Sturtevant
Sturtevant
Q & A
At the special request of METROPOLIS M, Elaine Sturtevant (1930) answers a few questions about her exhibition in Paris.
Chronology does not seem to be a relevant concept for you. Your works always proposes to look at things from the point of view of duration, recurrence, delay, comeback, or repetition. Yet it is not about understanding the past but projecting thinking in the future. Is it cutting through the past to re-assess meaning?
‘Most certainly it is not about understanding the past or cutting through, nor re-assessing. The work is full force to the reversal of hierarchies: the impositions of cybernetics.’
The first piece the visitor will encounter in your exhibition at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris is Elastic Tango, a video three-act play. Does the term ‘elastic’ refer to your relation to time? Can you say something about this new work?
‘Elastic Tango is displacement, a means of articulating shifting mental structures.’
You told me that this exhibition is about ‘images over objects’, which is a movement you see as characteristic of our contemporary world obsessed with cybernetics and the erasure of the possibility of image as object. What can art do to re-introduce the interior of image as object? How does the ‘silent power of art’ that you put forward become manifest?
‘The exhibition is about the articulation of visibilities; making thought visible.’
What is visibility?
‘Visibilities as opposed “to see”, which is surface.’
Pace and rhythm are important features of a number of works that you are showing in Paris, such as Dillinger Running Series (2001), Infinite Exhaustion (2007) or Vertical Monad (2008). These works have an effect on me of slowing down my thoughts, imposing their infinite rhythm and fragmented movement; they create a time lag. Do you want to engage the viewer physically? Is it about making them aware of their condition of being unique subjects, individually looking, thinking, and moving here and now?
‘It’s the movement, sound and horizontal light that creates the pacing and rhythm. Certainly not to physically involve the viewer but to give them vast new space for thinking.’
What sort of movement creates displacement?
‘It’s about jumps and bumps. But that’s a whole seminar.’
The exhibition is divided in two parts; the second part being an ambitious new installation that you describe as a House of Horrors, like the ones you find in fun fairs. What is the relationship between the House of Horrors and our ‘digicool’ cyberworld? Are they one and the same?
‘The House of Horrors, as total entertainment, our current fix, is in total opposition to the other.’
With this House of Horrors, do you point at the fact that death has entered the field of entertainment?
‘No, the House of Horrors is about being scared.’
Alongside the exhibition, a collection of your essays and texts for lectures titled The Razzle Dazzle of Thinking will be published by MoMA, ARC/Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and JRP Ringier. What has been the role of writing in relation to the making of art? Are they two different forms of (your) thinking?
‘Thinking while creating objects. Thinking while writing.’
Vanessa Desclaux is an independent curator and writer, London.Vanessa Desclaux is an independent curator and writer, London.
The Razzle Dazzle of ThinkingARC / Musée d’Art moderne de la ville de Paris, Parijs,The Razzle Dazzle of ThinkingARC / Musée d’Art moderne de la ville de Paris, Parijs,
5 februari t/m 25 april 5 februari t/m 25 april
Vanessa Desclaux
