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AA BRONSON: “I’M AS FEARLESS AS I EVER WAS”

Mr. Bronson, is your identity as an artist separate from your identity as a person?

No, I don’t have any sense of separation. There’s not really a word for it, but it’s just who I am I just became the work! You know, my real name is Michael Tims but nobody’s called me that for a very long time, except for the visa people here in Berlin! The main problem these days is that I’m divided: it’s difficult separating my solo work as AA Bronson from my work as part of the art collective, General Idea, which I operated with Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal from 1967 until the mid 1990s. I have AA Bronson exhibitions and General Idea exhibitions, and AA Bronson catalogs and General Idea catalogs. But I continue to work in this way of doing a little bit of everything…

“We were entertaining ourselves right from the beginning. So we always had a good time.”

What else do you remember about those early days?

No, I don’t have any sense of separation. There’s not really a word for it, but it’s just who I am I just became the work! You know, my real name is Michael Tims but nobody’s called me that for a very long time, except for the visa people here in Berlin!

If I am writing a scene that is full of pain, I can get myself there pretty quickly! But I am happy when I am done doing that. When I was younger I used to think, “I come from a white, upper middle class, suburban background — I come from a completely functional family. This is a terrible recipe for good writing.” First of all, I was wrong about coming from a normal family until I understood what other families were. Mostly what I was wrong about was that you don’t have to have the kind of pain that Eugene O’Neill had in order to be able to write.

Short Profile

Name: Michael Tims
DOB: 1946
Place of birth: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Occupation: Artist

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