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Ian White E-terview |
 2010
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Associated projects: Treehugger: Now/Romantic/Nature:
IW:Both of the pieces have been taken from an installation which accompanied a project I made collaboratively with Jimmy Robert at Tate Britain in Nov/Dec 2004 called '6 things we couldn't do, but can do now'. It was primarily a performance project - Jimmy and I made 2 (almost identical) performances in 2 different spaces at the Tate, approximately at the beginning and the end of the installation's display. The performance consisted of a series of actions followed by an historical (postmodern) dance piece choreographed by Yvonne Rainer in 1966 called 'Trio A', which we'd learnt specially. The installation which was shown in the gallery's Art Now space comprised of a number of different works (drawings, a print, paintings, text pieces, objects), some of which we had made more collaboratively and others that we had separately authored. At the time none of the works were credited to either of us. All were intrinsically connected (if not directly generated) to/by the process we had been through in preparing the performance. Perhaps they all represented elliptical ways of documenting the passage (or experience) of time - although we didn't start out making them with this specific agenda.
KP: How did you and Jimmy manage the working process of collaboration? Anything interesting about the process you want to tell us? IW:Jimmy is at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam so I was going there every month (from London) for around 5 days for about 6 months, plus we made two one-week long trips together to New York to learn 'Trio A'. The whole project was predicated on this kind of durational, personal process - one of hanging out with each other, passing time, allowing this to inform, if not become the work. IW: Art. Life. Politics. Intelligence. It moves me.
KP: How did you come to make the pieces included in this show? What was your inspiration, thinking, process&..? IW: Simply, I was travelling a lot last year for work and one of those trips was to San Sebastian in the autumn. After that I was going to visit Jimmy in Amsterdam and I hadn't had hardly any time to practice 'Trio A'. The beach there was empty and great so I practiced the piece three times in the same spot. Afterwards I thought it might be cute to have a photograph of the tracks for the installation, so I took a few and chose the worst, in conversation with Jimmy. That's how the photograph came to exist. '7 years' is like a published, edited diary for me, though I think it might not be for the viewer. Sporadically over a period of roughly seven years (beginning in 1995/6) I had been painting black squares into/onto a ruled A6 writing book. When I went to Amsterdam for the first time in 2000 I loved the massive windows of the houses along the canals. I can't describe them in words but found them not unrelated to the black squares I had been painting. So when visiting Jimmy in Amsterdam for '6 things&' I took a new book and tried to paint the windows of the houses along the canal as black squares, from life. It was something I wanted to do in the context of working on the whole project. We thought about including the action of me painting a black square in the performance but didn't. '7 years' is a selection of photocopied pages (the ones I liked) from my original book, stuck onto paper in a grid. The fact that the pages are organised chronologically from top to bottom, "reading" from left to right, with the first and last painting in the book at the beginning and the end is a system to be ignored and to which I have a belligerent yet fastidious attitude.
KP: How do you see the work you make as an artist in relation to your work as a curator for which you are better known? Or is that a ridiculous concept for you? IW: Not ridiculous. My work with Jimmy is specific to itself, being a collaboration. But separately I have an ongoing interest in interpretation becoming content. KP: What influences what work or projects you decide to complete apart from more obvious things such as 'practicality' or 'viability'? IW: Feeling good about them. KP: Any insights about what you're up to next ? IW: Shit no, none. |
KP:
The work you made showing in the 'Treehugger' show has an interesting history.
Could you tell us a bit about it?