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It all began when we broke the ice
Jacob Fabricius: (Curator, Copenhagen) Can you single out a picture that
made a special impression?
Alejandra Salinas and Aeron Bergman: (Artists, Barcelona) Ch’iu Ying
(Ming dynasty china) “Peach
assembly of Immortals”
http://www.npm.gov.tw/exh94/form9407/english/page02_06.html#
In Taipei we went to the National Palace Museum to see Chiang Kai-sheck's
hoard of Chinese art. Aeron wrote this in his journal: “The Peach
Assembly is the most unbelievable amazing single painting EVER.”
Intense detail, colours of seduction, and the overwhelmingly complex
yet harmonic system of form and meaning draws the viewer into its generous
fictional world and humbles the individual spirit in the face of nature.
As with many Asian paintings, it deals with the human place in nature:
an art that masters miniature "inch high people and pea sized horses".
Although the size of the painting is exaggerated human figures are dots
in the landscape. This painting also converges Chinese literati and folk
cultures of fantasy with detailed depiction of the mundane. The peach is
a symbol of longevity and immortality, and characters from the other world
gather to have a celebration. Characters such as the “monkey king” transect
great, terrible landscapes motivated by symbolic desires. At the same
time, quotidian details such as court life, contemporary clothing and
architecture
are meticulously, dreamily depicted amidst the supernatural.
Especially remarkable in this painting are the great flat areas of tiny
people lost in rolling ocean waves, at once forming decorative patterns
of brushstrokes, and tumultuous moments in the narrative.
JF: I imagine that the higher budgets, at the advent of the sound era,
presented quite a few new problems. There was no dubbing at the time?
AS & AB: Computer companies are smart, they develop new technology
quickly, and they release it in miniscule increments, slowly, so we buy
their products regularly. There is also the planned obsolescence. The
smart guys from the past made one good watch that, unless smashed against
a marble
floor, would last a lifetime. They were not good at marketing.
JF: The word ”suspense” can be interpreted in several ways.
But many people are under the impression that suspense is related to fear.
I’d like to have your definition of the difference between ”suspense” and ”surprise.” Can
either be experienced in your work shown at Centre d'Art Santa Monica?
How so?
AS & AB: Suspense is a mental state of confusion or uncertainty. Suspense
has fear built into it, but there is also a morbid attraction and curiosity
involved. That is where “Vertigo” comes in: Hitchcock used
the irrational desires of a man: at once terrified of and attracted to
falling; falling in “love” with a ghost, falling off a tower,
Scottie spirals towards new lows as a human being. As viewers, we are
attracted to the lush, romantic, inviting scenes, and to the personal
wreck we witness
in Scottie. The suspense is in the details: we hope Scottie can pull
up from his dive, that the ghost of Madeleine becomes grounded as true
love,
that Scottie will overcome his fear of heights and break the pattern.
When the movie ends, we are left with desolation, although Hitchcock's
elusive
meaning is a suspense that remains with us.
At the Santa Monica, we are building on suspense: we encourage the viewer
to consider the ladder and look over the railing down the spiral staircase
of this 17th century former convent. Ladders, climbing, falling, and the
patterns that this repetition creates all lead to the same bad conclusion.
What is the narrative? Through the ephemeral nature of sound, a concrete
image is planted in the mind: despite an alluring and lush atmosphere,
a free fall to a violent end is waiting.
But what about faith? Suspense is a fundamental part of both religion and
fiction: one must suspend disbelief to enter the game.
JF: There’s a psychological conflict as well as a moral fable in
this work, with both elements well blended into the dramatic texture so
that they never clash. Of course, truth is stranger than fiction. But even
so, it’s obvious
that you had to dramatize the story. In what way did you do that?
AS & AB: This is art; it’s not like building a road. Even during
documentary approaches, “reality" is left far behind. We normally
use documentary as our starting point, but this time we wanted to build
fiction from fiction, to see where it would lead. The architecture of
the site is already very dramatic, so we worked it.
JF: “Vertigo” (Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart), who, due to
acrophobia (fear of heights), has resigned from the San Francisco police
force, is asked by Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), a former friend, to shadow
his wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), whom he describes as a suicidal neurotic.)
is taken from the Boileau-Narcejac novel D’Entre les Morts. Can
you tell me what it was about this film specially appealed to you?
AS & AB: Hitchcock used extreme artifice and stylisation to explore
real issues: love, mental illness and patterns of behaviour. The story
is set in San Francisco and is a convincing document of the period. (Both
the staged sets and the outside shots.) But Hitchcock made a fetishistic
selection of views, panoramas,
and settings based on colours (mostly green and red) that rooted the
film to fiction. This combination of built and found elements reminded
us of
the way we work: part documentary and part construct, the work is heavily
designed and aestheticized to avoid any notions of objectivity. And yet,
the work observes real world truth through its artificial construction.
JF: It seems to me there are two kinds of creative
artists: those who simplify, and the others, who might be described as
the “complicators.” Many
fine painters and excellent writers belong to the latter category, but
to be successful in the medium of the spectacle, one has to be a “simplifier.” Do
you agree with that?
AS & AB: That sounds about right, but perhaps simplistic: what about
the artists who at once simplify as they complicate? “The painting
we mentioned already “Peach Assembly of Mortals” has a very
elegant, simplistic, stylised composition at the same time as it develops
a very layered narrative with an alarming amount of detail. Francis Alys
makes very minimal, formal objects, paintings and videos with limited
focus when seen individually: but seen all together, complex arguments
and suspenseful
juxtapositions open into his conceptualist world.
This also sounds suspiciously like the old masculine vs. feminine attributes
debate. Kant and Derrida wrote that beauty, the frame, and adornment
are feminine, and that the sublime and terror are masculine. Therefore,
art
works begin to be “masculine” and “feminine” depending
on the amount of ornament they have. It seems like in this post-universalistic
era we could begin to find more constructive and truthful ways to describe,
appreciate and reward our art works without resorting
to the elitism of the past or the pessimism of the present.
Furthermore, the word success is not as monolithic as it sounds. Success
usually implies money and fame, but there are also romantic and utopic
versions of success. The spectacle naturally demands a “dumbing down” of
most arguments, so minimalism easily fulfils this condition.
However, how does that explain the fact that Barnett Newman’s stripe
paintings can still stir up mass feelings of resentment after all these
years? (And Picasso is still considered “modern art”, (modern
as in “new” not “modernism”)
while classic rock is only 30 years old.)
JF: I must point out that here you departed from the faithful reconstruction
of the real story to return to the fiction form.
AS & AB: There is not much difference between “reconstruction” and “fiction”. Perhaps
our response indicates that we are “complicators”!
We assume, Jacob, that you are putting us into that group! : ) You
are probably right. But like Alys, we make individual works as concise
and simplistic as possible, using an “Asian” sense
of space (emptiness composed, anti horror vacui), that, when
the details begin to add up, the story grows in complexity. Also, because
we use several mediums, the work appears to be complicated even if
the message is not.
JF: So why is it that we can’t tell a lie
through a flashback?
AS & AB: Because it is all in our head! The flashback, like the
voice-over is a narrative device to communicate with the viewer.
JF: Napoleon claimed that the best defense was
attack. Wouldn’t
it have been possible to steal their thunder through some slogan in
the advance
promotion?
AS & AB: Bush said the best defence was pre-emptive attack. And
try this thing for slogans: http://www.sloganizer.net/en/
Postscript:
The above email interview has been conducted in june 2006 with questions
and comments sampled from the book: 'Hitchcock. The definitive study
of Alfred Hitchcock by François Truffaut' (Touchstone Book.
Revised edition, 1985). Some questions have been slightly altered
to fit the purpose
of the above interview, but all questions and comments by Jacob Fabricius
were originally all asked by film director François Truffaut
when he interviewed Alfred Hitchcock in 1962. There are two exceptions: “Can
either be experienced in your work at Centre d'Art Santa Monica?” (Fabricius
to Salinas and Bergman) and “Why is it that we can’t
tell a lie through a flashback?” (Hitchcock to Truffaut).
The artists Alejandra Salinas and Aeron Bergman were not aware of
the interview set-up when answering the questions. |
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