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BJS: In an earlier interview with Daniel Birnbaum, Michael, you stressed the importance of close communication with other people involved in your projects the need to have an interest in the specific exhibition place/community. Miwon Kwon has recently argued that notions of site-specificity have expanded from a sedentary model (physically site-specific artwork completely bound to its exhibition space) to a nomadic one wherein the artists' expertise becomes a mobilizable force placed in exhibition spaces across the globe. As your practice becomes more well-known and as you travel further and more often to exhibit, how do you manage to develop/maintain ties to the quite specific communities and locales in which you show? If this proves too difficult, what do you think will replace these concerns?

ME & ID: In those cases where we do something site-related or when we do a project related to the local socio-cultural conditions, our personal contact to the community—which we may address or incorporate—is still highly important for us. Of course, it adds up to many research trips each year and we are not spending much time at home, but compared to when we first started working, we now have a much better setup in Berlin. We have some absolutely fantastic assistants that we collaborate with in our studio. This leaves us with the ability to concentrate more on the “software” part of our production and less on logistics and practical matters.

We resist ending up in situations where we just fly in, dump our art project, and fly out again the following day without having any impression of the city, the venue, or the larger context that frames our exhibition. It simply doesn't make any sense for our working method. We keep in contact with a lot of the people with whom we have collaborated in our projects: the team of local female curators taking care of our gallery set up at Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana; the woman who lives above the Massimo de Carlo gallery in Milan; and some of the guys we just included in our project “Paris Diaries” in Paris. We consider this communication the fun part of the whole process, not an extra burden.

Doing more shows gives us the option of saying no to invitations if the conditions are not right, if there is a lack of communication or seriousness, if preparation and planning time turns out to be far too short, etc. Somehow we are still some fucking amateurs as we are driven mostly by our desire and curiosity. The difference between artists who did site-specific works in the 1970's and today's artists is not that big. Artists' practices have always been mobile and artists have always been nomadic, but both the increased interest in this field and many practical factors (such as a faster access to information through the internet, cheaper air fares—and last but not least—a bigger economy in the art scene) makes it possible for us and most of our colleagues to operate with more flexibility and within a larger radius.

BJS: Michael Warner and Lauren Berlant write in “Sex in Public” that acts not commonly recognized as part of sexual culture (paying taxes, investing for the future, owning anything 'his' and 'hers', running for president) disperse “heterosexual privilege as a tacit but central organizing index of social membership.” They argue: “...the space of sexual culture has become obnoxiously cramped from doing the work of maintaining a normal metaculture.” It seems that the Powerless Structures can be read as attempting to “open up” space in public for queer cultures and other “nonstandard intimacies.” To what extent was this effort conscious, and, now that you have moved beyond the Powerless Structures, is opening up this space still an important part of your practice?

ME & ID: Almost all public architecture and city planning is based on totally outdated, Victorian nuclear family values. (Even for the average nuclear family of the new millennium.) Rigid public spaces in which all signs of diverse cultural inheritance or sexual backgrounds are erased do not function as common platforms anymore. They appear as void-spaces that only exist through the sub-cultural layers added to them, by their unintended use by different populations' more-or-less hidden activities.

Because today most Western societies are comprised of multiple minority groups and communities, the meaning of “mainstream” has radically changed. The problem is that the urban landscape hasn't kept up with this development. The standardized architecture that we experience in schools, hospitals, prisons, public squares, and parks—:as well as in most contemporary museums—reflects a moral codex, a lifestyle, and a demography that are not longer present. To challenge such structures—and the perception of public space as something that can be shaped like a neutral or objective entity in society—is an essential part of our practice.

Our Powerless Structures became at a certain point too much of a brand, a label or a formula by which the work could be quickly decoded and read. So we decided to title our projects in a different way. However, the topics that interest us remain the same.