MP: How? Just because you met your future wife, you suddenly knew exactly what you wanted?

JL: It's hard to explain. Things don't work with one woman and do with another - mine. She's like a catalyst. Through talking, through perspectives on the world, I suddenly had a goal. And one with a concrete shape, namely concentrating on painting and taking a chance on it. I had a lot of support from Uschi, in a psychological sense. The old "you can't do that, you have to get a real job," was normal in the village where I grew up. You can take time out, but then you have to get to work, find a regular job that people understand!

MP: How did you get out of Basle?

JL: Simple: I just stopped going (laughs). I had a studio at home and worked there. There was a little house on my family's property, the fridge was always full, and Uschi had a few part-time jobs-and that was enough. The idea of going to Vienna came from my new neighbor, an art collector. He said that what I was doing was "Vienna School." I didn't know what "Vienna School" was supposed to mean. So we bought a little DuMont encyclopedia of Fantastic Realism. And look at that, it really was quite similar. Then, it became clear that I had to go to Vienna. Because I really wanted to study and progress beyond being an amateur. I taught myself everything up to a certain point, but there came a time when that wasn't enough any more.

MP: They don't take everybody at the Academy. How did that work out?

JL: That was Uschi again. When she gets a plan in her head, then it just happens. She flew to Vienna before me. It was in the early 80s, she booked one of those "Basle-Vienna-Basle plus three nights of accommodation" deals. And in those three days, she found us an apartment and set up an appointment at the Academy. Then we moved to Vienna, got furniture for the apartment and were then broke except for eight dollars.

MP: What did you do with the money?

JL: We saw "The Man who Fell to Earth" with David Bowie. And started looking for jobs: Uschi worked part-time as a nanny and I worked weekends at a secondhand junk dealer. Clearing out apartments and stuff like that. We both worked for about minimum wage, so we didn't get rich. But as a result, I got to know the city extremely well.

MP: But how did things work out at the Academy?

JL: I already had an appointment. When I went to it, I didn't go inside because I was scared. I stood around outside, in front of the door, in this little park and smoked like a fiend. With short hair, a New Wave haircut, and one of those horrible parkas. So Uschi grabbed the portfolio with my works and went inside. We wanted to see Professor Hausner and by chance, he was there, though he normally shows up only once every five or six weeks. But he was there that day, she showed him my stuff and he just said, "He's in." Without a test. That was possible at the time, the professors were classic dictators. So suddenly, I was registered at the Academy of Fine Arts in the master class taught by Professor Rudolf Hausner. And I did that for 12 semesters.

MP: Later, you started doing album covers. Was that just a sideline for you?

JL: Music has always been important, and I wanted to work in that area throughout my time at the Academy. It wasn't until Metal that the look was really right for me. It was the wave I had been waiting for - it was perfect for my things. And so, the 80s came to an end: The bands were there and they wanted someone and I could do it.

MP: But why did they come to you?

JL: I wrote to a few companies. That's how it all started with Mekong. That lead to my work with Rage. To be specific, Peavy (Peter Wagner) found my drafts under Hubert's couch (Ralph Hubert, the Mekong mastermind). I then made record covers for bands like Speed Limit, Blind Petition, Pyracanda, Ravenous, Destruction, Protector, Rage and Mekong Delta. That was just one aspect of art which I always wanted to include. And I want to continue doing it.

MP: And your work method has changed: You began to do things with sculpture.

JL: At some point, I got away from this "ism," meaning Fantastic Realism. Because it bored me. I began to concentrate on what I saw and felt. And the result was the sculptures. The first ones were very archaic-looking. I used old textiles, metal, wood and natural materials such as hair and finger- and toenails. They were large dolls in the broadest sense.

MP: Are apartments safer with your dolls because a burglar would get a heart attack?

JL: Could be. They aren't really very cuddly. But they were quite difficult to sell. It wasn't a question of money, but they hit a certain nerve. And lots of people want nothing to do with them. They have something to do with personal transience and death - but a final one, not romantic. And possibly with a weird kind of undead existence, which is even worse.

MP: Marilyn Manson has used your dolls, which was the source of additional inspiration. How did that happen?

JL: Once upon a summer... (laughs) Firstly, I was impressed by his music. And then, there was the interview with Ms. Spitra, who gave him a video which showed some of my works. He liked it, and then he called up and wanted them for a video ("Long Hard Road Out Of Hell"). That's how it all started. I sent him five dolls, but didn't get paid anything for them because I didn't ask for any money other than for expenses like shipping and insurance. I wanted them to be in the video. It was so much better that way because I could promote my own website and had an enormous number of hits as a result.

MP: Don't you throw away your things when you put them on the Web for free?

JL: That's really a matter of opinion. There's the conventional art market with galleries and a few people who can afford to buy the works. That's too small for me, not really interesting, and it's completely outdated in my opinion. And I'm no longer interested in the individual who can lay out, for example, 150,000 schillings*) for one of my works. I'd rather sell a thousand posters of the same thing for 150 schillings. In other words, no more elitism, but art for everybody. And the Internet is just the medium I was waiting for.

MP: What is there to see on your website?

JL: A thoroughly choreographed website. Not an online gallery, but a story in which the entire design is coordinated and everything was done by me: choreography, artworks, navigation, content, design, everything. The "new" luetke.com3.0 went online in late January. It has a completely new concept and has been coordinated with the art book ("Posthuman"), which will come out early in March. Actually, the book is mirrored by the website. This is primarily a cross section of my work, with cover art and pictures. There is a separate Manson department of ten double pages with the figure of Marilyn Manson, which has been worked into my sculptures. But that's the end of my work with Manson. That reached a climax in my book. And an online shop is coming where all the merchandise can be ordered.

MP: How difficult is it, being creative on the one hand and a businessman on the other so that you can market yourself. Don't you need a manager for that?

JL: I still have the same one: my wife Uschi. She does all that and the conceptual work, too. I take care of the artistic side, such as combining the world of Marilyn Manson and the world of Joachim Luetke, that's what I do. But the optimum realization, that's what she does. And that has always worked out fine.

MP: What's your next project?

JL: It's called "Book Of Days" and is also something for the Web which should come out later as a CD-ROM and a paperback. This is a countdown from the year 2000 to the year 2001, to the real beginning of the new millennium. That means a story for each day, a total of 365 [trans. note: This has apparently been corrected so that there will be something on Feb. 29th.]. They will be written by the Scottish horror author Richard Wright, and I will do the visual work. Sooner or later, "Necropolis - City of the Death" will also be on the Net. We'll develop a city, and everybody that lives there is dead. That's their problem, because all fears will be different. Though there will be sickness, decay and pain, there will be no more death, no redemption....

MP: Where does your fascination, your close tie to horror come from? I get the shivers when I think of your video collection!

JL: I don't just have the blood-and-gore program. That's what I watch instead of cartoons. (grins) That's just as funny to me... But real horror is created in a different way. Things like "The Haunting of Hill House" are horror in my opinion. That's the story of an extremely grotesque house where no one can live. And one day, a scientist moves in with three people who are extremely sensitive, who can feel "things." The story deals with their reactions to phenomena. And that is so gruesome, more than you can imagine. It's an invisible, a psychological horror. It's the same old story in the horror genre: Show the monster, or don't show it. Splatter movies show the monster according to the principle "look, here it is." When I don't show the monster, it exists in your imagination only - and that's much scarier than anything you can show people.

MP: What kind of music did you listen to in the beginning?

JL: Queen! I ran around the school playground and told everybody "that's the mega-act of the future." And I was an extreme Glam Rock fan, like Slade, Sweet, T-Rex. I ran around with a feather boa and had the first pair of bell-bottoms. And of course Alice Cooper - that was the first time the horror thing popped up. Then the Sex Pistols. After that, my taste didn't really have a direction. Though there were bands like Sisters of Mercy, the 80s were otherwise dead in my opinion. There were attempts, such as Die Krupps, DAF and the Fehlfarben, but that soon dried up because of this "fun" culture. The things I was really hungry for, though I didn't know about them, were Judas Priest and so on. I first heard them when I started to get away from the whole Academy crowd. Then came Heavy Metal. Although there is a lot about Metal that I don't like because it's one-dimensional. Metal is basically reactionary and a macho thing.

MP: But Marilyn Manson has nothing to do with Metal....

JL: He's not the Bowie of the late 90s, that was just the slip that a lot of people won't forgive him for. He is definitely a Reznor product, there's no question. No, he's - if he doesn't screw it up - a real answer. I've listened to a lot of Industrial, and Ministry. Industrial was the sophisticated answer to Metal and has incorporated its hardness and force, which I now like a lot better.

MP: Does an artist need a healthy dose of self-confidence?

JL: No, an even healthier dose of self-criticism. Everyone suffers, but the final result is what stimulates me. I want to prove things to myself by overcoming this obstacle. And brutal self-discipline, that's what it takes to be an artist! Visions are a dime a dozen, even a million. The hard part is realizing them.

MP: How do you motivate yourself when you reach the point where you just want to break your brush in two? Do you ever feel that way?

JL: Of course! Often. I can't see any pictures when that happens. I don't have a goal anymore. Normally, I can see the goal and get there, that's self-discipline. You know, you can create worlds in your head easily, and then tear them down. You can do that all day long. But bringing one of those images into our world, that's hard work. In my case, those things are so plastic that they want to bring themselves to life through me. Then I'm the one saddled with the job of having to do it. I know, it sounds banal and stupid, but that's how you have to separate the person and his work. They normally don't have much of anything to do with one another.

MP: I got that: You don't rampage through the center of Vienna, knifing people....

JL: No, because that's not necessary. When you look at it from a therapeutic point-of-view, I am constantly psychoanalyzing myself. And when I come to this wall where I don't see any more pictures, then I start drinking. Because I don't know what to do with myself at that point. I have the effects of alcohol under perfect control. I know exactly what will happen to me after three beers, I know exactly what will happen to me after five beers.

MP: How important is control for you, including control over your work?

JL: Very important. In the past, I often did things because I needed the money. I didn't turn them down, and every time it was just chaos. Even being reduced to my skills as a craftsman was bad. Actually, that is the worst thing that can happen to a person. When you can afford to, you have to turn down things like that.

MP: How do you relax and tune out?

JL: Not at all. Only when I'm drunk, that's the only time I can turn it off. You get used to it. It's like a computer program: There are two, three programs running at the same time.

MP: What bothers you about our current society?

JL: What bothers me at the moment is this new bourgeois period. Needing a certain apartment, needing a cell phone, needing a stock portfolio, needing Nikes. It's sad, there's no time for revolutions. But the bigger and more widespread this neo-bourgeois thing becomes, the bigger my audience will get. For many people, I'm definitely kind of a refuge, they see me providing them with an answer.

MP: Could you live with growing hostility?

JL: Yes, because that is something you have to expect. It's already happened and hurts, of course. But there's no sense in complaining, because I do something to provoke it. And provocation is practically inherent to my work. It's not really intentional, it just turns out that way.

MP: Do you think that you're a nice person to be around?

JL: When someone doesn't get on my nerves, I'm certainly quite pleasant. I just wouldn't give myself any kind of seal of approval. I have plenty of unpleasant sides, certainly a whole bunch. But I'm in a tough position in that regard: When I start correcting things in me, I correct the system as a whole. And psychotherapy ruins art. You have to allow people their imperfections, faults and fears. Psychotherapy has only one goal: helping people function according to the norm. There's nothing to heal in me! An artist who goes through therapy is empty, finished. He pulls his own plug. Because the energy, the creative power comes straight from these deviations - in me, too. When you treat them with therapy and neutralize them, it's all over. I would never do that....

MP: Neither would I! Thanks for your time.

*) For our international readers that are not currency experts: 100 ATS = 7,30 Euro or 100 $ = ca. 1.400 ATS

© MEGALOMANIAC PRODUCTIONS 2000 | 03

Pay a visit to the strange world of Joachim Luetke at his official homepage: http://www.luetke.com
Information on the "Book of Days" project can be found here: http://www.luetke.com/intro/luetke_com.html
His book can be ordered online at: http://www.amazon.de and http://www.luetke.com/artshop/index.html