|
|
| Awkwardness and social paradigms in ethnographic observations Laine Kristberga, Film and Art Historian Conversation with video artists Julika Rudelius and Pilvi Takala | |
| When going to Amsterdam, I asked the local art promoters who would be the greats in Dutch video art, preferably female. They gave me the names of Julika Rudelius and Pilvi Takala. Interestingly enough, neither Julika Rudelius, nor Pilvi Takala are Dutch by origin.1 Both have lived and worked in Amsterdam in the framework of artist residency programmes, but Julika is German, now living in New York, whereas Pilvi is Finnish, living in between Amsterdam and Helsinki, or Istanbul – wherever her projects take place. What is most striking, when looking at their work, is their ethnographic interest in society and the mechanisms it functions within. Both artists seem to be driven by an investigative curiosity and desire to know – epistemophilia. If Pilvi Takala dresses as Snow White and tries to enter Disneyland (2009) or in another project Broad Sense (2011) manages to get through security control to attend a strictly limited conference in the European Parliament, Julika Rudelius explores the way of life led by rich people as demonstrated by her works Forever (2006) and Dressage (2009), or the gestures of power and art of charismatic speaking in politics in Rites of Passage (2008). Laine Kristberga: Pipilotti Rist in a talk organized at the Tate Modern Museum in London said that in her understanding, video installations are paintings with light. For you, on the other hand, the video installations do not seem as much as a medium to convey a certain message, but rather a tool to investigate human behaviour, social and cultural stereotypes and prejudices. Would you agree? Pilvi Takala: I agree that certain video works can be really described as paintings with light, but in my works video is more like a storytelling tool, based on interventions2 and real-life situations. For me, video is often the most direct instrument to communicate and to reach the audience. Julika Rudelius: Yes, of course, I don’t really think that you can divide that into two. I would certainly not say that a video installation is only a painting with light. It is both. For me, video is a medium, but what I want to achieve at the end is that my work touches the viewer sometimes in a kind of unconscious way. To do that, I put together a lot of aesthetic and psychological and other choices. I am not doing like anthropological research, I’m rather fighting with my demons, the things I’m afraid of or fascinated by. L.K.: So it would not be right to claim that you see art as a form of social expression? P.T.: I see art as a tool for thinking and as a means of communication. It can be also a form of social expression, but not only that. Methods I use in my work are very similar to those used in anthropology or sociology. For me, too, I have to be at a certain place and observe people’s reactions. In some of my works I attempt to look at specific cultures, microcosms. Nevertheless, I don’t have any pressure to come up with certain results or comparative analyses like I would if I was a proper sociologist or anthropologist. Certainly I don’t want to come up with any cross-cultural conclusions. Nor do I want to come up with generalizations about certain groups of people or nations. J.R.: Yes, of course, I think art can be a form of social expression. Art only as social expression, I think, is very boring, because in that case I would be better off and my subjects would be better off if I did social work. I’m not very social. Look at my work – I mean, I’m looking at people, but they are often very scary and not very charming. Yet I’m putting my finger on a lot of things which I think are socially relevant, I put them there in a very personal way. It all centres on my feeling about these people. I study social circumstances, but social circumstances for me are also very overpowering, oppressive and scary. | |
 Pilvi Takala. The Real Snow White. Video still. 2009. Courtesy of the artist | |
| L.K.: Can I claim that parallels can be drawn between your film-making and archaeology? It seems that you, too, perceive a particular phenomenon not as a detached artefact, but as part of a comprehensible whole. Thus each phenomenon becomes a readable sign providing material for cultural and social analyses. P.T.: I see more parallels with sociology and anthropology, but I do agree that my work can be used as a tool for cultural and social analysis. Because of my work, I’m often contacted by people who are not part of the art world. It is important for me that the work is relevant and accessible also to those who are not art professionals. My work is really accessible to anybody, it does not depend on anyone’s knowledge of art history. The audience can identify with the situations I portray. J.R.: That’s funny, that’s kind of interesting! I never really thought about it, but in a way, yes, what I do is I dig until I find gestures or relationships or a way to show the things that anybody can relate to. When you look at certain patterns how people relate to each other in society or how they behave, you always have these small gestures. You can say that in a way I’m digging down like in archaeology, but then what I do is I readdress it in a new aesthetic way. L.K.: Also, by pinpointing the similarities within a given social group your work falls in the category of ethnographic filmmaking. However, most ethnographic films make cultural generalisations by showing a particular event or artefact, or person, and implying or openly claiming that the particular is typical, that is, general. Is this your goal or, on the contrary, you want to avoid that? J.R.: I do think that making generalisations about people is a very strong tool when you use it as a critical tool, but what I try to do with my art is that you look at a particular group presented by me and at the same time you look at yourself how you are as a viewer. I’m working with generalisations, but not because I want to say that everybody is the same or a certain group should be like this, but I work with this tool in order to show people how weird their prejudices and assumptions are. I start with a big cliché, but during the filming the cliché breaks up and is diversified. The main idea is not that you look at them, but that you look at them and then back at yourself. L.K.: The reflective value… J.R.: Yes, that’s why people feel very awkward when watching my films. They feel awkward because they look at themselves. And I have this awkwardness a lot in my life. So, basically, I give you guys my awkwardness. (laughing) P.T.: When looking at my work the audience has the opportunity to find out what were the reactions of people involved in the particular situation to my interventions, but on the other hand, the viewers can also visualize what they would do in a similar situation. For example, what they would do with a lady walking in the shopping mall with a lot of money put in a transparent plastic bag or how would they react to someone just sitting and doing “brain work” at their work place. I am not pointing that any of the actions is right or wrong. L.K.: The ethnographic filmmaker Jean Rouch has been defined as the “filmmaker-diver”, who “plunges” into real-life situations. Yet your work often involves some staging. To what degree your work can be seen as authentic social commentary and to what extent it is skillfully orchestrated by means of employing actors and editing the material? P.T.: I relate to the idea “diving” into real-life situations and I think I am making a social commentary. Also, the word “authentic” suits my work to some extent, as my work is based on real events and it often consists of documentary footage, but I also manipulate the situations. I actually often cause the whole situation by my carefully planned intervention and I also choose the material to use in the final piece according to what I think is interesting. I have used actors occasionally, when a young woman performing just wouldn’t suit my idea, but I don’t like to do that because it gives me much less control of the improvised situation. If I use other people, I have to instruct them beforehand how to act in all possible situations, but the whole point of doing the intervention is not knowing exactly what’s going to happen. It’s more exciting to be in the situations myself. J.R.: I think I used actors only once, I always work with non-actors. Even so, I think that nowadays the border between actors and non-actors diminishes very rapidly by the use of cell phone photography and video. People basically start staging so many parts of their lives that you don’t know where the acting starts and where it ends. I’m not only editing, but I’m also staging situations. I cast the people, I book the venue and, while these people are at these places, I’m asking them (invisibly for the viewer) certain questions. So there is basically nothing plunged into, it’s all staged. The “plunged-into” part I use for the audience to doubt what it is that I present – it’s like a teaser. | |
 Julika Rudelius. Dressage. Video installation. 2009. Courtesy of the artist | |
| L.K.: I will return to Rouch again. When he was asked why his films on Africa are male-orientated, he replied: “If you want to make films about African women, you have to be a woman. A man cannot enter women’s society, it is just impossible. It is forbidden. It is the male society I can be part of, so that is what I film.” Likewise, it is a question about trust from the groups you are portraying in your work and the way you can infiltrate and stay “invisible”. P.T.: My body and presence is definitely important and me failing to be invisible (on purpose) is at the core of my work. The fact that I’m female also plays a certain role, especially in works such as Event on Garnethill, where I dressed in a catholic school uniform and hanged out on the streets among the school kids. Also in The Real Snow White – I could play exactly this character, because I am female. If I had to choose to be a prince, who would be interested in me? (laughing) The character of Snow White, on the other hand, is very popular and appealing. I’m not sure how it worked in The Trainee, but in Finnish culture women are considered to be more talkative and more likely to start a conversation. If a young man were to sit in the office and do nothing – like I did in my project – people would think that it is just a normal Finnish guy. It is more difficult with intercultural projects, like the one I did in Turkey, where I entered male- only coffee houses with three Turkish women to play games. I was both female and foreign and it would have made sense to send only Turkish women to these places, but in that case I would have been excluded from my own work. J.R.: One thing about Rouch – I think he cannot be part of the male society in Africa either. I think that’s an illusion. This idea of being an ethnographer for society as part of society – that is a desire. It’s also the desire through your research to go into another society, but I think it’s always an illusion. L.K.: In Forever women seem to be candidly open and they tell you what they think of beauty. In a way they do trust you. If you, for example, were male, probably they wouldn’t trust you? J.R.: I don’t think so. In Forever, yes, they tell me a lot, but at the same time they say nothing, they don’t tell me big secrets. For me, the words become a form of a teaser, but underneath you see how the women act with the camera, how they turn around and that’s what they are really saying. What makes people cringe in Forever is the positive things these wealthy women are saying about themselves. So the audience say – oh, these rich women, they are not critical about themselves. But that was totally intended, that was what I staged! In society, women always have to say: “Thank you very much, but I look really awful, I am fat, etc.” And the provocation is that these women are 70 years old and they are telling people how beautiful they are! Yes, my subjects trust me, but the trust is expressed more in the way they behave than what they say. If you typed down all my films, you would see – nothing is said. L.K. to P.T.: The film theorist Laura Mulvey has said that female curiosity “is experienced almost like a drive with an aim and object to discover something felt so strongly that it overwhelms prohibition or danger”. Would you agree? P.T.: I can relate to the quote, but I don’t see why this curiosity should be female in particular. In my practice I have a drive to belong and to take part in situations and to discover and understand social systems not familiar to me. I definitely don’t mind being embarrassed or being scolded by security in Disneyland or malls, but I wouldn’t say I put myself in danger in my work. I think the degree of danger is actually a crucial part of my practice. The seemingly dangerous acts that actually are quite harmless tell a lot about how strongly we are limited by unwritten rules. Carrying cash in a transparent plastic bag in a mall is a minor risk, but appears as something extremely dangerous. Dressing up in a school uniform is in no way illegal, or even against the rules, but I was told I should prepare being sued when making Event on Garnethill. L.K. to J.R.: Taking into account art history and the fact that some art movements were very short-lived and that the latest trends in today’s society dictate that everyone should be on Facebook and Twitter, do you think video art has a future? J.R.: I guess video became more important in art because it became more accessible. Previously, you had film and people working with experimental film, but then video came onto the platform. I think video art is going to stay, as photography is going to stay. Video art in itself is not a movement, I don’t think so at all. But what is interesting at the moment, video and photography are the two mediums that are so accessible for self-made stuff that you can question yourself why, for example, you would go to a museum when you can see a movie on YouTube. My production costs increased enormously, and I don’t know whether it happened subconsciously to make a distinction between a hand-held, shaky YouTube movie or not. I don’t think that video art is short-lived, I think it’s a medium and it’s going to continue, but its whole standing might change through its accessibility. It will be interesting to see what future video art will have in this full-blown social media and self-promoting circus we are in at the moment. Julika Rudelius – born in 1968 in Cologne, Germany, currently lives and works in New York City. Solo exhibitions have been presented by the Grazer Kunstverein in Graz, Austria (2006) and the Stedeljik Museum Bureau in Amsterdam, NL (2004). Group exhibitions include Untitled 2004 at London Tate Modern (2004), Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum, New York (2007); the Gwangju Biennale in Korea (2006); The Youth of Today at the SchirnKunsthalle in Frankfurt, (2006), and Populism (2005), which toured to institutions in Vilnius, Oslo, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt. Pilvi Takala – born in 1981, Helsinki, currently lives and works in Amsterdam. Solo exhibitions include Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Turku Art Museum; Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic, Zagreb; Frac des Pays de la Loire, Nantes. Her work has been shown in group shows in Kunsthalle Basel; Wiels, Brussels; Witte de With, Rotterdam; CAC, Vilnius; 4th Bucharest Biennial; Eskilstuna Art Museum, Sweden; 5th Berlin Biennial; 9th Istanbul Biennial; Platform Garanti, Istanbul and Kunsthalle Helsinki. On 9 June 2011, Pilvi received the prestigious Prix de Rome award. /Translator into English: Laine Kristberga/ 1 In line with what Takala has said, thanks is due to the Dutch Government, which is very generous in supporting young artists. By providing funding and ensuring the artists with studios, the artists have no other task but to create. The conditions are ideal, and also due to such residency programmes lasting for a couple of years, the Duch later adopt these young and promising artists as their own. 2 Intervention – an art project that interacts with the audience, previously created works of art or an existing venue. As a form of artistic expression, intervention is linked with Viennese Actionism, the Dada movement and neo-Dadaism. | |
| go back | |
