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| Shelly Silver, “April 2nd,” 1994. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. http://www.eai.org |
Shelly
Silver: In 1969, Vito Acconci did a work called "Following
Piece" where he followed people every day for a month
in NYC. I knew about it because the performance
was documented with black-and-white photographs. I heard about this piece in
the early eighties. At the time, I was interested in the aggressive yet
vulnerable quality of his videos and installations, which usually centered on
himself. Acconci pulling out his pubic hair, one by one. Acconci confronting
the viewer with a baseball bat. Acconci trying to pry the eyelids of his
girlfriend open, trying to convince her to tie herself up. His mixing of the
private and public made sense to me when related to television, that tightly
controlled but seemingly harmless box that brings the outside in, to the living
room, the kitchen, the bedroom. It was the outside coming in, so why shouldn’t
the inside come out?
Acconci was an intense, odd, not particularly attractive man (who
appeared half-dressed or naked, who dressed up his penis). When I got to know
him, in my very early 20s, he seemed deeply middle-aged. I remember
thinking that he was a more interesting role model than many of the women who
did performance at the time, who were thin and young and attractive. I thought
that when I got older and fatter and less attractive, I would try. I never got
much fatter but I did get older. In the early 2000s, I had decided I had Acconci-ed
up sufficiently to be the central performer/crazed heroine of my film "suicide" (2003).
In 1993, I found myself living in Paris at the Cité internationale
des arts, spending 10 hours a day editing a film about Berlin ("Former East/Former West," 1994). One day,
probably to get away from my editing table, I decided to repeat Acconci’s
performance. I wasn’t thinking of it as a performance; I was thinking of it as
an experiment whose outcome or excuse would be a video.
The actual shooting was both stressful and exciting—a mixture of nerves and adrenaline. I rushed back to my studio to
dress for a dinner party where I remember holding a glass of red wine, hands
shaking, recounting my afternoon adventure to the artists Lynn Hershman and
Gary Hill and the curator Stephen Sarrazin. I remember this even though it
probably didn’t happen.
LV: I’m
curious about how much of the process of creating this work was calculated and
deliberate versus organic and accidental. Did you develop the idea over time
and then take to the street to execute it, or was it more inspired by just
being in the public sphere?
SS: The
machine—the conceptual framework—was set deliberately, but not with a calculated result. What
happened afterward was accidental or organic, depending on how you define life.
It grows out of the experiment.
The idea was simple. I didn’t ruminate over it or develop it. I just
did it.
The project was definitely influenced
by my experience in Paris—I don’t
think I would have done it elsewhere. The narrow winding streets which push
people together on the sidewalk were more conducive to following. There were
more people on the street, in cafés, hanging out in doorways. And in Paris
people look at each other more and flirt more. There is an awareness and
acknowledgement, or at least there was at that time. And everything seemed much
more gendered—the way people dressed and
acted.
Would I have done this in NYC? No. Why not? The simplest reason, it
was easier to do this as an outsider. Being a foreigner can be liberating. This
small distance, this shift in culture, probably made my behavior possible.
I’ve had both the paranoia and the actual experience of being
followed by a man. It’s awful. During the filming I started to follow one woman
and stopped immediately. I physically couldn’t do it—I became nauseated.
LV: Did you
follow other men that did not make it into the final video?
SS: It’s been
a while since I looked at the footage, but there were definitely other people
who didn’t make it in. There were at least several men, the one woman, also a
couple. I followed the policeman who appears towards the beginning, twice. The
first time he tried his best to ignore me. You can see him repeatedly looking
to his left. I’m sure this was so he could see if I was there and still there. Finally
he turned full around and looked at me. The second time he angrily stopped me, almost
shouting at me, wanting to know what I was doing. I pulled the tourist card
saying I was filming the beautiful buildings and people. He told me I should
just stick to the buildings, like normal tourists. Then he let me go.
LV: Your work
as a whole reveals an interest in other cultures, and in many cases public
spaces in these foreign places.
SS: I’ve
always traveled a lot and most of the nineties I spent circulating, on artists’
residencies (DAAD/Berlin, Cité/Paris, Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission/Tokyo),
to make money or to show work. This really blew my way of thinking wide open,
directly influencing the films I could and wanted to make. The position of the
outsider is an interesting one. You know less but sometimes can see more, if
you have the time and curiosity. Outsiders often ask the basic questions, like “Why
is it this way?” about things that residents take for granted. Of course it’s
also very easy to be the stupid outsider.
LV: I’m focusing
on two main themes in this exhibition: 1) the public vs. the private sphere,
and 2) how gender roles affect and determine the “rules” of looking.
One cedes a certain amount of privacy when in public, and it’s
common for anyone acting in an “abnormal” way to draw stares. Unlike Atlas’ video
of Leigh Bowery strutting around New York, in many ways performing and
soliciting stares and giggles, the subjects in your video are having their
privacy bubble breached by you and your camera.
SS: Cedes is
an interesting word. To give up power or territory or control. The assumption
would be, then, that the positive, most empowered state would be private,
right? That’s a huge assumption. Under capitalism, I think we’ve ceded,
psychological and physical (in terms of the actual real estate) control of
public space. This control has moved from the actual public (us) to corporations
and the government (not us). We no longer identify this space as ours. The way we
think of and use public space has changed. Rather than seeing it as a positive,
jointly owned place where the community comes together to see and watch and
talk, it’s now a place to be passed through, on one’s way from personal space
to the semi-public, but highly controlled space of stores or work. It’s not
surprising, then, that you talk about it as a place that is compromised, that
is not ours.
I agree that there’s a sizeable difference between "April 2nd" and the Atlas video. In "Mrs. Peanut Visits New York," Leigh Bowery
(did you know he was born in Sunshine, Australia?) is the spectacle, and others
are the observers. We look at him, and we look at the passersby reacting or not,
but mostly at him. And he is performing for us. We’re in the position of the
camera, but I’m not sure we think so much about it. In "April 2nd," when I followed these men, I was not the spectacle; it
was either the men, or both of us, as a unit. And I was protected by the
camera. It was this temporary relationship, the three of us, that was on
display. “He” perhaps was the most implicated. And this could be seen as
transgressive or downright impolite on my part. “He” wasn’t asked to be part of
this performance or couple. I didn’t ask permission and each “participant” had
to actively do something (run away, duck into a shop) to escape.
LV: Could you
talk more about these boundaries? Do you think public and private overlap, or
is there a fine line separating them?
SS: Public and
private always overlap. They’re always shifting and moveable. We like to think
that there’s a line separating, and sometimes there is. Even talking about
these terms this way, almost as positions on a map, is interesting and
questionable. And these words aren’t fixed objects. Their
definitions/interpretations expand out. Are we talking about designated public
and private spaces? Historically? Currently? Legally? In perception? Psychologically?
One of the reasons I’m so interested in these issues is
exactly because this spatialized idea of ownership—which impacts so directly the way we think of I/you/us/them/we—is ever-changing, ever being renegotiated. The last decade has seen
people intervening around the world (Tahrir Square, Zuccotti Park, Puerto del
Sol, Gezi Park, etc.) in the hopes of reclaiming these spaces, and the response
to this reclamation has often been violence on the part of the (democratically
elected or otherwise) home governments.
LV: What is
your goal in "April 2nd" in these terms?
To explore the boundaries and find where the limits lie, invade and destroy the
separation? Something else?
SS: Experiments
don’t have goals. They have outcomes and surprises.
I had an idea to follow people with my camera. Certainly I was aware
that this was not typical, that it did push against the limits of “personal”
space, though I always left a very comfortable physical distance between myself
and the person being followed. But a camera collapses that space.
So it started with “What will happen if…” Watching the video, you can
see some vestiges of how the people being followed reacted, and you can see
some reactions from people who watched the process. One of the things that hits
me now is this almost random aspect of someone being chosen, and then becoming
a recipient or target, depending on how you look at it. It could have been
anyone, but it was he. And him. And him. This definitely rubs up against an
idea of “passivity” and the idea of a “victim.”
During the act of filming, as well as when I was putting the film
together, I came to see each interaction as a failed relationship. That one
didn’t stick… that one ran away… I completely lost track of him as soon as I
turned the camera on… someone or something got in the way… until the last man. He
was the one who entered the game. He toyed with me as I toyed with him. He
walked. I walked. He stopped to buy bread. I stopped, filming him do so. He
continued, and then paused to look in a store window, perhaps checking if I was
still there. I was both relieved and wrenchingly sad when he turned the corner
and my battery ran out. It was over.
LV: Regarding
these failed relationships, it seems like you were trying to achieve a balance
of some sort in the end. It’s interesting that you weren’t looking to
completely control the situation, or have complete power over the men you were
following.
SS: I wanted
to put myself in another place, in another relation. I was thinking about
Acconci, a particular artist and man. So somewhere in my mind there was a
gender swap. The project is gendered again, in my later decision not to follow
women. There was a curiosity about what it would feel like to be in this
position. But what I was finally looking for was a call and response, a
communication. The back speaks.
If you describe the mechanism of the film in a certain way (a woman
follows men with her camera on the streets of Paris), I could see how you could
come up with words like control, power, triumphant. But when you watch the
film, do you come away thinking these words? I don’t at all.
At the end of the film, when my camera stopped before turning that
last corner, I felt the sadness of a connection that was broken. That I had
somehow gotten to know, in a small but intimate way, this man. We fell into a rhythm;
there was a call and response; I waited; he surprised. And when that was
broken, there was this feeling of loss, of ending. The game, within the
structure I had set up, was endless, or wasn’t for me to end. If it weren’t for
the end of my battery life, I would have continued until… and so there was a
sadness, and also a relief that happens when you brush up against another and
then part ways, of the game being over—and I
imagine he felt the same.
LV: You add a somewhat
aggressive element by not just looking at the men, but pursuing them, similarly
to how EXPORT adds an aggressive element by ensuring that the men participating
in the public performance are themselves being watched. Could you elaborate on
the function of the aggressive/invasive nature of pursuing the men? e.g. Was it
to make them acutely aware that you were invading their privacy/space?
SS: Consciously,
it was to run the experiment. When I went out on the street to film, I wasn’t
angry. I’m trying to remember my state of mind. I was nervous. Eager. It was
tiring. I didn’t feel triumphant (except perhaps when filming the cop). I
didn’t think of them as men, but as people. But of course I only filmed men.
I can remember when I was young and saw the short documentation of VALIE
EXPORT’s "Touch Cinema" I was
ambivalent, as there was a part of me that thought, “Oh, there’s another
attractive woman giving men what they want.” It’s true, that they had to pay a
price for their pleasure, the price of being filmed. (I’m very aware of my
early opinions now and wonder if part of this was an unconscious identifying
with men…)
There’s another work of VALIE EXPORT’s from around the same time, "Aktionshose: Genitalpanik" ("Action Pants: Genital Panic"), which interested me more because it
was more aggressive/transgressive. In the performance, EXPORT walked into an
experimental cinema wearing crotchless pants, confronting the audience to
engage with a real woman in a closed auditorium where it would be hard to
escape. People were seated, she was standing, and her crotch was eye-level. I
thought she also had a gun, but this was only in the posters she flyposted
around the city. "Touch Cinema" was
outside and seemed cuter, more scaled down. Although there might have been an
ambivalence, the men participate freely. I imagine that they felt that they
were getting what they wanted, for free even.
LV: Earlier,
you
said, "I was protected by the camera." What did you feel protected
from?
SS: When you use a
camera, especially one that’s pressed up against your eye, you become part of a
greater unit. While shooting, the unit was me, my camera, the person being
followed. The water we swam in was the passersby and neighborhood around us.
It’s also a question of acknowledgement. When I look at other people
with my “naked” eye, and they look back, we acknowledge each other. We exist in
the same time and space. When I am in a space next to you, and I’m talking into
my cell phone, you are probably not in my perceived space. I am in another
space, perhaps not even a visual one.
In each of the three works you will show, the camera functions as a kind
of protection and raison d’être. It brings in a different sphere and focus. In
the Atlas, Leigh Bowery is performing for the camera. The performance would be
different, would look different and feel different, without the camera’s
presence. It would also look and feel different if shot in a studio. In the VALIE
EXPORT, the camera is an integral part of the project—the mechanism that reveals, that captures the participants, more than
the box (which is the experiment, the trap and the bait?). I imagine that it
would have been different and even scary for VALIE EXPORT to go out on the
street alone with her mini-cinema. EXPORT’s "Aktionshose: Genitalpanik" ("Action Pants: Genital Panic") was much more dangerous, both for the audience
(even without the gun) as well as for EXPORT. It was direct unmediated human
contact, albeit in a quasi-performance/theatrical space.
The direction of the eyes offers great protection or exposure. The “I
see you” or “I don’t see you, I’m not looking at you.” I’m thinking right now
of that famous scene from "Taxi Driver," where
de Niro repeats the same sentence with different inflection to his image in the
mirror: “You lookin’ at me?” Or that’s how I (want to) remember the scene. His
actual line of course is: “You talkin’ to me?”…
In "April 2nd," I am part of this
inexplicable unit. I am in this other world, which is the world of making the
film, so I can function with my apparatus as a different unit. People didn’t
talk to me; they’d shout out to the person being filmed. It was almost as if I
didn’t function as a person in their space. Perhaps I was protected from being
judged. I was protected from my own vague feelings of doing an insane act, of
acting insane (outside of the realm of normal behavior).
LV: Did carrying
the camera make you feel more aggressive or empowered? It sounds like you were
fearful or at least hesitant at times. Were you concerned about a specific
consequence?
SS: I didn’t think
empowered or aggressive. It was a big rush, like doing a dare. When I was
following, there was a pleasure of not knowing what was going to happen; there
was the pleasure of reaching out, of making some kind of contact. The pleasure
of making a rule and following it regardless of sense. There’s something
exhilarating about this. The pleasure of the unknown. Where it got complicated
was the small rejections, or the feeling of the irritation of the person being
followed.
It was also physically exhausting and somewhat dangerous in that I’m
surprised I never tripped or bumped into anything. My focus was forward,
sometimes on the far distance. I had to walk quickly and hold the camera
steady, while maneuvering around people, walls, curbs. There was adrenaline, a
low-level danger, both interpersonally and physically.
LV: The Electronic
Arts Intermix summary of "April 2nd"
mentions the “female gaze.” Do you think this term is accurate? What does it
signify to you?
SS: That’s a
good question. By definition I suppose it was coming from a “female” so in this
way, sorta kinda. But as this was a replay of the Acconci, it certainly wasn’t
a traditionally female point of view. If we go to the Mulvey of “Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” the gaze could only be male, though she’d
probably not say that now.
So here too we’d have to take some time to define what these terms
mean/might mean.
LV: It’s fun
for people to see conventions about looking overturned and the power shift between
observer and observed. I think many viewers will find all three works amusing. Do
you think there’s a humorous element to "April
2nd"?
SS: I’m not
sure that it’s fun as much as funny, because it rubs up against something
uncomfortable, a bit dangerous or uncanny. I did certain things in the editing
to attempt to relax people into it. Jo Privat’s tango music was to signal
“playful” rather than “mean” although I used it only in brief spurts. The video
does, especially the last half, which is one long shot, have a feeling of real
or even extended time. So humor, yes. Entertainment—certainly not what I was aiming at. But this is a question for the
audience.
