a way of thinking that was expressive of a city.You presented the viewer with the theories they would be taking with them to your exhibition?
DLOriginally I had considered having three interviews with different people. To have one with Roland Barthes was also a possibility, but I was worried about the film becoming didactic.
The next work I made was a book, Publication.
LMLanguage as art is only the subject of the book. In your pieces it is the structure not the subject that is the work. It is not just three questions; there is a syllogistic form. You made a book as an exhibition. You asked people working with language as art three questions about language as art. Their responses are changed by the context in which you collected them, which is your artwork. So your use of other people to make your work is more central to this work than the question of language as an artwork.
DLYes, exactly. But actually few people have been able to understand it that way.
LMPublication doesn’t make any distinction between the writing of critics and the writing of artists. Victor Burgin’s piece is an artwork, but Barbara Reise and Michel Claura write as critics. Artists have adopted recent forms of criticism and influenced its development through their work. Publication produced a transition in your use of language. In your subsequent film, language and action have an equal role, while more recent films have been made without language, just with visual information.
DLPersonally, it was very healthy for me to do Publication. I subsequently took a break and went to Argentina, in 1971, where I made Reading Film from ‘Knots’ by R.D. Laing. Just before leaving for Argentina, I made a film called Reading of an Extract from ‘Labyrinths’ by J.L. Borges, which was based on short quotes from the essay ‘A New Refutation of Time’ from Borges’ Labyrinths.
LMWhat criteria did you use to choose one passage rather than another from Labyrinths?
DLLabyrinths had always interested me and I had often wanted to do something with it but I never knew how. After Publication I wanted to work on writing, in some other form. I chose the phrases which for me represented my understanding of Labyrinths.
LMReading of an Extract from ‘Labyrinths’ by J.L. Borges has no sound, just the image of someone reading. What is being read is presented as a subtitle. You cannot hear it but you can read it simultaneously.
DLIt reflects what Borges is about. I wanted to bring out his silence and perception. But, again, this is about personal experience. The film’s image is what the viewer does when he reads the subtitles. It is a mirror reflection of the viewer watching the film. This is a very Borgesian idea. He never expresses anything but himself, yet at the same time also you.
The Laing film is absolutely different from the Borges film. Again, it is related to what Laing himself is about. First it shows the text, eight pages from Laing, and then someone reading the same text with sound. You read the text; then it is read to you.
LMOne is a story, the other an analysis, but both rely on self-knowledge. I can see the distinction between Borges and Laing, and the difference in the use of language in the two films, but where do they connect to each other?
DLThey were both starting points that took me into two different ways of handling the same problem, a problem about reading. It is not about the distinction between Borges and Laing. The distinction between the two films is a distinction in my way of understanding. That is how the films connect. When I returned to London the first work I made was Film Script in 1972. It consisted of a slide projection and a film. What I wanted to bring out in this work was the many possible permutations of a set of slides as opposed to the consecutive order of a film. The slides and film worked with a beginning and an end, but there was a random structure. A later presentation in Italy was much better. The film and three cassettes of slides all started with the same image and all lasted exactly the same amount of time.
LMThe original presentation of Film Script was at Nigel Greenwood’s Gallery in London, where it had been filmed. You are no longer emphasizing the place but the presentation of the film.
DLFirst you plan the context a work is to be shown in. Then you find the best possible form to make it in. But once it is made, it becomes possible to introduce new qualifications, which are closer to the original intention than the original plan. This involves a development I could not have understood beforehand. It is a classical idea of art. I did not devise it; it just happened and I am happy about it.
LMWhile we were making Film Script, in which I was the actress, you talked about a scene from a movie such as John Schlesingers Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), about scenes which do not give any information but create the feeling of the film.
DLIn all movies you have scenes which just connect and do not contain any information, like a genre piece.
LMLast summer [1971], you showed a film called Cumulative Script, at Gallery House. In this piece, the repetition of events is made within the framework of the film, not as external information as in the slides in Film Script.
DLThe structure of this film is complex. I edited together two films, the original and a copy. But you need to see the film or have it explained in a diagram to be able to understand how its repetition works. The film is divided into six scenes. The first scene is shown and then repeated with the second scene; then the second scene is repeated, then the third scene and so on. Except, it is not always exact. Sometimes I start halfway through a scene and end before the end of it.
LMThe repeat of the film is markedly bluer. Was it necessary to make a deliberate distinction in the repeat?
DLI wonder because it involves a qualification that I am not sure people need. I now think it would be more interesting not to make that sort of distinction.
LMWhen watching the film, one follows people; they go to a place, meet, an activity takes place, and they go away.
DLI am not suggesting that the activities are important, but people, or figures, are central to this film.
I was interested in the structure of the storyline. I was interested in the structure of the meeting. It was important to have a clearly recognizable story before it went through the various repetitions so that people could reconstruct the events for themselves.
In Cumulative Script something actually happens. Two people meet, but no reason is given as to why this happens. Most contact with people is like this. You observe what they are doing on a bus or in the streets, or playing in the park. You observe far more about actions you know nothing about than you do with people you know, because then you are part of their action.
LMWhenever I refer to subjects in your work, you refute the importance of the subject. Your subjects are analogies selected from many possible analogies, and one has to see through the limitations of the analogy to understand the work.
DLIn this interview I have said many things which relate more to our conversation than to my work. This is not a negative statement because it is an attitude which is already there in the work. It is impossible for me to make definitive statements. A piece is defined by the person who looks at it.
* Extracts of this text were published in Art Press (Paris), no. 3 (March-April 1973), 14-15.
HEIKE ANDER
WORKS/WERKE 1962—1976
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