As everyone’s social media feeds can attest, it’s Anne Imhof week in New York City. She is the topic of conversation at dinners and nightclubs alike, having taken up residence in the regally cavernous Park Avenue Armory for the debut of her latest opus,Doom: House of Hope—a maximalist performance art spectacle that’s very loosely based onRomeo and Juliet.
“There’s a lot of storytelling in this,” Imhof told me in the days after the premiere. “Not only Romeo and Juliet, but there are 100 other stories that are told in this piece.”
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Anne Imhof’s DOOM at Park Avenue Armory. Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Avenue Armory.
Doom, running through March 12, is her largest project to date in the U.S., and it features Imhof’s longtime collaborator, artist Eliza Douglas. Seeing Douglas perform live, you get what the fuss is about—she’s magnetic. She is joined by around 60 mostly performers in a pastiche of cascading narratives. Layered into this is a pile of artistic forms, from topless body painting to ballet to queer line dancing to wolf howls.
All of it unfolds beneath a massive jumbotron counting down like a doomsday clock, amid a fleet of brand-new Cadillac Escalades, cheerleaders, people in mascot costumes, and the show’s curator Klaus Biesenbach scurrying about. But make no mistake—it’s all very serious and very German. It’s a lot to take in. At one point, a call-and-response section unfolds, with an actor chanting “I want discipline” to a chorus’s reply: “I won’t disappear.” It can be a heady, somnambulant venture, and there were many walkouts before the bombastic finale. But hey, you can’t frontload a crescendo, and Imhof isn’t here to entertain you, but to challenge you. You’re part of her immersive art activation, not the other way around.
Toon Lobach and Eliza Douglas in Anne Imhof’s DOOM at Park Avenue Armory. Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Avenue Armory.
I caught up with the multidisciplinary artist over FaceTime before she headed to an artist talk. As we spoke, the image feed occasionally froze, contorting her face into strange distortions. But her deep, measured voice remained crystal clear, as did her thoughtful responses.
I went to opening night and I saw you in action. Do you feel like you are part of the performance when you are running around directing? This looked performative.
No, I’m directing, that’s my role—giving cues and directing. At the Venice Biennale [in 2017], I decided to create performances that I’m not a part of. A piece like this has a lifetime. A creative process doesn’t stop necessarily with the opening. It continues in adding stuff once the first run is over because we figured out more. Where’s the audience? What are they doing? But I don’t think that [what I am doing] is a performative act. I would vanish if I could.
Talia Ryder (center) in Anne Imhof’s DOOM at Park Avenue Armory. Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Avenue Armory.
Can you tell me about how you initially conceived of and developed ‘Doom’?
I almost don’t know anymore. It’s a long process. I started with the idea of making a piece that has cars at its center. I wanted these cars to drive into the building, and for there to be a collision of inside and outside.
I begin working on a new piece as soon as the previous one ends. After “Natures Mortes” [at Palais de Tokyo in 2021], I immediately started developing the next project. It’s not like I take a piece of music and an idea, and then conceptually put them together. It’s many different ideas and inspirations and I work closely with people individually before I do a work like this. There is a strong emphasis on working with individuals and carving their parts out based on what they bring and what I bring and developing something together. I think that’s the strength of the work. It is a very non-linear process, and the piece itself is non-linear.
Are you a non-linear person in your day-to-day?
Very much so, but I can’t give you a diagnosis for this. I work well with people who have the same kind of [pattern], of going from one thing to another very fast. It’s basically a non-linear way of thinking.
Jacqueline Bologna, Talia Ryder, and Toon Lobach in Anne Imhof’s DOOM at Park Avenue Armory. Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Avenue Armory.
The performers are shooting a lot of footage on their phones and it is projected on the Jumbotron. Are you going to do anything with that documentation to create further works?
We don’t record anything. I’m panicking now that you say this. What you see on the jumbotron the phones aren’t recording, they’re only transmitting. You see it and it is gone.
It’s surprising that this aspect is ephemeral.
Did I forget about video and sound documentation to a lunatic extent? I’m a sucker for the live moment and for what is created when an audience comes together.
Sihana Shalaj and Remy Young in Anne Imhof’s DOOM at Park Avenue Armory. Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Avenue Armory.
Does the show change from night to night because the audience is different? I assume that an audience’s energy and how they can wander freely around can shift the experience.
During the first two shows, people were not recording or taking photos as much. From the third show onwards, people started recording a lot. And I think this is because over social media there are certain images created and people want to archive what people archived before them, so they take the same pictures. That’s a thing with archives. Stories are told by the people who are able to tell them.
This is a different conversation. With the three pieces that I’ve done [Faust, Angst II, and Doom] , iconographies are established over what goes out on social media, those become the signifying images, which is not at all planned.
I have a very young audience that usually comes to see the pieces in museums. Here in New York, it’s very mixed. It’s interesting because the Armory has certain people who come to see things specifically because it is at the Armory. There is also a difference between museum spaces and this kind of venue when it comes to the production itself. This production allowed me to work on a scale that wouldn’t be possible in a museum.
The audience can wander into these catacombs, like a locker room, and enter these B-story vignettes. It was moving to go from the cavernous main area into these intimate spaces.
The locker rooms do not hold a lot of audience. It allowed me to create more intimate scenes. For example, [German actor] Levi Strasser wrote a song for the piece called “The Flash Mob,” and he performs it there for only a couple of people.
Coco Gordon Moore in Anne Imhof’s DOOM at Park Avenue Armory. Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Avenue Armory.
Midland did the casting for this show, which is a very hip fashion casting agency. It is modern how you participate with fashion, but the art establishment can be dismissive of your adjacency to it. For instance, some derided Eliza’s affiliation with Balenciaga when writing about her role in your work.
I think we are kind of over this point, thank God. People no longer define the work by what Eliza or I wear. The people involved in the pieces know that it’s not the defining element anymore. I think that the art world is very afraid of something ruining their little bubble. There are different fields that I’m interested in and it doesn’t mean that the skill or the value of art is diminished. The art world is so afraid of something being popular or commercial. It’s such hypocrisy, and it is out of fear, and so unnecessary. Art is what it is. It will always be what is celebrated. It’s the king’s discipline.
It’s also about what a woman is not allowed to do. I got a lot of criticism from the art world that ended up being about what I wear, or what I look like in my clothes, or what personality I have, or that I’m the “new cool.” What the fuck? Look at the art! That’s what I’m good at. Are we in the 1950s?
We have to ensure that things don’t fall apart. We should stick together. Fashion has always had a role in art. Caravaggio went to the market and got the right colors [of fabric] for the people to throw over themselves so he could paint the folds in a certain color.
In this moment, it’s shifted to the background, and I love that. Even though the costumes are brilliant. You would have to ask Eliza about this—she came up with these colors.
Eliza Douglas in Anne Imhof’s DOOM at Park Avenue Armory. Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Avenue Armory.
Why is Eliza Douglas a collaborator that you can continually connect and work with?
Eliza is a very strong performer. She has the ability to get things done and manifest ideas. We are on opposite sides when it comes to this, so it is a good match. She’s very good at creating graphic images and she can pull people’s attention in such a strong way without using a specific form. It’s not like she spent all her life doing ballet.
She has a wonderful voice.
It’s crazy incredible. But it’s just there. Eliza can just throw it out there without even having any voice training. It’s like a superpower. She has this amazing presence.
Sihana Shalaj in Anne Imhof’s DOOM at Park Avenue Armory. Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Avenue Armory.
So, there are cheerleaders, Cadillacs, and a lot of imagery that is quintessentially American. Americans always think everything is about us, but there does seem to be some statement there.
There is a lot of Americana in the piece. There’s also queer line dancing, which they take seriously as a sport. They meet every Wednesday. I had this idea to bring it together with the ballet. I never made a combination in my life before, so I wanted to try it. The people from the American Ballet Theater liked the idea.
I grew up in West Germany, so there were American products around, but always in front of a German backdrop. Maybe I’m using Americana like this, like something that feels cut out from its background.
Anne Imhof. Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski, courtesy of the artist
There seemed to be a strong cedar odor like what they pump into the North Face store. Was there a scent element to the production?
It might be my perfume, Blackpepper from Comme des Garcons.
Have you gotten joy this week? What has your week been like with this huge undertaking?
It’s amazing. New York is so good to me. I love when it’s psychotically packed in my head and all around me, as well as in the heads of all the others. It’s like magic.
