarily the things that thrived on a hype in their time.

Last CD you bought/downloaded/shoplifted?

Uh, got two at the same time, “Songs Ohia, the lioness” and “the Sword, Age of winters”

How did you feel when you realised that art could make you some money?

Frightened and fascinated.

Why do so many people spend money on music yet so few buy art?

Music and art, is there a difference between the two? Oh and they are both crazy industries, and they can both be for free and underground, and people spend money on the silliest of things anyway, like, haircuts and tourist guides.

How is your local art scene?

Interesting enough, but sadly kinda silent.

What makes you happy?

Most things that doesn't make me sad, and even some of those that do.

What makes you sad?

Westernised-disneyland-death-culture, collective loneliness, organized religion, global warming and bureaucracy.

What's it like to be interviewed?

Fine thankyouverymuch, what's it like to be an interviewer?

Sex, drugs or rock n roll?

How about: sex, tab-water and cigarettes?

Last book you read?

Jack Kerouac's “book of blues”. Its like sketches, rants, rhythms, poems and pieces, all put together in the order of a set number of bars like in a jazz-blues chorus. William Burroughs is quoted in the introduction saying something that sums up a lot of things for me: “Kerouac is a writer. That is, he wrote. Many people who call themselves writers and have their names on books are not writers and they cant write- the difference being a bullfighter who fights a bull is different from the bullshitter who makes passes with no bull there. the writer has been there or he cant write about it…”

What's your favourite soup?

Hokkaido and mint leaves.

Tell us a secret?

They are watching you.

Quote us your favourite song lyric?

relationships of ownership they whisper in the wings/ to those condemned to act accordingly and wait for succeeding kings/ and I try to harmonize with songs the lonesome sparrow sings/ there are no kings inside the gates of eden.”

Or

“I know which way the wind blows and how to load a tech up…”

Is there a downside to being so talented?

To discuss this we would first have to jump to the conclusion that I am “so talented”. Lets not do that. Its all about hard work.

Ask yourself (and answer) a question?

Q: what makes one person so uniquely different from another person?

A: roughly two meters worth of DNA squeezed into every cell of their body.

What's your worst habit?

Outspoken paranoia.

Any close encounters with the law?

For all those who have little faith in the status quo, the law will present a dangerous obstacle. So remember to keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

What else do you like other than art?

Fireworks and rooftops. Old radio transmitters and the way that raincoats work. Things that “go bump in the night”.

Any regrets?

Regret is such a funny thing. You can do it all your life, hell you can build your life on it. You can regret the things you did do and the things that you didn't. I think that if we try to be conscious and aware of the existence of others and ourselves in time and the world then we wouldn't have to regret so much…

Final thoughts?

Its like they say: “buy the ticket take the ride and the only wrong we can do is doing nothing at all”.

Or something like that anyway.

Interview - Mr. Burrows 13/11/07