• Joachim Trier

    Written by Blenda Setterwa...

    One thing that can be said about Joachim Trier is that he is bold and unpredictable as a filmmaker, expanding his comfort zone with every new film.

    Oslo August 31, Trier’s second picture, he had already generated a faithful fanbase who are now following his career with anticipation. This position can also become a trap, placing you in a box or leading to crowd-pleasing maneuvers where directors tend to create the same movie over and over again with small variations. With his fourth film Thelma, Trier proved he's about to do quite the opposite and took on a completely new genre. Thelma is sensual, claustrophobic, nerve wrecking and beautiful

    Over the passed decade, Trier has emerged as one of Norway's biggest directors. Thelma has been announced as the Norweigians’s Oscar contribution this year and is being distributed in 95 countries. Comparisons have been made to everything from the legacy of Ingmar Bergman to the Netflix hit series Stranger Things, Oscar winning thriller The Black Swan and the Swedish cult film Let the right one in.

    B: You’ve made a film about a young woman from a deeply religious Christian family, who falls in love with another girl, discovers her sexuality and her supernatural powers that she doesn't really know how to control… How did you, being a grown-up man and proclaimed atheist, become interested in telling this story?

    J: That’s a good question. What’s interesting is creating a character, via an actor, by trying to find a human contact with her. For instance, I too know what it feels like to feel the need to be in control when you're not in control at all. And the film is very much about losing control. I too have experienced unhappy love, even though it's a different kind of unhappy love.
    I think the film is an attempt to speak to people who are different from yourself. Older or younger. I’m absorbed by the existential theme of being a young person experiencing love for the first time, breaking free from close family ties, trying to become an individual and the shock that can create.

    The first idea to make this movie was a manifestation of the psychological in a physical body. Her having an epileptic seizure surrounded by people. Me and Eskil (Vogt) who I write with always work from situations that we find interesting in order for it to come naturally. In this case we saw the story as kind of a feminist witch tale, where you side with the witch.
    I myself have a background in subcultures and punk, which makes me treasure the perspective where you see the good in magic. 

    B: One thing I thought about regarding the magic, connecting love between two women to witchcraft and dark supernatural powers is something that has been done in not so very positive ways throughout human history. Did that worry you at all when you decided to take on this theme? Dit it make it harder?

    J: Well, I wanted to approach it the other way around, to turn it into something positive, into a beautiful story. I think everyone who sees it understands that we're rooting for Thelma. Even though it’s complex and you’re supposed to feel ambivalence regarding her moralic persona and such. And, it’s a shout out to everyone who’s ever felt like a freak. On what premises do we accept ourselves? That's the core of being a witch. 

    B: All your movies are very different from one another, in theme and expression. You don’t stick to one particular style or theme like a lot of filmmakers do. Why do you think that is?

    J: I think there's something very cool in exploring variation in themes and genres. Growing up, I loved Stanley Kubrick for instance, that's what he did. Regardless if he made Si-Fi, war, horror or costume drama, it was still always Stanley Kubrick. Because he let some time pass between his films and developed the ideas himself, the movies always had a unique feel to them, whatever genre he did. I was very inspired by that, doing a genre. I work in a quiet  stable team with the same photographer, scenographer and editors, and we as a team wanted to try this genre. I used to love these types of horror movies when I was younger. The 70s and 80s were really cool decades in film history so we wrote it whiles listening to 80s synth music. Horror today is more about blood, guts and jump scares. I wanted to make something that was more psychologically creeping and supernatural.
     
    B: You have a team that you feel safe with. How important is it to surround yourself with the right things and the right people to be able to be creative the way you want? How did you find those people?


    J: It’s tremendously important! Eskil who I write with is an old friend. We met whilst working at a Double or Nothing TV show, as camera technicians. Between takes there wasn’t much to do and we had a lot of time to sit and talk about Fellini, Brian De Palma and movies we liked. After that I attended European Film College where I met my editor, Olivier (Bugge Coutté). He and I applied to National Film School in England, where I met Jakob Ihre, a fantastic film photographer from Sweden. And we have worked together ever since. It’s like an adventure and you pick good people up along the way.

    B: …and hold on to them.

    J: Yes. Not exclusively of course, they do heaps of other films. I like security and having a team, I’m not a novelist who wants to sit by myself and write. And I hope that we can create security together that can help the actors for instance. All actors are nervous, it’s scary to be on a movie set.

    B: This movie seems very aesthetically thought through. It’s intimate and each frame kind of looks like a beautiful photograph. How did you think in regards to the cinematography in this film?

    J: It´s perhaps the most important thing of all. It´s very intuitive and personal. Out of all of the movies I have made, I think Thelma is the most dynamic one. It’s very intimate, sometimes almost claustrophobic. At other times it’s almost paranoid, observing Thelma from a far distance. We wanted to play with that dynamic to create tension. Also, these days when so much is produced only for a TV format and filmmakers are asking themselves “Why do big screen?”, I hope a film like Thelma can answer that.  

    B: What reactions to your films makes you happy?

    J: It’s all in the personal meeting. Just a few hours ago after a screening at the Stockholm Film Festival, a women from the audience walked up to me, took my hand and told me how deeply touched she was by the movie. She didn’t say much, however I saw in her eyes that she meant it. So as soon as it means something to someone else, that makes me happy. I love sitting in an audience feeling like I communicate with others and that we’re experiencing something together that goes beyond everyday encounters. That's something art can do. It sounds simple, but it's really complicated. And if I can do that for a person, it means the world. When someone walks up to me to say that Oslo, August 31 has meant something to them in their life, that makes me feel like all the work we’re doing means something too.  
    Another thing that makes me happy is to see a young actor have an amazing day on set. Like when Eili Harboe who plays Thelma, had one of her best days, it was so insanely good and it was all her own doing. All I can do is support and give feedback. Witnessing that makes it all meaningful. I don’t know what it’s like for you as a journalist, but somehow you always need to look for meaning in what you do. Things aren’t meaningful in themselves.

    B: I think there are meaningful moments. And a lot of the opposite.

    J: Yes. It’s those moments we’re hunting for.

    B: You’re one of the Norweighs biggest directors by now. Thelma has been announced as Norway’s  Oscar’s contribution this year, among other things. What is your reaction to this success? Does it affect your creativity?

    J: Im continually doubtful. Every time I make a movie I’ll feel like I’ve failed completely at some point in the process. But, then along comes a day where I feel like everything is going to be fine. Ups and downs, that doesn’t change after four films. What's great about having made four films is that I know the process now and feel comfortable in the different stages of it. And of course, it has made it clear to me that success creates a certain amount of pressure.
    In a sense I’ve used my last two films to break the pressure that expectations create and get through it. I’ve had some growing pains. This is very personal I suppose but, ideas revolving around ambition and success have been crucial themes in all of my movies. My first movie Reprise is about two friends and their ambitions before knowing that one of them would reach success and the other wouldn't. Friendship and ambition basically.
    The second movie, Oslo, august 31 is about a guy who feels like a failure, who hasn’t managed to accomplish anything. Everyone saw him as smart and promising but then he failed at proving anything. Ambition has become a burden for him.
    In Louder than bombs, the mother is a successful photographer who doesn’t have a lot of time for her family and the father has given up his ambition to be an actor. Instead he’s a stay at home dad who stands in the middle of conflicts with his sons. There’s something beautiful in that. So, I guess success and ambition is a central theme for me.
    Another aspect of success for me that Im dependent on a certain amount of success to be able to make more movies.
    What I do is dependent on someone saying “Sure, we’ll give you money one more time”.  What I fear the most in that is losing naivety which I think is the core of art and life itself. Investigating something only to find out it’s completely different than you thought it was. If you start creating things looking for ratification from others, you'll realise quickly that it isn’t enough. It’s important that the films have meaning. That’s hard sometimes, I’ve had periods where I don’t know what I want to say.

    B: I read a little bit about you and you seem to have a lot of ambition or enthusiasm perhaps, from the beginning. Where do you think that came from?

    J: I don’t know. I easily get obsessed with things. Perhaps that's my talent, I’m good at maintaining enthusiasm. I manage to do those jobs where you need to get up at five am to stand outside in freezing snow. That's a privilege. I can’t think of anything else than my movie when I’m on set. Then, I'm completely free.

    B: If you play with the thought that you hadn’t had this strong enthusiasm and didn’t work with film, what do you think you would have done then?

    J: I don’t know anything else. This is all there is for me. Film is such an interesting way of telling a story, I can’t imagine anything else. Of course, there are moments when I think of an imaginary “after”. For how long will this last? For how long will I have the energy to go on?
    But I wonder if film isn’t vitalising. It’s vitalising to be able to work with your whole self. I was in Los Angeles recently at an award ceremony where the amazing french director Agnes Varda was awarded. I think she’s 89 and she still has humour and energy. It’s such a privilege being a director, working in so many different environments, with so many different kinds of people. Like when we were location scouting for Thelma, going out to the suburbs looking at small industrial apartments in east Oslo. We met so many different people, families from Somalia, Old couples, young students… And the next day we’re at the opera meeting ballet dancers during practice, seeing all their discipline. It’s a way of seeing the world.

    B: Ultimately your job is like having many different jobs at once.

    J: Yeah, that's how I feel.

    B: I’ve heard that you only watch your movies once and then never again.

    J: How do you know that? Well, that's almost true. I mean, I see them a hundred times when I make them, edit and mix them, over and over again. I do have a tradition to saying goodbye to my films at the Oslo premiere. I watch it there together with my team, family, friends and actors. After that, I try to forget about the movie, remove it from my hard drive so to speak.

    B: Is that why you do it?

    J: I think so. Otherwise, I just see things I could have done differently. There’s so much you can do. I did se Reprise once more at it’s 10 year anniversary. I had to, the actors were there and everything. And it felt ok, I was kind of proud but, it felt like another me had made it. In another time. 

    B: What are your hopes for Thelma? Like, in regards to who will see it and who it will affect.

    J: I think I’ve made it for anybody who wants to try to understand it. I’m very curious as to how it will be received in different cultures. It’s distributed in 95 countries! There amongst Russia, were the queer culture is very repressed, that feels really cool, having made a gay-romance that's being distributed in Russia. What if someone who goes to see a horror movie also feels like they get a pat on the back? That makes me proud because the movie is very clearly on the side of Love, that's important to me.

    B: What made religion an interesting subject to you?

    J: It started out as a kind of backdrop for the story. Most Christians in Scandinavia are not at all like Thelma's parents are, her family come from very charismatic and extreme environments. So we did research in places like that. And while doing the research I encountered a lot of people who were very critical towards homosexuality, which is completely unacceptable. It’s extremely tearing on one’s psyche, not being allowed to love who you love. And especially for these young people. I have nothing against the right to personal beliefs, it’s important that people feel they have the right to believe what they want. I don’t have the answers and I find the world very mysterious but, using religion for control, that, I am very opposed to. 

    B: Was it hard to create a mystery? Being used to creating more realistic movies?

    J: It’s a dream come true! To bring fantasy in. What’s hard is showing things the way they really are. I like exploring that and at the same time explore what imagination can do. That's what I hope will seduce the audience. Being invited on a journey into something unexpected and abnormal, seen from our reality. That's what art is for, taking on dreams and fantasies. The film is about what would happen if our deepest fantasies suddenly became real. Would that be really be desirable?

    B: It takes place very much in the twilight zone, between reality and imagination. Destabilisation of reality.

    J: Yes, we wanted the subconscious to surface. Thats where the deep connections between things lay, that we can’t talk about but show in movies. Death, eroticism, love. Big and important themes that art gives us a language for. When you sit inside a dark movie theatre with other people but alone with your thoughts and relate to those themes. I think that's a healthy way of processing them.

    B: If you were to give advice to someone just starting in the industry, wanting to make movies or write, what would that be?

    J: I don’t know if I'm any good at giving advice, just to have that said. But since you're asking, watch a lot of movies. Different kinds of movies, to see what a huge language film is. Watch rare movies from foreign countries, japanese, russian movies, to feel what the camera does differently. And, try to find out what your themes are. What do you want to show, what do you want other people to see? How do you make your gaze interesting enough for other people to want to see it? Break rules. Don’t try to satisfy others or create what's expected.

    B: Be an active observer?

    J: That's very well put, an active observer. See film, see the world and find the language that ties them together. And of course, you can’t just write a script and suddenly become a director, you need to be around cameras, make numerous tests, fail multiple times and try again. I made loads of shorts, like twelve I think. 

    B: You’ve only released three?

    J: Yeah, most of the others are buried or not finished.

    B: So, a hidden advice in this advice is to learn how to handle failure?

    J: Yes. I like to think of something Philip Roth said. He has been writing novels since the 60’s and still does. He says that every novel he writes feels like a tiny bird that hatches in the palm of his hand, craving nourishment and care. And he always feels like it’s probably never going to fly or even survive, but if he stays brave and keeps caring for it, he’ll soon realise he's created yet another piece.

    B: Just this week I read that Norwegian actresses have come together and signed a petition calling out sexual harrasments and inequalities in the industry, just like here in Sweden and many other countries all over the world. This is about your industry and your colleagues. What do you think needs to be done to change this climate? How do you move forward?

    J: I think it’s very positive that it comes out in the open and it’s very important to take it seriously. It pisses me off tremendously, all these women who haven’t been listened to, all these stories, I really wasn’t aware of the extent of this problem. There’s so much to say about this and I can’t cover it all now. Basically the way I see it, a lot of these incidents should be handled legally and should be reported. Then, there are grey-zones, things that are completely wrong but not illegal. We need to discuss and debate those grey-zones. Great acting grows in a climate of trust and cooperation which makes this so important for everyone in our industry, both men and women; directors, actors, crew etc. Creating a safe and trusting framework for the things we do. For people to dare to open up and make great art, we can’t have a culture of fear and repression, it has to end. And I think what’s starting now could be the beginning of something great.
     

  • Viviane Sassen

    Written by Blenda Setterwa...

    While waiting for Viviane Sassen in the exhibition room at the Fotografiska Museet (Museum of Photography), in Stockholm, I have time for a private moment with the almost finished UMBRA exhibition. As much as I’ve read up on Viviane Sassen’s photography, something comes together in the dimly lit room, like a wordless message is being whispered from the walls. They trigger a sense of fusion and synecdoche in me, where all my senses become equally receptive. The sort of images that linger when you close your eyes and speak to a place in your mind where they might be mistaken for personal memories in the future.
    UMBRA is full of contrasts and contradictions. A galanty show, color-popping sunlight, smoke, mirrors and frozen intimacy, capturing the space between the internal and external in us. Shadows of all shapes and sizes follow us like ghosts through the images. Pitch black and magnetic, sharply cut and graphic or thinly-spread like smoke and veils, all with a sense of gravity, mysticism and presence seen through Sassen’s camera lens.
    As we sit down for the interview, Viviane Sassen - like her body of work - signals an alliance between contradicting forces. Genuine openness and curiosity paired with strong integrity and a piercing gaze.

    V: I sometimes refer to myself back when I was younger as a shy exhibitionist. I think that in a lot of my work, there are paradoxes. Darkness and light, bold and subtle… there are all these contrasts. I feel drawn to both sides at the same time. Referring to myself as a shy exhibitionist sums it up. You want to show, you want to shine but at the same time you’re too shy to truly show your self. And I often feel drawn towards images that don’t show faces because I feel like they leave much more to the imagination. I like an image to not be… conclusive. To have an open end.

    B: Something that lingers…

    V: Yes. It makes you think about how you should perceive the image and what the story behind it is. In our subconscious we all have these universal ideas of what things are, how to register and categorize them, to be able to understand the outside world. And how that reflects back on our self. That’s constant, measuring between the self and the other.

    B: What is your fascination with shadows?

    V: I think the shadow stands for the unknown and I want to peek into the unknown. But it’s not about finding answers, it’s the curiosity itself. Maybe it is the fascination with the unknown. With darkness and with death, ultimately. And a fear of death that I have always had. My father was a doctor and worked in Africa. Later when we moved back to Holland, he had his practice in our house. There was always sickness and death nearby, it had something mysterious about it for me. And later on my father passed away, he ended his own life which was very tragic and something I can’t really understand. I think I still wonder what it’s like on the other side.

    B: And the shadow is a portal?

    V: A portal, yes. Without any answers.

    B: Can you tell me how you made these glass photographies in the desert? They look Photoshopped, but they’re not?

    V: No their not. It’s actually pieces of coloured prospects and a mirror. At least in the smaller once I used a mirror. And it was by accident that this happened because I set myself a goal to make a photographic version of the black square of Malevich. I had these really square things in mind and using the landscape. Almost like Rothko you know? All those references are there, but then I also brought a mirror, but I didn’t know what to do with it. At one point we were just resting a bit, drinking some water because we were in the desert in Namibia. When we put the mirror in the sand to free our hands, I saw the reflection of the sky. That was really beautiful! So we started experimenting with making shadows on top of the mirror. That is basically what you see. For instance that arrow here in the very corner, just a very thin line in the middle. That’s the mirror itself, seen from above. That dark piece on the right is the shadow of the mirror and the light piece is the reflexion of the sun in the mirror. They became very graphic, but I Like the human element in them, that you still see the shadows of the hand.

    B: How and when did you know you wanted to express yourself through photography?

    V: I think it was clear to me from a very young age that I wanted to do something creative, because I just couldn’t stop dreaming and drawing. That’s basically all I did. After high school it was pretty obvious that I would go to art school, but at the time I didn’t really know what I wanted to do or become. Or study. I thought maybe graphic design, maybe fashion design. I think the idea of becoming an artist was one step too far for me at the time, It was to vague and I needed something with more structure. So I decided to study fashion design, witch I did for two years. But I quite quickly realized that making clothes was not my passion, I wasn’t really interested in clothes that much. I’ve always had this kind of love/hate relationship with fashion. Like, not really interested but at the same time fashion photography always gave me a great platform to express myself, communicate and experiment with photography.

    B: You started out as a model, that was your first encounter with the fashion industry. Do you think that affects your artistic expression in any way, that you have a double view?

    V: Yeah, I think it had an influence on me back then. Just the fact that I worked with other creative people and could see how they set up a photograph, or the decisions they made. But I was still doing fashion design at that time and I realised that I wanted to be in control of the image. I also think that back then, it was a way of taking back the control of my own body. My own image and femininity. I worked with a lot of male photographers, they do have this “male gaze”. I felt as if many male photographers had these expectations of what a woman should look like, be like of behave like. I felt restricted by that. So It felt liberating to pick up the camera myself and make images of myself. Self portraits, nudes… exploring my own sexuality in a way, through images of friends and of myself.

    B: A way of reclaiming?

    V: Reclaiming, exactly. That’s exactly the right word.

    B: You said that when you were younger you were mostly dreaming and drawing. I think that a lot of your pictures are like images you might see in your night-dreams. The moments you remember in flashbacks later on during the day.

    V: Yes, I hear that a lot.

    B: They go in through the subconscious sort of. When do you first see your images? Do you recreate pictures from memory?

    V: It’s funny that you mention this. A lot of my images are created after I’ve had a dream at night and I wake up with just an idea or an image in my head that popped up. I sometimes make a drawing of it and have it as a lead to stage one of my pictures.
    Of Course, the outcome will be different than how I saw it in my dream. Which is interesting because your mind is endless, you can think and invent anything, but with photography you still have to deal with reality. You need reality and things in order to make photographs. That paradox itself is interesting. In the process of making an image, new unexpected things happen that you would never have thought of beforehand. That makes it very exciting, to be surprised. It’s a way of trickyng the accident. Creating the conditions to allow accidents to happen.

    B: Does that have to do with becoming more comfortable?

    V: Yes, and more experienced. The great thing is that if you have all these years of experience, you gain the confidence to trust your own instincts and gut feeling. Which is great because then you gain this flow. You don’t worry anymore. Compare it to a musician who’s making music and is just in the moment, forgetting everything around. It’s tunnel vision, but it’s great.

    B: Your pictures are so very sculptural. Have you ever been curious to try some other art form? Like sculpture? Or film?

    V: I have been drawing for a long time, on the side. I don’t think I’m a very good drawer, but there are some little drawings over there. Then film, I’ve tried some stuff but I think it’s so complicated with my view of the world. It’s difficult to get the same quality. You have sound, time and narrative. That easily irritates me. If a photographer has too much narrative it becomes too literal. The way I compose my images is very sculptural. An image works in a specific moment in time and space, if it moves it changes and might lose it’s strength, or give too much information and become… prosaic or something.

    B: You started as a photographer before Photoshop and have been along for the entire transition from analog to digital. What do you think has changed? In your way of working and in the artform in a broader sense?

    V: It’s hard to imagine going back to how it was. I mean, a lot changed. I think I was very lucky to experience the whole turn-around. It was just this little tiny moment in time. When I was studying it was still all analogue so I was able to learn all those techniques, the tactility of it, the analogue process. Nowadays it’s more difficult to feel connected to the medium.

    B: For the spectator or the photographer?

    V: Both. I think that’s why young people go back to shooting analogue. Which for me doesn’t make much sense, I have to say. I mean, I understand it from the point of view of wanting to feel this connection with the medium in a stronger and more tactile way. I could go back to shooting more analogue, but I don’t feel the need. I think that the quality of the digital process and printing has become so good. In our collective conscience we have gotten used to the digital image. It took me a while, but now I don’t mind it any more. A lot of people think that analogue is up there, then there’s nothing, and then comes digital. The funny thing is that a lot of museums nowadays prefer to have good digital prints instead of analogue because they last longer. There are famous photographers, like Cindy Sherman who need to reprint all of their work from the 80’s because everything vanishes. The colours fade.

    B: You went to art school for quite a long time.

    V: Yes..

    B: What was good about getting an extensive education in art?

    V: I think time. Time itself. You don’t grow up overnight. You need to experience life.
    I think that’s one of the problems and challenges that young people face nowadays, that it’s all so instant, so immediate, so fast. Because of social media, people have the feeling that they miss out on things or they need to be… you know…

    B: Have something to show for themselves?

    V: Yes! It’s a big pressure. We didn’t have all that information. I think maybe photography itself benefited from the overflow of images, because there are a lot of photographers out there and they all educate each other just by looking at eachothers images, but It’s also much more difficult for them to find their own voice. I mean, I studied fashion for two years, then photography for four years, then one year fine arts. And only then it started.

    B: A protected time?

    V: Yes, of experimentation. I can’t remember ever thinking about the future. We founded our own little magazine just as a way to get our work out into the world, we didn’t have anything else! Sometimes some shop in Amsterdam would sell fanzines like Purple Prose, Purple Fiction, Purple Fashion, Self Service, ID… I’d just send them colour copies of my prints and hope they’d want to work with me. And that happened, I just got a phone call, there was no email even!
    I recently had this discussion with a young guy where I asked him “What would be your dream to make?” and he said, “Well, to make a little magazine with my friends.” And I thought, wow, for us it was completely the other way around! We made these little magazines to be able to get our work out as much as we could. They have the whole world as their platform, but want to make it more exclusive and intimate.

    B: That sound so very nice, that you didn’t ever think about the future…

    V: Yes, we were drinking coffee with friends for hours and hours and we didn’t think about the future. For years, we just hung out.
    I think now, there’s much more pressure.

    B: If you were to give advice, to for instance yourself back when you started, what would that be?

    V: I think you have to be lucky in the sense that you have the time and space to develop as a person or artist.You need to have the creativity, but also the drive to make work. I see a lot of people who make some work every now and then but it doesn’t really come off the ground, they don’t have this urge to create. I think I have this inner drive, this passion to really make things and keep on making things and be curious. That helps.
    We started with two classes, about 60 people. Then, we only graduated with 15-20 people and of the 15-20 people, maybe 4 or 5 are still working as a photographer. And from those 4 - 5 people there are not that many who have regular exhibitions.
    But that isn’t very encouraging, maybe you shouldn’t write about that, ha ha!
    Something that is more of an advice is that there are so many opinions, it’s not possible to make work that is appreciated by everybody. When I was doing my masters in fine arts we had artists and critics every week on studio visits. One would say one thing, and you’d think “Yeah ok he’s completely right”. The next day, someone else would come in and say the complete opposite. So in the end it doesn’t really matter, you have to make your own choices. Don’t be to concerned about being liked.
    I’ve experienced periods in my life where I felt unable to make new work. I was too stuck in my head. But at some point I just thought, “Know what? It’s better that I go out there and take really bad pictures than not taking pictures at all.” I just picked up my camera and started photographing again. And little by little, step by step, you get something that you think is good, or could be different and have a new experience. There’s this saying in Holland, “ein hund die loopt find boten”. It means “a dog that walks find bones.” You see?

    B: What do you think art could or should be? Getting that platform and reach, does it come with any obligations?

    V: That’s a very difficult question. I’m not sure I’ll be able to answer that one. It’s a very important and profound question. On a very personal level it gives me reasons to live, making art is a way to sustain myself. Art is like a mirror, reflecting yourself and the outside world. In that sense it’s philosophical, not religious but spiritual. That’s why sometimes, if art is too theorised, too conceptual or too high brow, I tend to get bored.
    I like to be able to connect on an emotional level. Solely on an intellectual level I loose interest.

    B: What do you do if you feel uninspired?

    V: The best trick is to travel. When you travel you see everything with new eyes. You’re much more aware, sharper eyes, ears… It’s like, if you have a photograph on your wall that you like, at some point you don’t really notice it anymore. It’s a pity because it’s there for a purpose, but at some point, as much as you love it you get used to it.

    B; Home-blindness…

    V: Yes.

    B: Do you have favourite places to shoot where you like to return?

    V: In general, I love it where the sun is shining. I love the sunlight, the brightness. And the shade. So I think that’s what’s most important for me, In a very literal sense.

    B: What are you working on right now?

    V: I’ve just finished a new body of work that is all about femininity. Womanhood and female strength. It’s about fertility and the female power to be able produce, feed and nourish. It’s about mushrooms, things growing… in a very organic way. And I’ve started drawing on pictures again, making collages. This (UMBRA) was kind of soul searching for me. Revisiting the death of my father. This whole series about shadows. Then I felt completely open, and now there’s space for other adventures and to be really playful and intuitive again.

    B: That picture, that is your son and your shadow? What does it mean to you?

    V: That picture is very important to me. It symbolises the fact that we as parents always put a shadow on our own children. In a good or a bad way, somehow we’re always influenced by our parents, even if they’re absent, it’s in our DNA. And I also like that this picture is a view into the future, to the moment when he will have long legs like that.

    B: It kind of relates to what you’re doing now, with parenthood?

    V: Yes! But what I do now is a lot more frivolous and bold.

    B: When and where can we see it?

    V: I did an exhibition at Stevenson gallery in Johannesburg, and there’s one coming up in Tokyo in October and there will be a book made by the japanese gallery. It’s called “Of mud and Lotus”.

    B: You’re very good with titles and words, I think.

    V: Thank you!

    B: I’m curious about the cloud-picture, can you tell me how it happened?

    V: This was in suriname, at a really weird empty swimming pool. I saw this cumulus cloud coming up, and I tried to connect the line of the cloud with the line of the roof. And somehow, for me it relates to the idea of rebuses. There are certain messages in these pictures, you can’t really grasp what their meaning is but they have something that they want to tell you. Like getting messages from somewhere.

    B: You see them all like rebuses?

    V: Yes. Or like words. They form sentences or poems or stories. I’ve always been very interested in the fact that you can take a picture out of one context and put in in a different one, and it will mean something else. You can form different sentences with images. Taking away and adding. Like in a rebus.

  • photography by CARYS HUWS

    Solange’s Performance Piece at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

    Written by Yasmine by Fashion Tales

    With the iconic interior of Frank Lloyd Wright at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Solange detracted and confidently filled the space with her own contemporary performance piece, An Ode To. An art installation of movement and expression where she used herself and the attendees as the medium on themes from her recent album, A Seat at the Table, a music script of personal and universal inquiries.

    As a part of Red Bull Music Academy Festival in New York this late spring, she had one of the most respected art institutions to show An Ode To, a creative statement that will encouraging further representation in the art world for musicians, especially black female musicians. Popularly, merging the pop-culture with the contemporary art scene.

    The limited number of guests, dressed in all-white looks, as per requested by the artist, presumably to have them be a part of the piece in the stark white spiraling venue. The documentation we see becomes a unity and strengthens the visual documentation of Solange’s performance, in the first gaze you cannot distinguish between the dancer and observer which I conclude is part of the realization. The audience were treated to a piece which comprehended modern dance choreography to a live set ensemble playing unrivaled funk, soul and R&B.

    Performance art has for decades inspired and captured the eyes of art enthusiasts, Meredith Monk and Marina Abramović being two of the most recognizable. Yet, it is in modern times, artists have really merged with the contemporary music scene, catching the eye of the mainstream. Marina Abramovic and Antony Hegarty, and The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhols famed 1967 performance, Exploding Plastic Inevidable, for example. Yoko Ono and Lady Gaga are two very prominent proclaimed performance artists. For these artists who have paved the way, performance art has been able to show the astonishing quality it has, a role that has had the chance to enter the mainstream.

    In a timeline where we have been captured and amazed with performance artist Vanessa Beecroft installations, she has received the light beyond the art world network once her work united with the music sphere and fashion collection Yeezy season 1-3 at New York Fashion Week together with Kanye West. The worlds of art have always collided, but nowadays, with greater access to information and a daily influx of visual and audio impressions, the mainstream can embrace the unconventional more and more. Beecroft’s previous installations using the human bodies, creating her army have become an inspiration, not only for Kanye West and Solange, but other music and fashion designers. Not to mention, the work of Meredith Monk, the first to use the rotunda for a performance, a tradition that has been ongoing since the late 60’s.

    An Ode To have been critical acclaimed for its creativity and pureness, unfortunately we can simply witness it through photographs and film. Nevertheless, that is one of the glories of performance art; it lives in the present of the artwork itself and is infrequently at its best when it gets reproduced through documentation such as photographs and video. Peggy Phelan, a scholar in performance studies, emphasizes that performance can’t be saved, recorded or documented; once it does so, it becomes something other than performance art. (1993,146) An Ode To, had a no-cellphone policy, which I conclude made the guests alive to fully engage in the experience from start to finish to live in the moment and embrace the art piece.

    Being able to enter the high art institutions such as Guggenheim, it’s a movement that has been developing over decades. And now recently, the MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art in New York City) has initiated various events the past years inviting more than 750 artists, including pop artists Solange, Jamie XX, and Grimes. And with their Party in the Garden, held in the MoMA’s Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, an annual event that takes place in the beginning of June, included musicians James Blake and Kaytranada. This merge gives performers and contemporary artists a bigger arena and show their work to a larger audience.

    It is apparent that more musicians are seeking diverse forms of performance that captures a broader audience; movement, design, installations et al.

    Solange performance piece has definitely been given a seat at the table.

    Source Peggy Phelan statement:
    Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, Psychology Press, 1993

    photography by KRISANNE JOHNSON
    photography by STACY KRANITZ

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