RAUSCHENBERG
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done only so much. Take that business with the tires in
Map Room,
which I found interesting if it is done for about five minutes. But
something else happens if it goes on for ten more minutes. It's a little
like
La
Monte Young's thing,
[The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys].
At some point, you admit that it isn't interesting any more, but you're
still confronted by it. So what are you going to make out of it?
INTERVIEWER:
However, there is a difference between intentional bore–
dom and inadvertent boredom.
RAUSCHENBERG:
I'd like it if even at the risk of boring someone, there
is an area of uninteresting activity where the spectator may behave
uniquely. You see, I'm against the prepared consistent entertainment.
Theater does not have to be entertaining, just like pictures don't have
to be beautiful.
INTERVIEWER:
Must theater be interesting?
RAUSCHENBERG:
Involving. Now boredom is restlessness; your audience
is not a familiar thing. It is made up of individual people who have
all led different lives.
I've been with people who have speech problems. At first it made
me quite nervous, later I found myself listening to it and being quite
interested in just the physical contact; it can be a very dramatic thing.
I've never deliberately thought about boring anyone; but I'm also
interested in that kind of theater activity that provides a minimum
of guarantees. I have often been more interested in works I have found
very boring than in other works that seem to be brilliantly done.
INTERVIEWER:
What was it that made them more memorable to you?
RAUSCHENBERG:
It may be that that kind of pacing is more unique to
theater-going. The role of the audience, traditionally, I don't find
very interesting. I don't like the idea that they shouldn't assume as
much responsibility as the entertainer does for making the evening
interesting. I'm really quite unfriendly and unrealistic about the artist
having to assume the total responsibility for the function of the eve–
ning. I would like people to come home from work, wash up, and go
to the theater as an evening of taking their chances. I think it is more
interesting for them.
INTERVIEWER:
I'm bothered about this juxtaposition of interesting and
boring. What you're doing, I think, is setting up an opposition to
entertainment.
RAUSCHENBERG:
I think that's it. I used the word bored to refer to
someone who might look at a Barnett Newman and say there ought
to be more image there than a single vertical or two single verticals.
If
someone said that that was a boring picture, he was using the word
in relation to a preconceived idea of what interesting might be. What
