Weekend & La Chinoise: Why these two Godard’s 1967 masterpieces are still relevant today
It is no breaking news: many of us will agree that Jean Luc Godard is a genius and key filmmaker in the history of cinema. But, as any interesting genius, he can be extremely gifted at some times and completely annoying at others. The irritation experienced when seeing Anna Karina in the (a bit shallow but playful) musical melodrama Une femme est une femme (1961) is only comparable to the admiration one feels for him when seeing the two movies he directed in 1967 –probably his most inspired year as far as I am concerned: Weekend and La Chinoise.
It is also important to note that Une femme est un femme was only his second long feature, released after his iconic debut A bout de souffle (1959), whereas his two 1967 works represent a much more mature stage in his career and, undoubtedly, mark the beginning of a period where his political engagement took over more pedestrian subject matters like love and relationships. Godard also finally jilted traditional narratives (ie. a plot, a “story”) and took to the extreme his interest in cinematic fragments and disconnected structures,– rhizomatic if you like, to use Deleuze’s omnipresent concept. 1967, actually, is considered the end of Godard’s Nouvelle Vague period, as from 1968 till 1972 he joined the Marxist filmmaking group Dziga Vertov and became even more experimental and unapologetically radical.
In 1967, in a pre-riot Paris and with Situationist and other political groups warming up the social landscape, Godard presented two very different but equally critical strange films that summarised the European zeigeist and discontent. Weekend was an acid (note the pun) critique of the hegemonic bourgeois values through a quite disturbing movie which, at first sight, is about a couple’s weekend trip outside Paris but that, behind that façade, illustrates the deceit and violence (murder, cannibalism and car crashes) that capitalism fuels. The starring couple, a middle-high class marriage, make the aforementioned weekend country trip to visit the woman’s parents. They want to get rid of them to obtain a more than healthy inheritance. But we learn that they also want to get rid of each other once they get the money, as they both have lovers with who they’d much rather enjoy it. On their trip back, after a nightmarish succession of traffic jams and accidents, as well as some encounters with working class farmers who give us some political speeches about class struggle, they finally manage to get abducted by a gang of marxist hippies who turn out to be also practising cannibals. Influenced as much by George Bataille’s philosophy as by Marx, one of the highlights of Weekend shows us a woman screaming in terror after a horrible crash car. What we think is a person’s cling for dear life turns to be a complain about the loss of her Hermes bag.
The subversion Godard achieves with Weekend and his fascination with car crashes and bodies could be read as an anticipation of JG Ballard’s novel Crash, that was published 6 years later, in 1973, which takes this premise to the limit: a group of deranged fetishists play with death and sex as they crash their cars in the highways of London. But while for Godard the crucial point to be addressed is how capitalism and liberal politics engender frustration and thus violence, Ballard seems more fixed with the relationship between the everyday, sex and technology. Indeed technology in Crash is the representation of the bourgeois class, that bored and stuck, need to indulge in perversion to feel alive again (through sex and cars in violent communion). Godard goes from the particular to the general, a bigger picture of the classes, while Ballard prefers to engage in the very personal life of a group of people and let the reader draw general conclusions.
La Chinoise, on the other hand, provides good material to reflect on the aesthetics of radical politics. And the way Godard constructed this reflection is still relevant today, I believe, even if the slogans and the pure communist ideology used are definitely dated. This film about a group of university students learning by heart Mao’s Little Red Book during a summer and organising a terrorist attack in 1967 seems amazingly prescient of the following’s year May revolution. La Chinoise is especially interesting to me in that Godard, even if a convinced Marxist, is keen on exploring the contradiction in which these well-off bourgeois youngsters incur. They want a revolution, because for them it sounds good, it sounds fair, but when questioned in depth about it, they only can stammer cliches and slogans. The train conversation that Veronique (Anne Wiazemsky), the main character, has with her university teacher, the philosopher Francis Jeanson, is an excellent example of this and a key scene in left-wing cinema *. Veronique wants blood because revolutions are only revolutions if blood is shed. But the teacher is able to deconstruct all Veronique’s apparently security in her ideas in a matter of seconds, and he shows that she really doesn’t know what she wants to achieve or what will happen after the attacks, anticipatory again of what would happen also a year later with the actions of the Baader-Meinhof. Here again, like in Weekend, Godard uses violence to pose poignant questions about the state of society and politics. Jeanson’s dialogue is also prescient in that he talks about “culture-action” and claims that culture, which gives control of the world, has been long time ago cut off from action and has to be reunited to allow the participation of the public, which remind us of what Nicolas Bourriaud argued 30 years later in Esthetique Relationelle. As it is habitual in all Godard’s films, the use of constant contemporary cultural references (names of politicians, names of filmmakers, Jacques Rivette, Mick Jagger) produces a sense of witnessing something real, that what these characters are living is happening somewhere else in real life. His films are the perfect zeitgeist artifacts. They are pertinent and dense, at times high-brow but hilarious at others. And because of that they do not become outdated but historical, and worth revisiting time and again, as with each screening one discovers something new.
————–
* The Otolith Group used the soundtrack of this scene for their piece Communist Like Us (2006-present).
Something happened: catching up with Keren Cytter
Keren Cytter (1977, Tel Aviv) is an artist and writer. In her short films she explores human relationships and the everyday through a playful experimentation with structures and narratives and subverting classical ways of storytelling. She also makes drawings and has published a number of poems, articles, scripts and, most notably, novels. She has just been awarded the Nationalgalerie Prize for Young Art and, in 2006, she won the Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel. In a few years, Keren has become a permanent fixture of the international art circuit. She is currently showing her work at The New Museum (New York, until the 5th of July) as part of Younger Than Jesus exhibition. She has had solo shows at Cubitt (London, 2008), Centro Huarte (Huelva, Spain, 2008) and Witte de With (Rotterdam, 2008) amongst others. Already featured in Manifesta 7 (Trentino, Italy, 2008), the Second Moscow Biennial (2007) and the Lyon Biennial (2007) to name but a few, this year Cytter will take part in Making Worlds, the International Art Exhibition of the upcoming 2009 Venice Biennale curated by Daniel Birbaum, who already selected her to take part in the 50 Rings of Saturn, the Torino Triennale (November 2008-January 2009). Keren Cytter lives and works in Berlin.
Hi Keren! How are you? Are you working on a project now?
Oh yes, I am shooting the video for the Venice Biennale 2009. We will see how it looks. There is a boy who was supposed to shot a woman, but he started crying and he couldn’t do it. Very cute.
He was too into character, I suppose!
He was totally out of character, he should have shot her!
Are you shooting in Berlin?
Yes, I shot in a theatre, with real actors. Two of them are over 40 years old.
That is interesting. You usually use friends, don’t you?
Yes… generally. People I feel comfortable with.
So why the change to professional actors?
Because that suits the film, which takes place in a theatre. There was supposed to be an audience but hardly any one came. It was Sunday morning after the first of May, so only extremely hungover people showed up.
Still from Keren’s video for the 2009 Venice Biennale
Are you excited about showing in Venice?
I don’t know, I wonder how the movie will come out. I didn’t really start editing it…
Well, you always seem to work very close to the deadline, don’t you? I remember that with your videos at your recent show at Pilar Corrias it was a bit like that as well (Domestics, March-April 2009, Pilar Corrias Gallery London).
Yes… but this time the actors really acted. And the tempo is different now.
I think the show at Venice, Making worlds, is going to be good. For example, Nathalie Djurberg is there also. Do you like her work?
I don’t know… I am not so keen on animation…
Oh, neither am I. But she is not doing like “cute” animation precisely. How is Berlin, anyway?
Today? Rainy.
All the artists seem to live there now.
Well, yeah, it’s cheap and the people are nice. It is easiest place to live outside Israel. But there is no money.
When did you leave Israel? Long time ago?
7 years ago. Is it long?
Quite long, I suppose! Do you miss it?
No. I read Israeli newspapers every morning.
It’s an awful situation there…
I don’t think about that so much, it’s very personal for me.
Do you consider yourself political?
Maybe somehow, yes. But who is somehow “not political”?
I mean in your work.
Mhhhhh, yes but not in this kind of politics.
What kind, then?
For example: all the characters in my movie are smoking. I do that to make people smoke, because I don’t want to be the only one who’s smoking on this planet…
(Laughs) That’s mean! What about the role of sex in your work? It seems to me like a very important part of it…
Only in my work. All I want is to fall in love…
(Laughs) You are sublimating… Are you not in love, then?
I am checking in the dictionary what is sublimating…
“In psychology, sublimation is a term coined by Friedrich Nietzsche which was eventually used to describe the spirit as a reflection of the libido. It has its roots in the Nietzschean & psychoanalytical approach, and is sometimes also referred to as a type of defense mechanism. According to Wade and Tavris, sublimation is when displacement “serves a higher cultural or socially useful purpose, as in the creation of art or inventions”.
Mmmmmm…
Are you sublimating, then?
It’s complicated. Would that mean that I have problem I am projecting in my work?
I am not sure, to be honest. I am bit out of my depth here… but I think that when you sublimate you tend to work a lot, and you seem to produce non stop. Videos, writing, drawings…
Yes, I do a lot. I think it’s a good idea to do a lot.
Still from Keren’s video for the 2009 Venice Biennale
You have published quite a few novels (three, since 2005)… And writing takes lots of discipline…
I like discipline. I think it’s cool. It shows power of will and, at the same time, another power which is against the will, the one that tells you to sit down and write instead of doing something else.
In what language do you write?
Mostly Hebrew.
And who translates?
Sometimes me and then an editor friend. And sometimes Hillel, my friend from Israel.
And what came first: writing, drawing or filming?
Writing. Since I was very little girl. My first story was called The pretty Group.
What made you experiment with other media?
I started to draw after I went to a psychologist and she told me I should draw. So I started drawing. And then I went to learn, drawing in the village next to my place and then, when I left the army, I went to study art. Then I was painting and drawing and, when I finished, I started to write for newspapers, then I started drawing again. Then got bored of it so I started filming. My father bought a camera, and I wanted to do something different than drawing… So I wrote a script, and used my father’s camera.
But you see! I see some sublimation there as well, or transference, maybe…
Where?!
In you starting to draw as a little girl. “Transference: the redirection of feelings and desires and especially of those unconsciously retained from childhood toward a new object.” Another definition is “a reproduction of emotions relating to repressed experiences, especially of childhood, and the substitution of another person for the original object of the repressed impulses.” Transference was first described by Sigmund Freud, who acknowledged its importance for psychoanalysis for better understanding of the patient’s feelings”.
Ah! So instead of solving my problems I started drawing!
Well, you transferred your troubles to paper maybe. And I think I am going to end my cheap therapy session here…
That is quite interesting!
How was being in the army?
Boring.
Why there are always penises in your films?
No reason. Just to make it look like hardcore, I guess. Just to be noticed… Or maybe I am sublimating!
(Laughs) Why this need to be noticed? I read your recent Art Review cover feature (April 2009), and there you explicitly said that you wanted to attract attention…
But otherwise I am wasting my time, aren’t I?
Sure, but there are many other ways to do that, and you chose a very specific way, which is by shocking
Like how? Penis is the easiest!
Maybe you can call attention by extreme beauty, or by being strongly political.
But that is either kitsch or political art, which is the 50% of contemporary art. And I am not that interested in any of these.
Do you know the work of Santiago Sierra o Regina Galindo? They are shocking too, in a very different way to your shocking.
Yes, I know their work. To me they are only shocking.
Ok, so what are you doing besides shocking?
Trying to confuse the audience, and confuse them with a set of rules. There’s supposed to be a logic in it…
To me it’s well confusing, I have to say. I think your video works are quite hard to understand, to decipher…
Really? I think they are really easy to read through. They are just a bit complicated to describe…
Still from Keren’s video for the 2009 Venice Biennale
Ok, for example, Repulsion, yes I get it, cause I like early Polanski and have seen his films, so I recognize the signs and the re-interpretation you have made. But Peacocks (2009), I don’t really understand what it’s about…
I am trying to remember… It’s about a trio. I’m trying to remember what I was thinking about when I wrote it. I thought about memories that are not real and hate that comes out of love, carelessness, images and photos…
You say you want to confuse with your films, but by following a set of rules. What set of rules is this? Some sort of “Dogma”?
No, it’s not as literal as Von Trier’s, it’s more about setting different rules to each video, and they are not about the technical way of shooting the movie, but mostly about a certain style and reality the movie is describing… Something like that…
What is similar in your writing and films? Do you recognize some things in common?
No… not really… Even the dialogs are different.
I am wondering if maybe in both media there is some sense of subverting the ways of telling stories. Playing with classical structures and narratives… Like Cortazar?
Ah, yes, maybe. But I don’t like that. It’s too confusing.
But you have just said that you want to confuse your viewers!
Yes, but I’m not the viewer.
(Laughs) Fair enough. How did you feel when you saw yourself on the cover of Art Review with the title “Art hottest young star”?
Like in a woman in a style magazine. By the way, me and my friend have a blog: http://sillycatholic.blogspot.com/. Check it out! I do the haikus.
Yes, I have seen it! But what I mean is, apart of the magazine anecdote, you seem to be everywhere now: shows in the best museums and galleries, biennales… Did you expect it?
Yes, and I expected it to happen sooner, to be honest. It’s a very small world.
Really? Think about all the students each year in art school all over the world that will never make past the graduation show…
Yes…but you are talking about something else. What you are talking about here it’s how hard it is to start or to get in, and with that I totally agree, and which is why I don’t like the art world. It’s not about quality. It’s a dictatorship of money and formulas and of buyers (collectors and curators).
And gallerists…
Yes.. ! But if there are no buyers and curators, the gallery has nothing to do…
And the press…
Yes, the press. I think in London and NY the press is relevant.
Have you experienced any change since you were in the cover of that magazine? Like more sales or offers for shows?
No, some people wrote on my Facebook wall. That is pretty much it. I think covers on magazines are not the same for older people. I’m not a rock band… or maybe I need to be on many covers!
What artists do you like?
Bruce Nauman. But I am more into film-makers.
Like who? Like Jodorowsky, for example?
Yes, I really like him.
The Sacred Mountain is genius.
I like the one when they cut off the hands of the woman. A friend of mine met him and made a tattoo on his hands because of it. Long story…
Jesus! What is your next project?
I need to write a performance for Dublin, for If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution programme. It’s immediately after Venice. It will be a performance in a theatre. I have a dance group, we’re called D.I.E NOW (Dance International Europe Now).
Promotional poster for the D.I.E. Now tour
That’s a brilliant name. Will be it be your first performance?
No, we have already done some at De Appel Rotterdam, in a cafe in Amsterdam, and in a dance studio in Bilbao. And we will be at the Pavilion of the Serpentine Gallery at the end of July. And we will do a mega play that will tour! I am very excited. It’s not only dance, it’s acting too, combined with videos, and I direct and write the scripts. Every show is a different part of the same story, a long story.
Sounds amazing! It’s great you are doing so much stuff. I am trying to write a curatorial proposal for a show… I just don’t have much money or time… It takes lots of discipline to work at night, after work.
Yes, but I was working also in kitchens for years, in Israel and Amsterdam, and I found the time to do my stuff.
Really? I didn’t know that…
Yes! I am a really good cook, I am telling you. Amsterdam was awful though, I felt like Ann Frank. The thing is now I do more, because I have time and resources and but with less passion. And I miss the times when I felt the urgency to get out of a situation. And that’s the only way, isn’t it?
Yes, I suppose!
I am tired now.
Me too! That was long. Thank you so much!
Kein problem!
More info:
Younger Than Jesus (The New Museum, New Yorks) runs until the 5th of July 2009.
Making Worlds, the 53rd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale opens the 7th of June and runs until the 22nd of November 2009.
Keren Cytter is represented by Pilar Corrias Gallery (London, UK) and by Elizabeth Kaufmann (Zurich, Switzerland).
Keren Cytter’s blog: http://sillycatholic.blogspot.com/
Museum Futures: A conversation with Marysia Lewandowska
On July 2008 I visited the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. There, and by chance, I found a videowork titled “Museum Futures” (2007), created by Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska for the 50th anniversary of the Swedish museum.
“Museum Futures” is not an accessible work of art. More than 30 minutes long and dialogue-based, it requires a serious engagement from the viewer in order to understand. The subject is the future politics of the museum, and what we see is an interview that takes place in 2058 between a researcher and the director of the museum, both women and both of different ethnicities, which is a political statement in itself. The artists, instead of focusing the 50 years of History of the Museum, had focused in its 50 years of future ahead, unveiled by the staged discussion of these two people.
When I returned to London, I established contact with Marysia Lewandowska. I wanted to make a studio visit to have a discussion about this work and discover if my reading of it corresponded to the vision of the author. Following is the transcription of that conversation.
Museum Futures production meeting
Can you explain how such a specific project as “Museum Futures” was born?
The project was born from initial invitation of contributing to a book that looked into the 50 years history of Moderna Museet in Stockholm. We were approached by the director, Lars Nittve, who we have worked with previously on two occasions, once when he was at the Louisiana Museum and also more recently Tate Modern, where we presented Capital, so he was aware of our interests in museum culture. He proposed to the curatorial and editorial teams that besides commissioning curators and academics to write about the different aspects of the Moderna Museet, it would also be interesting to approach artists to contribute. And he proposed that Neil and I consider an intervention into the book. It took us about two years of research to feel comfortable to be able to approach the project.
Around the same time, a curator from the museum, Magnus af Petersens contacted me with an proposal for developing a separate commission. So these two invitations came together and I suggested fusing both aspects. The research we made was initially based on how Moderna Museet has been represented in Swedish television. I managed to persuade people to make copies of all the programmes ever made that pictured Moderna. But the process that triggered writing the script came later and was grounded in a carefully constructed timeline. We were looking a the history of the museum and its seminal exhibitions and also at other, mainly social and political events, that shaped the current moment up until 2008, and from there, we begun mapping as well as imagining the future.
Essential for us was Pontus Hulten’s idea of creating a “museum of our wishes”. He was truly committed to building a collection and getting money from the State to create a public museum, accessible for all.
So from there, we worked on how would the museum of our wishes function, what would it do, how could we as artists contribute to its organisation. We tried to construct the future from the point of view of what we care about, how we imagine the public for such a museum.
Museum Futures film still
What about the aesthetics of the film, this particular sci-fi feel to it?
We were imagining the future, but we did not want to portray it as completely devoid of what we already enjoy. We did not want it to be white and cold, as the cliché goes. So we used design that exists now, because people tend to keep on using furniture that was designed decades ago. We also wanted to emphasise a future that will be modest, not glamorous and shiny. A kind of retro future.
What is going to happen to “Museum Futures”, is it going to stay in the permanent collection of Moderna or, despite its specificity, can it be shown somewhere else?
I don’t know yet if it will become part of the permanent collection. And yes, I think it can be shown in any museum, or any place if the right context is created by the curator or another institution. It would be good to have it distributed. And we are thinking of having a low-res version on archive.org
I am saying this because this video addressed the type of issues I am concerned with and I think it would be great to show it in London.
Yes, but where? We are both open to suggestions.
How does this work relate to your other projects?
In that it tries to understand what is the function of the public museum and how the museum engenders certain values and why these values are maintained historically. But in order for the museum to keep on having relevance culturally it needs to reinvent itself. Lately most museums reinvent themselves along the lines of commercial pressures. That tends to be the updating for them. And there is always this discussion about funding and the private interests interfering with the ethos of many public museums. So it is time for the museum of the future to implement a new “Transaction Tax” which would reverse the resource flow. So we don’t suggest that the capitalist market relations are going to disappear because of course they won’t, but there is a way of taking something from the prosperity of the private sector to give an opportunity to a publicly owned independent institution.
Would you say your work is related to Institutional Critique?
Yes, definitely. You can’t say that Institutional Critique is something that is done, that is over. So we do acknowledge that it is vital and very influential. But it is also not our only concern and direction, because we do not worry so much about how to change the institution itself but more how to work with the public of an institution, how the institution need to make an effort to build a public. So much of our work addresses the public more than just the structure.
I think I would like to work in a big institution and try to do something from within, rather than in a small artist-run space, I don’t know… I think I like the contradiction that it offers.
But all these things are connected and all different spaces have different functions to perform. There is definitely not just one way or place to get things done. You have to find the one that suits your project best.
Museum Futures film still
Which artists interest you?
Jeremy Deller, Pierry Huyghe, Critical Art Ensemble, also Mike Kelley, Andrea Fraser, Julie Ault and Martin Beck, Open Music Archive. Also people who are looking into the idea of documentary and its critical dimension, like Hito Steyrl, Carles Guerra, Harun Farocki or Wendolien van Oldenborgh.
Do you think that Institutional Critique is a utopia? Many people point out what a difficult task that is and even how it has been co-opted by the same institutions.
But utopias are legitimate, because they still have an impact. It is not true that they are ignored. And you should think that you don’t do what you do to simply change the system, but rather think that the system is a result of different people’s engagements and all of them count. Institutions are these machines that represent values so it is really up to us to decide what can or should be done with them, inside of them, we are all part of their present and therefore determining their and our, artists’ future. And it is rewarding, like it was rewarding to receive your email and to have more direct sense that this film, Museum Futures, does something to someone out there. These are the best indications that the system works.
London, September 2008
Selfselector is back
It has been almost two years since the last Selfselector post. In the meantime, the author has left her job, changed country, taken an MA in Critical Writing & Curatorial Practice and hopefully improved her English, at least a tiny bit. All these are the happy events. Let’s spare the audience the not so shiny moments.
Selfselector has changed its looks due to technical reasons and that has produced also a shift in its ethos. I will try to post more often and heterogeneously, without putting so much stress on the lenght or depth of the articles, and thus hoping to let spontaneity bloom. Let’s see what happens.
Thanks to all the people who used to read me back in the days and thanks to those who will read me from now on.
Lorena
The metafleshical writings of Dennis Cooper: an approximation
Some weeks ago, a journalist from El Mundo, a famous Spanish newspaper, defined the characters of Dennis Cooper’s novels as “depraved or bored little Americans that have a go to gay life between whiskey, money, drugs and multiple forms of hardcore sex”. Given the fact that this critic is a professional reviewer of Oscar Wilde, we are quite sorry to say that his point of view doesn’t match at all with the true essence of the work of this North American writer, born in Pasadena in 1953.
Richard Hell (left), Dennis Cooper (center) and friend in the 80’s.
His last novel published in Spain by El Tercer Nombre –called originally The Sluts (Void Books, 2004 / Carroll & Graf, 2005)– is nothing of what you would expect from its cover: a product for consumers of soft gay literature, David Leavitt-style. It doesn’t display good taste or bourgeois eroticism with a decadent tone. Cooper, let’s get this straight, writes from his obsessions, that are neither comfortable nor digestive. Not for us and not even for himself. The Sluts has been renamed for its Spanish edition Chaperos (Rent Boys), the only mistake of a otherwise fairly good translation by Juan Bonilla. This new title is quite wrong because the novel is not about a group of male prostitutes, but just one: a ghostly teenager. He is the center point, the sun of a constellation of avid clients that get in touch by means of faxes, SMS, e-mails and Internet forums to satisfy their dark needs. To all those new to Cooper’s work and circumstances we should note that he is one of the highest priests of the digital revolution applied to culture (from the web world to video-games) and that he has spread writings and poems through his two blogs –www.denniscooper.blogspot.com (already closed) and www.denniscoopertheweaklings.blogspot.com (in active) – where the author unveils himself as a rather nice and considerate host. To them and to his official website (www.denniscooper.net) we relocate people that wants to know a bit more about his new book and all these obsessions than we mentioned before, that range from curious and nice to dreadful.
Dream Police, poetry compilation and The Sluts, his last novel.
From this and other sources we know that Cooper lived an unhappy childhood as the son of a millionaire California couple, described on his first poems with a mix of sarcasm and shame. The young Dennis relieved the resentment produced by this environement training to become a sort of hippie and diving into pornography, music, drugs and books. Infatuated by French culture since an early age, his first steps into literature were taken in the shadow of Sade, Rimbaud and the Surrealists. Input he completed with trash culture in the shape of rock & roll and that so very North American cult to the psychokiller as the ultimate expression of social alarm. He then went to University but never completed any degree. In 1973 he published his first book of poems and three years later he founded a poetry magazine called Little Caesar (that you can download on www.denniscooper.net/littlecaesar/lcmagazine.htm), followed by a small publishing group that released his own work and fellow’s Tim Dlugos.
Portraits of a young Dennis Cooper.
At 23 he listened to the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK and began his first European pilgrimage (soon to be followed by many others, all marked by excess). Between addictions, psychosexual torments and creative lows he arrived to 1983, when he reunited with George Miles, a former high school friend with severe mental problems and “the most important person I have known all my life”, as he described him. This relationship pushed him to narrative prose at last. Cooper had been in love with Miles for years and the consummation of that love, followed by the desertion of his partner and the fear of Cooper “to hurt someone” guided by his ghosts, led him to organize a plan: he would win back his loved one if he made him the star (a weak, beautiful, fragile and drugged up star) of all his stories and tales. In his own words “every young character in every piece of fiction I have written is George, whether by name or not”. George Miles killed himself in 1987 but Cooper didn’t find out until ten years later.
The cycle of 5 novels published between 1989 and 2000 are the result of this obsession. The ones we mostly recommend are Frisk (1991), Try (1994) and Period (2000). All of them can de defined like black comedies or twisted versions of the 80’s teen comedies. But in Cooper’s universe the main characters are young or even younger and are facing adults that most of the time are rapist and psycopaths at their best. One of the adults of Frisk is called Dennis and shares many biographical facts with the own writer. That might be te key to understand many things about him. Cooper shows on these books his grasp on slang and witty dialogs as well as being able to make interesting and hooking books based on schematic and sometimes even weak plots. We should not ignore his sense of humor: he didn’t hesitate in using the music band Blur (without any previous consent) as the stars of his novel Guide (1997), focused especially on bassist player Alex James. The British band, after reading the book, declined the invitation to meet him. Frisk became a film in 1995, and even though the soundtrack was composed by Bob Mould, of his adored band Hüsker Dü, Cooper was not satisfied at all with the result and that was the begginning and the end of his collaboration with the world of cinema.
Closer, Try and Period, three of the five novels that form the Miles Cycle.
The novels of the Miles Cycle took Cooper out of the “highbrow” circuit into the center of the mass culture. The erotic and violent essence of his books turned him into the favorite target of the conservatory sectors but also of some gay groups that didn’t get his point, so to speak. The Queer Nation association accused him of encouraging homophobia and the writer David Leavitt makes outraged critics whenever he has the chance. On the other hand William S. Burroughs and Edmund White have always praised his frankness and talent.
Hüsker Dü, My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth… Friends and references.
The teenager aesthetic of his novels and his use of musical references (My Bloody Valentine, Hüsker Dü, Joy Division, Slayer…) turned the author into an unexpected common ground for youngsters of both genders, straight and homo, identified with the inner void and teenage angst expressed in his novels. The involuntary involvement of Dennis Cooper in the literature mega-fraud of JT Leroy sadly averted the attention of the public away of his two following novels My Loose Thread (Cannongate Books, 2002) and the unorthodox detective store God Jr. (Grove Press, 2005), both highly recommended.
In 2004 the friendship between Cooper and Sonic Youth, Guided by Voices and Xiu Xiu among many other bands lead to the tribute record Dennis, released also by Void Books. His latest bet has been to jump on the theatre scene: his plays I Apologize (2004), Un Belle Enfant Blonde (2005) and Kindertotenlieder (2007)– written in collaboration with Giselle Vienne– had been performed in Paris, London and several USA cities. All his friends and acquaintances have described him as a nice but shy person, always willing to help or contribute with ideas. Sheltered under a barrier of video-games, music and literary erudition he continues to explore his dark side. And ours.
Dennis Cooper these days. Portrait by Jean-Luc Bertini.
Thanks to Yago Garcia Salmeron for his contribution
“Bonnie” de Saint Phalle & “Clyde” Tinguely
If you have wandered around the Centre Pompidou in Paris, you have most likely stumbled upon the work of two very special artists: Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely, also know as the Bonnie & Clyde of Art because they were a fascinating couple and they liked to use shotguns and explosives in their shocking pieces and installations.
Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely in 1961.
So to one side of the Pompidou there is big fountain with a group of sculptures. It’s called La Fontaine Stravinsky and it is one of their last joint works of art and also one of their most famous, probably due to its fantastic location. This fountain is the perfect symbol of their personalities and styles, so different and yet so complementary. On one hand we have Jean’s masculine, sharp, metallic and mobile sculptures. On the other, the colorful, feminine and voluptuous pieces of Niki. At first sight they don’t seem to match at all but, on closer look, you discover how they empower and highlight each other. That perfect contradiction also happens when you examine the couple.
La Fontaine Stravinsly (1983), Paris.
Niki was a French-American girl (born in 1930 in the south of France but educated in the United States) that worked as model for Vogue and Harper’s Baazar, got married at 18 and became a mother at 21 before even considering the possibility of entering the world of Art. It was actually thanks to her first husband, Harry Matthews, a musician that liked to hang out with plastic artists, that she got in touch with the world of creation, moving together to Paris in 1952. But as much compromised with Art as she became the following years, she never neglected her aesthetical appeal, that she learned during her modelling years. She always had a very personal and styled look, often wearing custom-made Christian Dior dresses and cultivating a sophisticated look that in the 60’s and 70’s collided with the uprising feminist trend, that was prone to judge that taking care of the outside was sexist, conservatory and, worst of all, shallow. Niki never minded that and, as much as “hands-on” as she was, and as much dirty as she got while doing her Nanas (to the point of dying due to a respiratory illness produced by the toxic fumes of the polyester paints she used), she always ended looking more a like a flamboyant movie star than an careless artist.
Blanc Jaune et Noir (1956) and Trois points blancs (1955), by Jean Tinguely.
Swiss born Jean Tinguely (1925-1991) was a well-known kinetic artist that had left Basel for Paris in 1953. Trained as a decorator, a work he did for several years, it was painting and sculpture that won him in the end. His style was quickly recognizable and appreciated: rough mobile pieces that looked like strange machines, a style that had it roots in Marcel Duchamp and that even got a proper name: metamechanics. He was then married to another painter, Eva Aeppli, and also had a daughter. The atelier they shared in Paris was a meetig point for all the artist of the city, from Brancusi to Yves Klein, but in 1955 they received a visit that changed his life: a North-american called Harry Matthews and her young wife, Niki de Saint-Phalle, a self-taught incipient painter, already fascinated by Antonio Gaudí (her main influence), whose work she had got to know through several trips to Spain.
Jean and Niki modelling a Nana at their Paris house in 1966.
But it wasn’t until five years later, in 1960, when they had both divorced their first partners (in friendly terms) that they started their tumultuous and prolific relationship rooted in Paris. They both took part in the exhibition called The Movement at the Moderna Museet of Stockholm, and fell in love in the process. Jean proved to be final push that Niki needed to become an artist on her own terms. They both maintained separately successful careers, but their collaborations were constant and celebrated. The mix resulting from crossing their personalities had allure and strenght. Masculine vs. feminine. Sharp vs. round. Besides, they also helped and influenced each other in most of their individual pieces, so its difficult to draw a separating line in their bodies of work.
One example is the Study for an end of the world, an habitual concept in Tinguely’s work (he did two studies between 1961 and 1962), which consisted of a representation of chaos and destruction by the explosion of a series of sculptures with dynamite and fireworks. The audience of this art action witnessed a series of figures violently exploding and jumping in the air, that ended with a French flag descending from the sky to the ground with a parachute.
Niki got famous when she began her shooting paintings, a new type of piece, half painting and half performance, because they only happened when she shot (with a proper shotgun) plaster-covered collages she had previously designed with attached bags filled with painting that exploded in dripping colours. But it was her Nanas that became her trademark: big sculptures in the shape of curvy women painted in bright colours.
Niki at one her shooting paintings, Malibu (1962).
They also were part of the gang of agitators of the 60’s New York, formed by John Cage, Merce Cunningham, David Tudor, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Frank Stella amongst others, and they took part on several happenings and performances that were seminal for both Contemporary Music and Art.
Diagram of Hon, their inhabitable sculputure project in Stockholm (1966).
In 1966, again in the Moderna Museet of Stockholm and again curated by Pontus Hulten (a fundamental figure in their careers) they created of their most interesting and influential projects: Hon, a giant size Nana that hosted several spaces (from bars to a cinema) for people to walk through and whose access was in her sex, like a huge fertility goddess. It was revolutionary, controversial, new and funny (and if you take a look to Atelier Van Lieshout’s currents projects you will find more than a common point). It lasted three months, and was destroyed after.
Public entering Hon (through her sex), Moderna Museet Stockholm (1966).
During the following years and decades, they never stopped creating, from little sculptures to huge installation, paintings, even films. In 1979, they started their bigger and most ambitious project, and Niki’s dream of a lifetime: the Tarot Garden. A tale-like park inhabited by her fantastic creations, no longer in sculpture size but reaching architectonic scale, all together creating an epic piece of land-art. Niki had been fascinated by Gaudí’s Güell Park since visiting Barcelona in the 50’s and from that moment on, she never stopped dreaming of building a space of her own. Jean always encouraged her to do it. It was a huge project that took many years to be finished. In fact, Jean Tinguely never saw it completed (he died in 1991), and it only stopped when also Niki died, in 2002. She wrote about it: “When I met Jean for the first time, I was a 25 year old girl with my pockets full of drawings. I dreamt of building a crazy castle, like a chapel for all religions. But when I told him, he didn’t laugh. He took it seriously. I said my dreams were bigger than my abilities, and he answered me with a sentence that changed my life: ‘Niki, the dream is everything. The technique is something you can learn’. With his brilliant help I realized my obsession of building something of monumental proportions“. So they found a lost location, in the middle of the Tuscan landscape, in Italy, and started constructing Niki’s masterpiece with Jean’s distinctive touch. A public space for people to experience and enjoy the fantastic, imaginative universe these two persons created for themselves and for all of us.
Part of the Tarot Garden, Tuscany (Italy, 1979-2002).
More info at:
http://www.nikidesaintphalle.com/ http://www.tinguely.ch/fr/museum/jean_tinguely.html
The Adaptation
Humans, as animals, show an amazing ability to accomodate to a wide range of situations and contexts, from cozy to awkward. That is the center point of The Adaptation, the choreography created by Björn Säfsten that will be represented next week at La Casa Encendida (Madrid) as part of the En Tránsito and Artistas en Residencia project, a joint plataform to promote young audiovisual artists (from the fields of Dance, Performance, Installation and Video) by providing them with economical support, a rehearsal space and stage to perform.
The Adaptation: Anja Arnquist and Sophie Augot on stage.
Already performed last summer at a mysterious and hidden place, an old church of Alcalá de Henares (a small universitary town outside Madrid), the team of The Adaptation returns to an Spanish stage, the patio of La Casa Encedida, after some successful performances at the Scandinavian countries. Björn Säfsten, a young and promising choreographer (Umea, Sweden, 1981), is the head of the team. He has created a very complete piece that not only has a interesting concept behind but that is also supported by a mixed group of artists from Sweden and Spain that contribute to the powerful final result. The dancers, Sophie Augot and Anja Arnquist, give strenght and yet lightness to the movements, often strong and struggling.
Björn Säfsten, the choreographer of the piece.
Jesús Franch, a Spanish architect living in Stockholm, was in charge of the scenography. For that, he added a moving layer made of bricks of expanded styrofoam as the only, but very significant, item on stage. He likes to describe it as a “dominant scenography” because it moves up and down and oscillates around the dancers, constraining their movements and creating the dynamics, often sharp and unpredictable. This layer is a central part of the piece, because it forces the dancers to “adapt” their routines to it and justifies the title of the project.
The dancers adapt their routines to the movement of the layer.
Pola.r0i.de composed the music, that melts with the movements, complementing the choreography in an absolutely coherent way. It also shifts from melodic to confusing, as the situation towards the scenography does, acompaning and rocking the dancers and helping the spectator to understand what he is seeing, becoming some kind of auditive narrator. It was the first time this musician from Madrid –already a familiar name in the electronic scene, having played at festivals like Sonar- received a commission like this. But he was excited by the challenge of approaching an unknow field for him. “Composing for The Adaptation was a unique experience. Working closely with Bjorn, Anja and Sophie during the process gave the piece a strong meaning. I first composed small pieces for the different parts of the choreography and then I focused on the structure. Every day, during rehearsals, I could see the sensibility of the dancers grasping the smallest details of the sounds and incorporating them to their movements, which was a very stimulating feeling for me as a musician”.
They all –both the choreographer and the dancers, as well as the musician and the scenographer– agree that the final result is strong and homogenic, and so the reviews of the shows have said so far. The Adaptation has actually marked the beginning of a productive collaboration for this ensemble, hopefully a proper company in a near future. They have already created another piece called I Say Tomato And You Don’t Even Talk About Vegetables and they have been selected for one the most important dance competitions in Sweden for the next September, hosted by the House of Dance, in which four choreographers will show their works and the winner will have access to a significant economical prize, a full evening production and at least seven shows at Swedish cities. They are excited and crossing their fingers.
But like all Art performances, specially concerning Dance, its definitely useless to try to put the feeling they produce into words. They are meant to be experienced live, and next week they will be two chances to do that. So, if you are in Madrid, don’t miss it.
The Adaptation:
Choreography: Björn Säfsten.
Scenography: Jesús Franch.
Dancers: Sophie Augot and Anja Arnquist.
Music: Pola.r0i.de
Video: Alejo Maside.
Thursday 31st of May and Friday 1st of June. 22:00 p.m at
La Casa Encendida, Madrid.
Luis Eslava: a new order for everyday life
Designers (from all fields) are supposed to shape the world in which we live, aren’t they. Written like that, it seems like a pretty heavy task, but Luis Eslava prefers to enjoy and explore the irony of this job. Born in Valencia (Spain) in 1976, he studied Product and Graphic Design there and worked for important Spanish companies like Camper before moving to London in 2003 to do a Master at the Royal College of Art, the promised land of designers these days.
Luis Eslava. Right: Face to Face installation at the Design Museum, London (2007).
He spent the following four years at the British capital, setting up a studio there and releasing products for companies like Okusa Ltd. or ABR. It was there where he created the USB memory stick called Oh Mary, keep my data safe, one of the most hilarious pieces of design many of us have seen for quite some time. He has recently returned to Valencia and set his proper studio there, but his relationship with London is still intense. He has exhibited at the Aram Gallery and also has just had an installation at the Design Museum. Thus, oscillating between sunny Spain and hectic England, this young designer, that likes to work with the idea of caos as a new order and to use cheap materials to give them a new life, continues to create wherever his imagination and clients take him.
You had a good Cv and a good deal of experience (even working for companies like Camper) before taking the MA at the Royal College of Art in London. What made you take the decision to go there and what did you learn?
I had friends studying there and they were tempting me telling me all about the education, the programs and the tutors at the Master of the Royal College. It all seemed very interesting to me. As for what I learned there, I can say I discovered a lot about myself and my concerns about design, and how I wanted to focus my career.
Bulb shade (2005), a project the merges the existing archetypes of the bulb and the lampshade.
What’s your opinion on the design scene in both countries, if you compare them, and which would you choose if you had to?
I have been in London for almost four years and I have made a lot of contacts and friends there. In Valencia, on the other hand, I have my own studio. The prices for renting there are much more affordable and you can easily have access to a big space to work. Also the quality of life here is definitely higher. Anyway, given the facilities to travel to London nowadays (is very cheap and fast) you don’t need to “choose”, so I take both. I have my headquarters at Valencia, but I travel to London whenever it is necessary.
One of you projects is called My mess, in which you “celebrate mess as an acceptable part of human behaviour”. Its interesting, because instead of creating a system to arrange stuff, its more like a system to dis-arrange it, to build caos instead of order, which in the end is something new in design, isn’t it. Is it caos as a generator of beauty an important concept in your work?
Yes, it is, definitely. I think that the human nature tends to mess and untidiness. A kind of order within disorder and that randomness becomes beauty.
My mess (2005), clothes hanger and room divider.
You form part of the Xiu Xiu collective. What is that exactly?
It’s a group of friends that got together around 2002. It came from the necessity of three friends to share ideas and concepts related to design. We were all living on different places and when we met, physically or on line, we shared our experiences and ideas. From that exchange emerged XiuXiu (we took that name because XiuXiu in our dialect means to gossip, to chat and whisper).
Salon Nude, from the Valencia Furniture Fair, is lately getting more and more attention from the design press (even from bibles like Icon). Do you think the design scene in Spain is finally reaching an interesting point?
Well, I think the design culture has always existed here, even if at a more “shy” level. Now its reaching a more stable and confident stage, with more designers working here and abroad. Also the industry here is trusting and investing more in young designers, which brings fresh air to the scene and calls the attention of the international press.
I first heard of you because of your “Virgin” USB memory stick Oh Maria, keep my data safe, which made me laugh for a whole day because it is true that we all use and trust in technology in a semi-religious way (we all have prayed at some point for our computer not to crash or for some file not to dissapear misteriously). How did you came with that idea?
That was one of my first projects at the Royal College of Art in London. They made us reflect on amulets and Maria was my conclusion on how technology is becoming our new religion, in which we trust as a matter of faith. It has been produced by the company ABR and you can buy at several stores in Madrid and Barcelona, like Vinçon.
Oh Maria, keep my data safe (2004), USB memory stick.
I have seen on your website some other projects related to clothes, lots of shoes and even a shirt. Is it Fashion something that interests you specially or is it simply another form of design?
To me, design is a creative process that you can apply to many perspectives and disciplines. I have done industrial, graphic, fashion design… Its all part of the same field. The only things that change are the materials and production processes, and that makes it even more interesting.
What interest you more, the research or the possibility of producing your designs?
Both, they are both part of the process. First you do the research to create something interesting, then you produce it (if you are lucky). For some projects, however, the research part is more intense than in others, obviously.
What companies produce your work?
ABR and Sol y Luna in Spain, Okusa Ltd. in Japan amongst others.
When did you first got interested in design? When did you decide to work on this?
It was pretty random, to be honest. Before going to University, Design was the option that I didnt “dislike” of all the careers that I could study. But then I got really into it and here I am!
Face to face (2007), velcro lamp exhibited at the Design Museum, London.
One of your last projects, that was exhibited at the Design Museum, is Face to Face, a lamp made of such a cheap material as velcro. What are you working on now?
Im working on several projects, a collection of outdoors furniture, an lighting installation in London…
Finally, since some years, there has been this debate on whether Design is Art, if it should or should not be considered Art and so on… It is clear that lately there is craze on collecting design pieces from the biggest names, one-off super expensive items… What do you think about this? Is it a positive or negative thing?
The culture of Design is definitely growing and reaching more and more people outside the sector, and also the borders between Art and Design are becoming more subtle. There is also some kind of disappointment of the public with Art, I think, because it has neglected a bit its social function. But Design maintains this social use, which is linked to its function, and has very much refined its aesthetic appeal, so maybe that is why now it’s winning the game. People still need cult objects for their everyday life and they can find them in the Design world in a much more accessible way.
Pussy Lawn (2006), chair made of coconut fiber compressed with latex.
More info at: http://www.luiseslava.com/
The bitter-sweet harmonies of Barbara Morgenstern
Born in 1971 in Hagen (Germany), a small town near Düsseldorf, Barbara Morgenstern’s “affair” with music started quite precociously. She began taking jazz-piano lessons as a young girl and, after spending some time in Hamburg, in 1994 she moved to Berlin, where, after some musical projects and in few years, she would become one of the most influential and active musicians from the German electronic music scene.
Her name is linked with two things: one is Monika Enterprise, the Berlin based record-label run by Gudrun Gut (a fundamental figure of the Berlin scene since the very early 80’s), where she releases her records. The second, and most important, is her sound: a very personal mix of electronics with a pop attitude that often oscillates between the melancholic and the optimistic mood, all inmersed in a beautiful layer of harmonies, both vocal and instrumental. Besides her own releases, she is also well-known for her collaborations with prestigious musicians. One of her most frequent companion is Robert Lippok (To Rococo Rot), also member of the Monika crew, with whom she released an EP and the splendid LP Tesri in 2005. But she also is part of project called September Collective, where along Stefan Schneider (Mapstation, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler) and Paul Wirkus, they work on the improvisation field. They released an eponymus album in the label Geographic in 2004 and next month, in May, their second album All the birds were anarchist will be released at Mosz Records.
Barbara’s life is the one of a musician, always open to an exchange of ideas and travelling from one end to the world to the other, playing live sets and discovering new places and stimulus than then she filters through her unique point of view. Barbara agreed kindly to be interview by Self Selector after her return from New Zealand, where she spent the month of March invited by the Goethe Institut and the Institut Français to play live set and compose with the French musician Fred Avril.
Barbara’s releases at Monika Enterprise: Vermona ET 6-1 (1998), Fjorden (2000), Nichts Muss (2003) and The Grass is Always Greener (2006).
What infatuated you first, composing or singing? How did your “love story” with music started and when did you know that music was going to be your way of living?
I started composing songs at the age of 16 . I was a singer in a pop band called “The Lovesongs” (what a creative name!) and took jazz-piano lessons. My dream was to become a jazz piano-player, but I failed because I’m really not keen on rehearsing tunes and scales. But I learned a lot concerning harmonies and since then, I started to get familiar with the jazz idea of improvisation as a way to compose songs.
Many musicians in electronic music tend to compose instrumental songs or feature someone else singing, but you do both. What comes first when you are composing, a vocal melody or musical base?
Mostly the musical base, because I’m such a big fan of looking for uncommon harmony structures.
You work in several projects: your own, your collaborations with Robert Lippok and September Collective. What is your approach, your input, to each of them?
With Robert Lippok we compose together, which means the composition is divided in two halfs and the final output becomes the quintessence of Robert and me. September Collective is based on improvisation. There my part is looking for good melodies and harmonies, playing piano and organ. I just came back from New Zealand where I was invited to compose with the French musician Fred Avril. With him I composed songs, wrote lyrics together and sang a lot, which was new to me after all that instrumental work. So collaborations always open up a new musical side of me.
Tesri (2005), her joint album with Robert Lippok and the Aus Heiteren Himmel single, one of her most famous songs.
You form part of the Berlin scene but, because of the sound of your music, as well as for your usual musical partners, it reminds me more of the Düsseldorf scene. Is there still a difference between both cities? What city you consider more interesting in musical terms?
Berlin is much bigger and so is the music scene, which does not mean, that it’s necessarily more interesting. In Düsseldorf are still a lot of things happening (Kreidler, Mapstation… etc.), but I would consider Berlin more interesting, because people from everywhere are constatly moving here, so we have musicians from all over the world and a few more good places to listen to interesting music.
You are one of the most fundamental artists on Monika Enterprise, run by the fantastic Gudrun Gut. How is your relationship with such an historical figure of the Berlin scene and why was Monika your label of choice to develop your musical career?
Gudrun and me really became good friend through all the years and she’s very important for me, because of her long-term support. She has just released her new album (”I put a record on”) and we will go on tour in the USA in September 2007, hopefully driving a nice cabriolet from town to town to rock all the public! Monika actually “chose me” and I’m really happy about it! In 1994 I was part of the so called living-room scene. We used to organize concerts in our own living rooms and it reminded Gudrun a lot of what she used to do in the 80’s, so she asked me if I would like to release an album on Monika and so it all started.
Tell me your process to make a record. What instruments and tools you usually use. Do you prefer more analogic tools and field recordings, a more organic sound, or are you infatuated by the possibilities of having “an orchestra within a computer”, programming and all that?
Actually, I didn’t use so many analog tools for the last albums, so I’m programming a lot and using virtual synthesizers. Every once in a while I record some strings, guitars or drums. But it’s true, my old east-german organ called Vermona ET 6-1 was my best companion during the last 10 years! For my last album, “The Grass Is Always Greener”, I used a lot my piano and I’m moving more and more into the direcction of analog instruments. I think the next album will be mostly based on piano, but you never know! I’m working a lot with my computer as well.
I wish I could, but I can’t understand your lyrics (as I dont speak German!). What are they usually about? Are they an important issue to you (writting another important means of expression) or you privilege the music and the words are just a way of filling in the best way the vocal melodies?
The lyrics are quite important to me. They are very personal, but I try to put my experiences on a more general level. Most of my lyrics – I hope – can work as poems as well. I try to find good formulations. Lyrics are a good way to draw a conclusion of topics that are concerning me, periods I went trough or experiences I’ve had.
To me, you are a master of mixing intimist, introverted music with a certain pop touch. Your songs are sometimes melancholic but with an optimistic essence. How would YOU define your music?
Oh, that´s hard to say! I always say (if people ask me) “I’m composing songs with German lyrics and arrange them electronically”. But I guess that is too general! My music is a bit strange and very personal, bitter-sweet is a word that fits quite well. I hope I can touch people with my music and say something in-between the lines, even music-wise, because to me that is the great power of music: It can communicate topics and emotions without words. And that is proved to me, when I see that I can reach people in foreign countries, where they do not understand German.
I read that the “The Grass Is Always Greener” is about how happy and sad moments often happen next to each other. How everythig can change completely (in both direcctions) which I think is a beautiful concept that I can relate completely to. You are already working on your new album, I think. Do you already have any sort of concept for it? When it will be released and what can we expect from it?
The next album will be based on piano, because I love to play the piano right now and I want to escape from loop-composing with the computer, which can be a huge trap. But I’m at the beginning of the album right now, so it’s hard to say what it will be like. I can only tell about the rough idea I have. Also, I was asked by the “House of World Culture” in Berlin to form a choir, which is a big, new challenge. This new task takes a lot time at the moment, so I can’t say anything about the release date yet. Hopefully it will be out next spring.
You remix songs for other artists and have yours remixed as well, what does that intercourse provides you?
It is interesting to play around with the tracks of other people. Sometimes real new things happen, and the other way round, with my own music remixed by someone else.
Where do you usually find your inspiration to compose?
I get a lot of inspiration from conversations and walks . I’m a passionate walker. And of course records and concerts inspire me a lot.
So what music do you listen to? What are your favourites musicians from now and always?
I brought back a wonderful album from New Zealand from a woman called Bachelorette, she’s doing electronic music with wonderful harmonies (www.myspace.com/bachelorettepop ). Because of the work for the choir I listened to different music styles during the last weeks, which was totally interesting and inspiring. I have listened to old soul-classics like Al Green, Nina Simone, Jimy Cliff and tons of independent music. Stina Nordenstam, Feist and Radiohead impressed me again. And I can really recommend the last album of LCD Soundsytem, fantastic dance music!
Her “music cave” in New Zealand and cover of the first September Collective album.
More info at: http://www.barbaramorgenstern.de/
Meeting Mr. Sottsass
Last year, around early summer (probably as a consecuence of my work as a staff editor at a design magazine) I started feeling the urge of interviewing Ettore Sottsass. I didnt know why, but it became a mission. I had come across with his Carlton room divider burned out and varnished with epoxy as a part of a project of Maarten Baas, a young dutch designer I like a lot, and I realized that the essence of this colourful and ironic Italian designer with a strange name had hipnotised me.
I didnt know yet that 2007 was going to be “the revival year” of Sottsass, not only because next September he will be 90 years-old (he was born in Innsbruck in 1917), but also because the Design Museum of London inaugurates a big retrospective on him just tomorrow. But sometimes these things are in the air and you just need to grasp them. I started making contacts aroud July and, finally, last October I took a plane to my beloved Milano to interview him at his place. There I was. It was, without any doubt, the most exciting interview I was going to make for quite some time.
I have been researching like mad and preparing the interview for at least a couple of months, but the night before, at some cheap Milano hotel, I could barely sleep. I was going to meet one the stars of Italian counter-desing, the father of Memphis, the most exciting thing that happened in the world of Design during the 80’s and which Im not even sure if it has been overcome yet.
Left: Grey Furniture table and chairs, for Poltronova (1970). Right: Asteroid mirror (1969).
On the taxi, trying to get as closer as possible to the Doumo neighbourhood, where he lives, I calmed down a bit with the photographer, who was rather nervous as well. On arriving to his flat we were surprised by how modest and small it was. Nothing fancy, nothing “too designed”, not even if in his extravagant anti-bourgeois style. No. Some pieces of his furniture, like a small sidetable or a chest of drawers, some of his miniatures, that you can buy at the bookstore of Triennale, some original pictures and a portrait with his wife Barbara Radice by Helmut Newton (a dear friend) and books. Books and more books, specialy on Arts and Architecture. The walls were covered by his drawings of playful interiors and buddihst imaginery (the religion that changed his life when he travelled to India in the 60’s, with his first wife, Fernanda Pivano). Not much more. A humble flat, the shelter of one the most famous designers in History.
Ettore Sottsass was sitting in the living room, helping an assistant from his studio with some kind of strange sculpture and listening to the radio. He was wearing slippers, not at all bothered to dress up for a photo session for a well-known magazine. He was just like in the all the pics I had seen before, with those puppy eyes and that long and thing plait of white hair that has become his trademark. At 89, his body was tired and he didnt want to move a lot, complaining about his back, but he oozed an air of sweetness and intelligence that will never abandon him for as long as he lives.
Our interview began, first in English to then mutate to a mix of that, Italian and Spanish. The goal was to make each other understood. Its all about the Mediterranean, isnt it?
Now is so very common to talk about “emotional desing”, which I think it is an approach you started in the late 50’s and that, in your case, I think it not only refers as being ‘user friendly’ like in your work for Olivetti, but also because you projected own feelings and experiences in your objects.
Well, I always call it sensorial design, because its your senses that allow you to explore and understand an object. Your eyes, your fingers, even your nose. That’s why the materials are so important. Objects can change your daily life, make it exciting, happier and more poetic.
These days some of best galleries from all over the world are specialized in selling not proper painting, or sculpture or anything like that, but very limited pieces of furniture by names like you, Prouvé, Nelson, Superstudio, Wegner and all the rest of great designers. Do you think that Design and Art melt or you think they should belong to different categories with different functions?
Yes, that is happening, but I don’t think it’s a problem and that Art and Design should be separated fields. The key is making a difference between designers and industrial designers. Nowadays, Im NOT an industrial designer. I have been one, a for a lot time, like all those years I worked for Olivetti and the rest, but eventually I have found my space in the world of the galleries because I cant find anymore companies that allow me to do what I want and whose principles I respect. Right now, my pieces are produced exclusively for two galleries: the Ernest Mourmans in Belgium and the Bischofberger in Switzerland.
You started your career as an architect, working first with your dad and then alone, before having to quit and then working for a longtime on design. You came back to it in the 80’s, when you said you were ready. Why were you ready at that point?
I studied Architecture at the Torino Polytechnic and soon was helping my father in his studio, but it all crashed with the Second World War. I went to the front and got prisioner in Yugoslavia, where I was held in a prisioner camp during the most boring years of my life. After the war, there wasn’t much money for Architecture, so Design was the perfect way out and, in the end, took most of my working life. I came back to Architecture in my late 70’s and formed Sottsass Associati. Thats when I felt ready to face the discipline. You have to be calm and sensitive to do that job.
Van Impe House. St. Lievens Houtem, Belgium. Sottsass Associati (1996-98).
Olivetti was the one brand that made you famous for the first time. How did an architect and painter ended with that job?
Olivetti was an industrial design experience like I couldn’t have dreamed to have. I became close friends with the son of Adriano Olivetti, Roberto. Roberto was the president of the electronic department, that was just starting in 1959. We used to go out and have dinner and discuss for hours and hours about what could be done to make products that were nice and human for the user. Around that time, the computers were something very new and were as big as a whole room, so we wanted to design tools that didn’t scare or bore the workers. I didn’t have a clue of that technological world that was beginning, but I was designing what I would like to use if I would have to. I always design for myself, what I would like or need.
Your career was built in position of pushing the line, proposing something new and bold, challenging the people and the industry. It was a very political attitude, compromised with your own values. These days the design world in general seem a bit flat, very focused on a aesthetical proposal but a bit empty, meaningless. Your approach, although very different in the results, seems to be a bit more connected nowadays with dutch desing, or with the work of some brits.
In Olivetti, for instance, we spoke of concepts, about the future, about what we wanted to make out of it. Now it would be impossible to speak on that terms because now all the conversations are focused on sales, targets and marketing. That’s why Im not interested anymore in being part of that, of the Industry. The designers seem anesthetized by the Industry, by the weight of being part of it. That’s why maybe there are less challenging and surprising ideas. The aggressiveness of this industry is killing the creativity. If you open a magazine or go to a furniture fair, you will see 200 sofas and chairs that look the same. It seems people these days are obsessed with designing chairs. Its becoming all quite boring.
Left: Summa 19 calculator, Olivetti (1970). Right: Malabar room divider, Memphis (1982).
It is often said, because of your bold use of materials, symbols and colours, that you were one of the fathers of Postmodern design. Would you say you connected with the Postmodernism flow that was starting in the 60’s?
No, not at all. Postmodernist proposed a return to classic values. They were not Modern but conservatory. I have always felt more identificated with “Pop”, with Learning from Las Vegas by Robert Venturi, that for me means a Pop point of view and comes from the United States. I wanted to overcome the rigidity of Modernism, but in a different way.
You have said you started as a functionalist, maybe influenced by your father, but that at an early point you changed to another direction. What made you change?
I didn’t change, it was my idea of function that changed. Functionalists were worried basically by ergonomics but I realized there were another concepts in daily life that were equally important, maybe in subtle but just as important way. Emotional, sensorial, spiritual and even erotic functions. And that was the path I started to work on.
So you started being quite young a path from the margins, maybe, not really caring for the system and its static laws. But nevertheless you were accepted and adored by the industry since you entered Olivetti. Later, with even more rebellious production, like your ceramic or glass, or your furniture for Poltronova or Memphis, not really something easily digestible for the mass taste, you were always recognised and celebrated. Were you surprised when you were hailed by the same system you were trying to upgrade? Was success something you expected?
Well, I don’t consider that I have been commercially successful, but so I was in the world of critics. I could expect some success, yes, it didn’t surprise me a lot. But it was never an extra motivation or a goal. I just wanted to do my stuff. At the “vernissage” of the first Memphis exhibition, here in Milano at 1981, the street was packed with people that wanted to take a look at it, and it was really a great feeling. But I think I am more motivated by other things, because the other day the 5 year-old nephew of a friend saw one of my drawings and got fascinated and that made me feel a lot better (laughs). It was the biggest compliment ever.
Laminated silk-screens with Bacterio (left) and Spugnato (right) patterns, ABET (1978).
Tell me about the colour. If there is something unique in your work is the master use of colour, without any kind of fear, in each one of your pieces. You even wrote than colour should dictate structure and not in reverse (Struttura e Colore, 1954), which contradicts the very history of architecture. Is this something you really think or a very polemic and powerful statement? Why do you think colour is so unpopular?
Colour it is fundamental to me, and my palette is so very bright. Some people say they are primary colours, but I call them “gas station colours”. And they are the colours I used when I was a kid and I was learning to draw, strong and pure. Why I use them? Because they mean freedom and the reject of prejudices. It’s a shame, but yes, colour is still something unpopular. The predominant shades are white, black, beige… I think the reason is that it is just easier. If you go all dressed in black is very easy. But if you start mixing colours it means an extra effort to combine them. Its laborious and risky. That scares people and it’s a real shame. Bright colours are for a happy and fearless society.
Is it being polemic, rebelling against the establishment, something you looked for? Are you a designer or a anti-designer? You challenged the consumer, a bit “guerrilla style”, but from within the system, using its tools. Is that the true counter-desing, breaking from inside?
No, it was never my intention to be a counter-designer or rebelling against the system.
I was just a bit critical, so I wanted to do something different, to propose another possibility and working on things that made me happy at the same time. My proposal was never charged with aggressiveness, at least as far as a I see it. If people took it like something shocking or disturbing, it’s something I can’t change, but it was never my intention.
What do you think of the terms “good/bad taste”? Do you find it bourgeois?
To me it’s a matter of culture and ignorance. Every society has its own aesthetic code, even each person has one. Sometimes you don’t like something just because you don’t understand it, you don’t understand the concept behind it. But I don’t use good or bad taste because I find them meaningless. I prefer using interesting or not interesting.
If something so powerful as Memphis happened now, probably Ikea would take three months to launch super cheap version collection of it. Would that make you happy or a bit mad?
Its is possible, yes. But there is something that will never be repeated, and even less in a industrial production, and it is the fact that Memphis was a project about ideas. Revolutionary ideas based on contradiction, like mixing poor materials (laminated plastic) with rich materials (like wood). I always thought that using two different languages produces a new life. Or changing the symmetry axis, like the Carlton shelf. Memphis was a conceptual project made by a group of friends, architects, designers and artists (Andrea Brazi, Michele de Lucchi, Matteo Thun, Nathalie de Pasquier…). We just made the prototypes for that exhibition. We didn’t expect that reception in the first place and I decided to leave it in 1985, when it had all gotten too exposed and had lost its sense.
Right: Set for a Poltronova exhibtion (1965). Carlton room divider, Memphis (1981).
You are mentioned as an icon for many designers these days. But who is the icon of the icon?
I have always admired George Nelson, for whom I worked briefly in 1956 on my first trip to the United Stated. I also like Mies, Le Corbusier, Barragán, Aldo Rossi…
Both your furniture, and your architecture, even the small pieces, they are all standing on podiums, which is something very distinctive of your work. Why this?
Because a podium calls your attention and highlights the object. It becomes like a little monument, doesn’t it?
Do you like seeing your pieces used in a house? Lets say you see your Carlton shelf full of books and stuff. Do you like it to see it used or you prefer it to be empty, displayed like a piece of art?
Used, always used. That is its function. I detest being called and “artist”. Im not an artist. I am an architect and a designer.
You have said that your objects are very architectural but I also think that your architecture resembles those objects sometimes. You also use the classic roof and the round door in all your houses. Do you believe in the power of the symbols of the traditional shelter, a home that looks like home?
Objects have to be compact, but in house you live for hours and hours, so they have to be more sophisticated. You can’t think of a house as a façade but as interior spaces and how they relate to each other, and their orientation. Houses are not architecture, they are more like a present that the architect makes to a friend. Right now, I don’t know who to give one to. There are such few people who deserve it…
You also tend to employ vernacular materials, wherever they are built, maybe to better melt with the landscape. Are you against the architecture which screams ‘look at me’, even disturbing the context (which is so very common in the buildings these days)?
No, I think that a piece good architecture stands alone in any context. It looks good anywhere you build it. I don’t think you have to design to match the landscape.
The fact that you build private architecture, mostly houses, is related to avoiding the censure of working for institutions?
It is. I don’t copulate very well with politics and institutions. I design houses for my friends or people that become my friend very fast. People that I want to work with. When you work for an institution it all becomes a big mess.
Jasmine Hill house, Singapore. Sottsass Associati (1996-2000).
Doing research for this interview I read a million definitions of your persona, but I would like to know how you would describe yourself.
You never know you really are, so any definition I might give you might be wrong.
Im an architect and a designer but Im not any guru. I ve had a very full life in which I have done things right and thing wrong. I have worked a lot, I have broken hearts and had mine broken. I have done many things wrong, but I have been always faithful to my point of view. That’s all I can say.
You have been a celebrated designer, an original architect, you have written essays, articles and poems. You have painted and sculpted, made glass and ceramics, and you’ve even had your pictures (photography another of your passions) published regularly in books and magazines… Do you still have something left to do?
Im a very curious person, that is why I do all these things. And there always be more things to do while you are alive. But I will tell you what Im not interested in doing: building a skyscraper. Im not interested at all in those constructions (laughs).
Left: Poster for the Sottsass retrospective at the Design Museum. Right: Glass sculpture.
The Design Museum of London hosts a big exhibition on Ettore Sottsass :”Work in progress”. From March 29th to June 10th.
Bibliography: “Ettore Sottsass, Architect and Designer” by Ronald T. Labaco. LACMA and Merrell Publishers (2006). “Maestri del Design”, edited by Bruno Mondadori.
