Mike Hoolboom

Ironic Nostalgia: an Interview with Nelson Henricks

Source: Practical Dreamers: Conversations with Movie Artists, Mike Hoolboom, 2007

MH: Artists often play with the means of systems other than Hollywood cinema and ent than ever, how is fringe media working expression, the way a message or story is network television, and refer to a broader to enter the breaches of representation? told. For the uninitiated, this often makes the spectrum of human activities than can usu- work bewildering and confusing. Why is it ally be contained within conventional forms. NH: Well, I don’t think fringe work is politi- necessary to alter the shaping of pictures? cally efficacious. Most of it was never meant When I was in a band we started doing to be. Someone said (I forget who) that NH: If I understand the question correctly, cover versions but soon realized that it was politics should not be used as a measure of I believe you are asking why artist’s work easier to make original material. I remember the worth of something. Bad art can have looks so much different that what we see the singer saying, “It’s easier to write and good political effects, but does that make in mainstream media. My initial response play our own songs because no one can it better art? was going to be that artist’s work is part tell when you make a mistake.” You imme- of a larger constellation of alternative uses diately abandon questions of technique Deleuze and Guattari wrote about rhizom- of film and video media, so it isn’t all that (”Can I play this perfectly?”), and move atic structures as a way of combating fas- extraordinary. When we think of image onto something more enabling (“Can I cism. The current historical moment is prob- production in the broadest possible terms— play SOMETHING?”). Perhaps this is all a ably a good time to again consider ways amateur video and filmmaking, home mov- question of intellectual styles. Some people of eliminating fascism. Their argument was ies, surveillance videos, web cams, film and naturally gravitate towards imitation and that fields of decentralized modules (like a video outside of the occident, pornography, technical mastery, and they would call me a potato plant) were the best way of destabi- et cetera—we see that the majority of mov- lazy guitarist because I can’t play Stairway lizing monolithic, centralized structures (like ing images produced globally are not what to Heaven. Yet, I have written a few songs. trees). But it’s not enough simply to make we usually think of as the mainstream Was it more work? I don’t know. a bunch of rhizomes. The key is to connect (though the mainstream is unquestionably them. When linked, rhizomatic structures dominant). Most people underestimate the MH: We are all familiar with the virtues of can have political potential. breadth of possible uses of media. Artists the small moment, narrowcast not broad- are simply engaged in a conscious explora- cast; small dreams not “I am the king of the Perhaps the queer festivals of the eighties tion of the alternatives. world.” But where is the political efficacy and nineties are a good example of this. in this range of fringe media? Isn’t it only Make a queer movie, and so what? But get But are all artists willfully exploring? A com- too easy to ignore these willful obscurities, a hundred people to make a queer movie, mitment to experimentation and what used which may be found only in specialist hous- show them all together and call it a festival to be called the “avant-garde” has certainly es playing to in-crowds? Or is it, instead, and suddenly you have something that has guided my work. But beyond this, I think supposed to rely on the ‘universal’ values of some political weight. So if we want to that it is much easier for people to make the great art: transcendence, the truth in mate- make fringe work political, maybe we need work that they make, than it is for them to rials, consciousness, time and memory? to think about creating links. follow conventions. The work of most artists At a moment when the lies of mainstream, is guided by an interest in representational corporate-owned media are more transpar- 02

I choose to understand politics as activi- this in-crowd insularity is creating a body of from the outset. One of my friends said to ties that have social effects. Usually, I am work whose means and messages lie fur- me while I was in art school, “Don’t forget depressed that my work is so useless, ther and further from any who don’t already that you are making work for us too.” And I politically speaking. But if I think in terms of know the secret handshake, possess the suppose those words have stayed with me. social effects, perhaps my production has decoder ring, speak the riddle? This is primarily a problem of educating the encouraged other people to make bewil- general public. But I think there are ways dering and confusing work (and I believe it NH: Video, as a medium, has been always for people who have no education in art or has). If one thinks rhizomatically, this prob- dogged by a certain between-ness: experimental film to enter my work. I have ably has some net political effect. between television, cinema and art, but employed narrative and tropes derived from never completely of them. I think people popular culture in order to facilitate this. I I saw a seventy six-year-old woman do a had already begun to realize that video’s don’t think every artist needs to do this, but puppet show a few days ago. She was utopian potential—in terms of broadcast some of us do. This is a niche I am happy a Holocaust survivor, and the show was television anyway—was pretty much nil by to inhabit because I adore pop culture. And about her experiences in the camps when the mid-seventies. People (myself included) art. I am a pop artist! she was fifteen. I was literally speechless continued to explore this terrain up into the afterwards. The people I was with—video current decade, but with limited success. I think we underestimate the value of our artists, performance artists and experimen- And let’s not forget that other utopias have own production if we don’t admit that it is tal musicians—were all mute. There was a disappeared as well. People don’t even a specialist discourse on some level. You question and answer session and no one pretend that television has the possibility couldn’t expect to understand everything a in the audience could say a word. I would to educate anymore. It’s nearly impossible doctor says without some education. Some be hard pressed to explain why this was so for anything difficult to survive in the current aspects of medical practice are extremely powerful (in political and other ways), but televisual ecology. And don’t get me wrong: specialized and can take years of education it had something to do with the immense I love television. But I just don’t go there to understand. When it comes to art, there humanness of this person. There weren’t with the same expectations that I do when is an expectation that this simply isn’t the more than twenty-five people in the audi- I enter the cinema or an art gallery. Perhaps case. There is an assumption, by both art- ence. Was that old woman’s testimony use- this is why I feel that my work functions best ists and the general public, that art is trans- less because she wasn’t on TV? Was it any at festivals or in galleries. Over the past five parent and requires no special expertise. It’s less politically efficacious? Was her puppet years, I have begun to feel more strongly the same kind of thinking that let’s people show good art? I am not sure I can answer that the gallery is where my work belongs. I say things like, “My kid could do that!” that question, but I know that for me what I am an artist and I make art. Festivals (unless when they are standing in front of a Jackson experienced that night made all the differ- they are dedicated to art or experimental Pollock. Not all aspects of medicine, phys- ence in the world. It was like the difference work) tend to provide a distorted context ics, or even hairstyling are accessible to between life and death. for the work. They set up the wrong kind of everyone. And the same is true of art. expectations about how the work should be MH: Video art began in the mid-1960s seen, how it functions, what it should do. There is a subtext to your questioning which with the advent of portable video record- seems to assume a natural and interlocking ing, finally the apparatus could be taken As a video maker, I feel that the potential relationship between visibility, popularity out of corporate broadcast centers and put for audience is great, and my most satisfy- and success (financial, cultural and politi- into the hands of individuals. Going back ing experiences have occurred outside of cal). I am not sure we can assume that this through the literature of this time there is the usual venues. In Atlanta, my work was is so. Three years ago, three of the most much talk about a hoped for utopia of repre- shown in a public park, and a few teenagers successful artists in contemporary music sentation, that these tools would make pos- really responded strongly to it. They simply worldwide were Canadian: Celine Dion, sible a genuine democracy of what could weren’t an audience I ever imagined having. Alanis Morrissette, and Shania Twain. (And be shown. Television by the people for the Another time, I was working with ten ‘at risk’ let’s not forget Avril Lavigne and Nelly people. And on the other hand personal kids in an alternative school, and we made a Furtado!) Now I ask you, is this the best expressions which lay far from the strictures tape collaboratively. When it was done, we Canadian cultural product, musically or oth- of ratings and advertisers could also be presented it to the entire school. The stu- erwise? I realize that this is going to sound celebrated. But the liberation of produc- dents were so enthusiastic that we watched like a loser’s argument, but it seems to me tion was not accompanied by a liberation the tape three times in a row. They cheered that there is a hazard in making work which of exhibition, the portals remain as closed when it was over. So I believe the audience is too accessible, too popular. And that haz- today as they were then. Another utopia is out there. Somewhere. ard, I suppose, is that you are going to start has come and gone. How do you see the making kitsch; making entertainment. ongoing disconnect between production As a person who comes from a working and exhibition? Do you feel that most artist’s class background, I was very conscious of Between the most popular bit of television work simply shows to other artists, and that the rift between the general public and art fluff and the most impenetrable chestnut of 03

experimental film there is a vast spectrum the feeling that making video is much less weeks afterwards I was convinced the only of work. For myself, a healthy cultural ecol- interesting now that it’s so much easier to option left to me was to move onto another ogy supports both fluff and chestnuts, and do. I would have killed to have personal, medium. Most of the time I still feel this way. everything between them. Our society is unlimited access to these kinds of tools Every video I have made since Planetarium increasingly inclined towards entertainment, twenty years ago. Now that I have it all here feels like my last one. And with my newest so it falls to artists to do something else: to at home, it seems very ordinary. I feel that is project, I feel I have made a decisive (if provoke, to educate. reflected in a lot of the work being produced self-sabotaging) break from single-channel today, which seems very banal. That prob- work. It’s sad for me to think that I may have MH: The advent of digital video is realizing ably sounds snobbish, but there you go. to abandon video, because it is the medium the utopian hope of the sixties: that “every- that best suits my voice. I still have things to one” can do it. Soon, video/cel phone at the MH: The first person to rub two stones say with video (in fact, I have two projects ready, “everyone” will. But who will watch all together produced an unthinkable fire, then that need to be finished). But the sheer glut this stuff? There is more artist’s media work everyone did it so no one notices anymore. of bad production coupled with a lack of being made this year than in all the previous The first couple of generations of video art critical and curatorial standards necessary years put together, but the rise in audiences are filled with utopian and originary ges- to contextualize it, leaves me increasingly is not commensurate. Is such a proliferation tures large and small that mapped out the wary of going any further. of personal expression such a good thing field. Our generation, on the other hand, when it leads to increasing disappointments seems condemned to montage, recutting In private I wonder: am I an anachronism? Is and dashed dreams? Will we ever get over and reshaping moments which often already my failure to love this glut of badly crafted, the sense of having come “too late,” after exist (either as found footage or modeled in ill-conceived work just a failure to keep up all the important events, discoveries, inven- other lives/works). Everything’s been done, with the times? I think we all need to ask tions, have already occurred? and who would know better, our generation ourselves these questions. Has the medium learned all about it in “art school.” The major reached its endgame in the same man- NH: Teaching video at a university level strokes have been laid down, the outlines ner that painting and sculpture did, and is gives me the impression that production and arguments constructed, it’s been left now poised to be absorbed within a new and dissemination will probably occur much to us to fill in the colours, fuss with the multi-media hybrid? Or is this a paradigm differently in this century than it did in the borders. We are the generation of ornamen- shift that merits serious critical attention? last. The emerging generation conceives tation, made helpless by privilege and prec- Diplomatically I feel I should say it’s the these issues within an entirely different edent. Gatekeepers between the analog latter, but in my heart, I am almost sure the framework. One of my students posts his world of presence and a digital microverse former has prevailed. I don’t feel that I need work on a website as soon as he finishes of mirrors. to defend video. But I can’t imagine myself it. Some say broadcast television as we becoming one of those people who gleefully knew it is on the verge of collapse. The new NH: The epoch we are living in now is shouts, “The emperor still has his clothes!” model of web distribution for television, incredibly unique. I can’t think of another when clearly he does not. Being a deluded film and video favours small, specialized historical period when there was such a fool is a fate more terrible than working with audiences (recall the rhizomatic structure I glut of images and information. Certainly the an admittedly anachronistic medium. mentioned earlier). Clearly we are entering invention of the printing press and the first another utopian paradigm, one dependent wide proliferation of books must have been MH: Satellite (6 minutes 2004) looks like upon storage space, bandwidth and data similar moment. Perhaps moving away from it’s made entirely of 50s industrial play- flow. Time will tell whether it is viable or authorship and towards filling in colours things culled from the Prelinger Archives. not. We may need to rethink our notion of and fussing with borders, as you say, is the He’s taken his block long stock footage what an audience is and how they interact only suitable response. This, I feel, is the library and put it online, an open source with work. crux of what Barthes was saying when he dream available to anyone with a down- described the ‘death of the author.’ When load button. Do you feel that your movie The transition from analogue to digital has I was working on Satellite, I was very satis- is one possible arrangement of an infinite been a long and painful process, and the fied to be working with found footage. It series? Or does it signal, more ominously, question of distribution is hopefully the felt responsible: reduce, recycle, reuse! As an exhaustion of imagination where there is closing bracket on this slow and expen- artists, we are working in an unprecedented nothing left to discover? sive arc. The shift has had both positive historical moment: one would think that this and negative repercussions. I marvel at alone would allow us enormous possibilities NH: I am embarrassed to say it, but Satellite the fact that the post-production facilities to create something original (and I think it was built in old school fashion. I happened on my laptop are vastly superior to what has). I remember walking into a group exhi- upon a guy selling educational films. The was available in 1986 at Em/Media (the bition in Rome in the summer of 2004 and first one I bought was called Hearing and artist run centre where I first started mak- seeing so much poorly installed, conceived, the Ears. I bought several more in the next ing work). Paradoxically, I am dogged by and constructed video work that for two months, took them back to my studio and 04

Satellite, Nelson Henricks, 2004 watched them one at a time. The films produced that ‘ideogrammatic’ effect abun- a wall; slogans for political parties; names I didn’t think were useful I returned and dantly. A friend commented that the images of bands, films, magazines or products. The exchanged for others. When I felt I had in Satellite look like things I could have kind of language that is prevalent in urban enough material to work with, I reshot the shot. Maybe watching educational films in environments. I was also very interested films off the wall of my studio and built the junior high and high school influenced my in paradoxes and nonsense. I suppose I rough cut. Eventually I had professional film camera aesthetic. I was also interested in wanted the aphorisms to be disposable, transfers made. Still there wasn’t enough notions of the scientific and objective truth, but at the same time, to stick in your throat. footage. I found another person selling which was another level of appeal these There is something disturbing, off-kilter, or 16mm films and repeated this process a images contain: they seem to represent a just baffling about these phrases that is second time. All in all, Satellite is built with world of absolutes, which the text attempts hard to dismiss. elements from eight or nine films, though to undermine. I viewed many more. Lack of immediacy “Everything is visible but no longer means (among other things) is one of the reasons MH: “You are everything you hate. anything.” I think perhaps meaning is where Satellite took nearly two years to complete. Intelligence is insanity by consensus.” These we make it. The brain has a fantastic titles occur in rapid-fire succession over the capacity for creating sense out of random Even though five versions of Satellite exist, pictures, provocative throwaway lines (unre- information. What I was trying to do was the arrangement never really changes. This lated, unattached) in this throwaway world. set up a space where the production of is largely due to the text, which is (kind of) “Stare at something until it is meaningless. meaning was problematized. People have carefully ordered. As the images are linked Ambiguity is obsolete.” Everything is visible described Satellite alternately as political, to the text in specific ways, I don’t think but no longer means anything. Isn’t that bleak and funny. Or my favourite: ironic nos- they would be easy to shuffle. I suppose my also part of the message you’re conveying? talgia (which simultaneously sounds like an interest in using these images was due to Even your catchphrase “Hangover Without aphorism from Satellite and a good capsule their generic, ‘archetypal’ quality. In my work Pleasure” evokes a party you weren’t invited description of my work generally). I often tend to use pictures as ideograms. In to, perhaps the original place where these montage theory, Eisenstein compares film pictures were made. All you can feel, all you MH: There are a long and curious set editing to Japanese ideograms. He theo- can deliver to the audience, are the after of superimposed titles which close out rized that montage produces meaning in the effects, the reaction shot. “The characters Planetarium (21 minutes 2001). Titles like: same way. In Japanese, the symbols ‘child are trapped in the same story.” Are you, Essen Ich Koln NR. Can you talk about how + mouth = scream,’ ‘knife + heart = sorrow,’ the author, condemned to rewrite the same these texts were generated and what they ‘door + ear = listen,’ and so on. So I guess book, or is the audience condemned to mean? Their scrambled rearrangements what I am trying to say in a pretentious and watch the same movie? recalled for me Joyce Wieland’s Reason overly complex way is that I use images Over Passion or some of Hollis Frampton’s as symbols. Still, there is a nuance to NH: Yes, the aphorisms were trying to tap work. Do you find moments of your fringe Eisenstein’s idea that is interesting, namely, into an ephemeral style of language which movie viewing sneaking into your work, that meaning is produced in an interval is prevalent these days: advertising buzz especially because as a teacher you likely between two images, rather than by the phrases; mottos you could have tattooed on see some things time and again? Do Harold images themselves. These educational films your arm, write on a t-shirt or spray-paint on Bloom’s well known formulations around 05

Planetarium, Nelson Henricks, 2001 anxiety of influence concern you (all texts “The West moistens everything with mean- hear my fist pounding on the desk all the are created out of existing texts, and “break ing, like an authoritarian religion which way in Toronto? throughs” occur within a generational ten- imposes baptism on entire peoples.” Roland sion between canonized forbears and the Barthes I hadn’t really thought of Weiland or present), or has all that been left behind? Frampton though I love their work very Perhaps my use of the word nonsense is much. Any plagiarism/citation was uncon- NH: I was sitting around in my studio killing misleading. I think I am not trying to absolve scious. I can’t say I am aware of Bloom’s time, waiting for someone, and I started people from searching for sense in the ideas, though generally I would agree doing anagrams of my name. I’m interested work, but I am raising the bar consider- with that hypothesis. It sounds like an apt in games and unproductive uses of time. ably higher than what the general public is description of my process (though that is Most of the phrases come from sitting accustomed to. It’s a broader, more diffused probably a damning confession to make). around making up anagrams. ‘McKinley sense, and people have to work harder to I quote/borrow/steal very liberally in my Morganfield’ is Muddy Water’s original order an experience. In the occident, and work, usually taking for granted that in the name. ‘Merc Montclair’ is a reference to a particularly in the mainstream media, all process of translation, the theft will become song by Captain Beefheart called When information is totalized in order to make invisible. For example, the soundtrack of Big Joan Sets Up. “Uh turqoise scarf ‘n uh some kind of meaning. And as a people, Window is meant to be a combination of sleeve rolled up over uh Merc Montclair.” we are very frightened when we encounter the bands Tortoise with Cypress Hill, but (He’s referring to a car, a Mercury Montclair.) things that don’t make sense, or rather, because I lack the skill to do this well, I end I listened to Beefheart exclusively during the that aren’t groomed to make sense by a up with ‘Nelson Henricks.’ I have always felt editing of Planetarium. I was interested in boardroom full of power brokers. I believe that style is something artificial: my videos how he uses nonsense to create really won- that there are a whole lot of things that I are very diverse, stylistically speaking, and derful meanings. encounter on a daily basis that don’t make I have tended jump from one aesthetic to sense. I am buying hothouse tomatoes in my another. What is original is the content—the This interest in nonsense fuelled the writ- grocery, while on the radio, the American writing and the ideas—and I think there is a ing/collecting of the Satellite aphorisms, president announces the commencement lot of consistency from one work to another. which were originally to be included in of the bombing of Baghdad. What kind of Planetarium. Most were removed because sense can I make of that? The fact is it does MH: The anagram/nonsense titles appear they made the tape impossibly dense. A few make sense, but one that is hard to contain over an image (of you? a friend?) spray- are still there: NO REVOLUTION and YOU or totalize within speech. We feel the sense ing shaving cream over his body in reverse KNOW YOU ARE WRONG, for example. of it intuitively, somewhere beyond the limits motion, mostly in such close-up splendour It is about names and naming, and forms a of language. And this is one place where I it’s difficult to know what we might be look- kind of credit sequence. It leads the viewer think art can actually perform rather well. It ing at. Apart from its ambiguous beauty, through a field of nonsense until it arrives at is perhaps the only thing we have: this abil- why this picture to end everything (I was my name and the end of the tape simultane- ity to speak in a way that doesn’t fix meaning going to ask: why did you leave this as the ously. into these little iron hard pellets of ideology. last image in the corpse’s eye, which would OK, now I am slipping into a rant. Can you have to resuscitated by forensics)? 06

Time Passes, Nelson Henricks, 1998

NH: That’s me with the shaving cream. My them slowly become recognizable. So there What led you to want to show the unshow- earliest works were performance-based, is this alien body running backwards, and able? The opening and closing phrases many were concerned with constructing at some point it becomes apparent that it’s are the same, does this suggest that living aliens out of the human body. ‘Become an a guy spraying shaving cream on himself. and writing arrive in circles, that we are alien.’ I also wanted Planetarium to look And there is the text running backwards condemned to repeat ourselves? Or is it cheap, aesthetically speaking. ‘Plastic’ was and slowly becoming recognizable as ana- simply that our display modes are acts of the guiding material theme. And of course, grams of my name. I liked the feeling that repetition, because we are forced to accom- because the tape was a comedy, a slapstick the tape was running backwards towards modate already existing forms (in language style of abject humour prevailed. the beginning (rather than ending), which is or clothing) in order to make sense? In this why the tape ends “Nelson Henricks a video sense writing is always an act of rewriting. Like the nonsense texts that accompany by PLANETARIUM.” This idea of revers- these images, it is very difficult for me to talk ibility, that the tape can be played forward NH: I was looking for a third work to flesh precisely about what this sequence means. or backwards, is also present in Window out the Window trilogy. I was toying around I proceeded intuitively, sensing if something and Crush. with some ideas on paper that dealt with was right or wrong, whether it worked or silence. For many years, I had been inter- not, whether it was boring or interesting, I don’t really know why I wanted to leave ested in making a work about an empty and building things accordingly. It’s like people with this image. I suppose the house. What is it like when no one is cooking spaghetti: if you throw it at the wall idea of reversibility made it the logical end there? (This impulse winds its way through and it sticks, it’s done. If it falls to the floor, sequence (that, and the music, which refers Murderer’s Song, Conspiracy of Lies, and it’s not. Everything in Planetarium is the back to the opening credit sequence). It’s Comédie, which all feature architectural stuff that, for one reason or another, stuck also a signature to the work, in which I am spaces devoid of people.) Sometime during to the wall. I do remember very vividly that presented in a somewhat ridiculous posi- the early nineties, I read Virginia Woolf’s we had leftover shaving cream in the bath- tion while taking credit for the work. And To the Lighthouse. The middle section is room and deciding to shoot this scene was it’s funny. It’s like a pie in the face. I wanted a thirty-page description of an abandoned very spontaneous. My partner Pierre did to end on something upbeat, after so much house, falling into decrepitude. This was the camera work. My hope—my very sincere death and destruction. really enabling for me, because I could see and honest hope—is that work is capable of (through Woolf) how it could be done: how articulating something, of making a sense MH: Time Passes (6.5 minutes 1998) is you could make something about nothing, which is beyond the limits of language. This made of exquisitely rendered time lapsed but keep it dynamic and exhilarating. makes it a bit frustrating to talk about. I can shots inside and outside your apartment explain what I was thinking about or why I punctuated by intertitles. It is a portrait I had borrowed a Super8 camera from did things, but I can’t always discuss what of a place, and a writer’s solitary. “They Yudi Sewraj and Monique Moumblow with something means. write in order to disappear.” It is a portrait an intervelometer function: it allowed the of something which can’t be pictured, the camera to expose one frame automatically I suppose another guiding principle act of writing remains an invisible activity, every few seconds, depending on where throughout Planetarium was to give the even if you can watch pen move on paper. you set the frequency dial. It was December viewer unrecognizable images and have Whatever led you to this porous abyss? 1997. I had a couple of spare rolls to burn 07

(and no ideas, having just finished Crush These weren’t things I was engaging in a failure. What I remember from the whole that month). The film cartridges had already consciously. My interpretation, sitting here corpus of all the film and video I have expe- been opened and I wasn’t sure if they’d at my desk in 2006, is that the tape rienced probably comes down to just a few been used or not. I was reluctant to put a was about these momentary epiphanies: moments. Jeanne Moreau leaving Marcello lot of work into a shoot and then have it all moments of intense awareness bracketed Mastroianni’s book launch in La Notte, and come back unusable, so I devised a low by what Woolf herself referred to as “cot- aimlessly wandering the streets of Milan. effort method of burning the film: I set up the ton wool” moments (those times when we Things like that. It’s not the images or the camera on a tripod looking out my window are less conscious, less aware). But this is text that are memorable, but the sensations and pointed it at the horizon visible from our one interpretation among many. One of my they evoke. For example, the sense that, at living room. professors in film school told us we should that precise moment, Jeanne Moreau just never trust what the director says about decided to walk out of the narrative flow I have never liked shooting. In fact, I hate the work. They can only tell you what they of that film. It’s amazing to me because I it. And so I was walking around all that intended, but not what they achieved. remember all the times that I have attempt- day, shopping, talking to people, having ed to do that in my life. lunch, and I kept thinking, “I am shooting! MH: “History is everything that happened to This is great!” But other things were rolling me before I was born.” Shimmer (7 minutes Shimmer stands at the end of my auto- through my head too: the trilogy, Virginia 1995) is a tape about memory, and I won- biographical work, and in many ways it is Woolf, writing and time. I realized that I had der if you could recount it to me now, from a summation of all those impulses. It is a finally found a way to make my video about your memory of it. Would it concern you if rallying of all the techniques and tools I had an empty house. I came home and over the only a single picture survived, or just one developed in my early work, deployed in next week hammered out the script that phrase, if an entire audience left the theatre one concise statement. It was the first time would become Time Passes (which is also after seeing it and a poll was run and a week I really felt in control of the medium; that the name of that central chapter of To the later just one picture remained? Would things weren’t just occurring accidentally. Lighthouse which I found so inspiring). that be OK or would that be a failure? This On one hand, the restraint you speak of was memory brief refuses storytelling, and while due to material concerns. I was incredibly The opening and closing sections then, are it is ostensibly “about” your parents they poor, I could only afford to buy so much film, about an empty house. I edited this together hardly appear, there are no home movies so retakes were impossible. But there were as a rough cut and realized it didn’t make or recountings, just a few pictures which other impulses at work as well. much of a video on its own. I had a begin- quickly fall out of frame. Instead we see ning and end but no middle. So I added stylized, dramatized moments which stage I was very impressed by the work of two Irish the section about writing, which was can- instants of recall: there is a toy train, a cam- artists/authors: James Coleman and Samuel nibalized from two other works in progress. era panning a bedspread (like a descending Beckett. I had seen an incredible film instal- Aside from the reference to Woolf, my plane), a hand holding a cup to a wall. Why lation by Coleman called Box in which shots interest in writing sprang from an interest these moments? Why so much refusal and of two boxers fighting are intercut with black in superimposing two different time scales restraint? leader. Every cut to black left strong retinal that make up human experience: the time retentions: ghost images of the two fighters of the mind and the time of the body. The NH: Recount the tape from memory? Do remained for a few seconds after the image time of the body is slow: the time it takes you mean, recall the whole tape, word for cut. So the idea of using long passages of for a scar to heal, the time it takes to age word, shot by shot? I am sure I could. I black in Shimmer came from there. I was and mature. The time of the mind is light- have a very good auditory memory. I can interested in retinal effect, which is much ning quick, mercurial. So I suppose what play the soundtrack of the video in my head stronger in the film version, as a physiologi- I wanted to do was start and end in this right now. If I wrote it down, I could fill in the cal analog for memory. I liked also how the slower, organic time of the body and then images later. This is essentially how I have film interacted with the eye physically. The take the viewer into this space of the mind: worked for many years: sound first, picture conceit in Shimmer was to work with a film that protracted temporal envelope where second. All of my early work is build that theatre in a site-specific manner: the cin- it is just you and the words, locked in the way, and Shimmer is no exception. ema as the inside of someone’s head and here and now. I felt that writing represented the screen as mental imagery that flashes that friction between the two time spaces “Would it concern you if only a single pic- before the mind’s eye. At one point, I want- well: those moments when the thoughts are ture survived…?” That’s a good question. ed to present Shimmer as an installation in coming fast and your hand just isn’t quick Of course, I’d be concerned. I would want an actual cinema. I wish I’d had the courage enough to get it all down. And of course the audience to remember all of it! But the to do this, as it is probably the way the piece the character in the text is writing to escape reality is, they probably only do remember should be shown. So that’s why many of the the body. one image, one phrase. And that’s if you are images appear as they do: a colour field, an lucky! I think we can’t really count that as out of focus image, a flash, a simple image. 08

Shimmer, Nelson Henricks, 1995

It was about making the architectural space text. I was reading his later texts, Worstward There are images that I don’t think work as of the cinema analogous to mental space: a Ho, Stirrings Still and Ill Seen, Ill Said and well as they should, particularly the ending, theatre inside the dome of the skull. I was really impressed by the economy of and this undermines the strength of the language. I suppose up until this point I overall work. Still, it was a big breakthrough. The one image that I will carry with me from was under the impression that good writing I was able to resolve my autobiographical Shimmer is the glass against the wall. That should be evidently so, with gymnastic uses impulses, which was very liberating for me. image alludes to the sources of the work. of adjectives and punctuation, the kind of It gave me a lot more options as a writer. I When I was moving out of my first Montreal writing that draws attention to itself. Beckett had also gained a great sense of how to apartment in 1993, I had intended to do seemed to be the reverse of that. organize a time-based composition, and this a performance once it was empty. I would had a great impact on everything that came light each room with a different coloured Shimmer opens with an ominous dedica- afterwards, especially Crush. light bulb and lead the audience from room tion: ‘For Mom and Dad.’ In a way, the to room. I wouldn’t have any props: only a tape was first conceived of as a gift for MH: Crush (12 minutes 1997) is a movie water glass, which I would hold to the wall my parents. Then it became a way of say- made in close-up, gathering moments of and listen through. In each room, I would ing, ‘Thanks. I love you.’ Then it became an flesh (a torso turning, a hand clenching) in a recount a story of a previous occupant apology. Heavy-hearted was I in the sound monologue about changing shape, “becom- of the apartment (the building was over a booth, doing the voice-over paragraph by ing animal,” dissolving the self. “When I hundred years old). Anyway, somehow the paragraph. On the final section, I cried become animal I will dissolve, become process of moving AND doing a perfor- on the first take (à la Michael Jackson). I anonymous, interchangeable with any other mance (Ah youth!) were a bit too ambitious, thought this was brilliant. Laurel Woodcock member of my species.” Is this a critical so the project was scrapped. The script I and Nikki Forrest (who were operating the take on gay male gym clone culture, where wrote became the basis for Shimmer and tape) said, ‘Um, we don’t really think that’s a steady diet of work outs, aimed at the the image of listening to the wall with a working. Maybe we should edit the text.’ same muscular ideal, has produced bodies glass was the only element that remained And so we did right there. It helped enor- that appear alike? Is this a harbinger of the from this aborted work. The other images mously. It opened up something that was body’s globalization? “Becoming animal” is that I will carry with me forever are the blue very closed and personal into something a term I hazily recall from Deleuze/Guattari and yellow screens. These colours were the that had the possibility of speaking to a who were inveighing against genital-orient- poles of Shimmer. When you are on the public beyond my parents. So hopefully ed hierarchies and sexual pleasures, insist- prairies, and the setting sun hits the horizon, it is more about memory and the place of ing that revolt against hegemonic capitol all the light is golden, and all the shadows family in defining identity than it is about the needs to begin with one’s own body. Do go purple-blue. I don’t really know of any relationship I have with my parents and my these social pressures and shared ideals other place in Canada where you can see homeland, per se. form the crush of the title? this. It’s a really a prairie thing. From the perspective of 2006, it’s easy NH: In some ways, Crush was a response Anyway, James Coleman and poverty had for me to find fault with Shimmer. It is too to that cult of the perfect body that is some influence on the restraint in the imag- personal and precious for my taste, and emblematic of mainstream queer culture. es. Beckett was responsible for the spartan verges dangerously close to being maudlin. But questions of body image are also a 09

concern for heterosexual men and women, and a love of destruction. In some ways, dow, different look, or a variation on a look). and they also engage in these practices. this encapsulates the protagonist’s journey: The title prepped me for an ambient experi- Gay men have just invested in it in a more he is following this desire but there is some- ence, instead, there is a compressed, every conscious manner. In fact, gays have articu- thing destructive about it. I didn’t really want moment counts feeling, as if a mind is rap- lated a variety of modified bodies as fetish to resolve his dilemma at the end. I wanted idly recalling (in reverie? Nervously flicking objects (I am thinking about bears and the spectator to choose between either of through the once moments?). Can you talk growers as well). I suppose we are pioneers two possibilities: either he succeeds and about how you structured this movie and in that regard. Meanwhile, alteration of the swims happily away, or he has entered into the inspirations behind beginning? body occurs in more underground and a world of delusions. The title echoes that subversive ways, too. I was interested in duality. There is also the sense of compres- NH: I started shooting Window in the winter all the axes that extend from that discourse sion and refinement contained in the word of 1996. I had just bought my first video of body modification—tattooing, subcutane- ‘crush’ (coal being crushed into a diamond) camera and for some reason felt compelled ous implants, voluntary amputation—basi- and this fit well also. So the title isn’t meant to film out my front window. I really loved cally everything that ReSearch brought to to direct your reading that specifically. It is the arrangement of the dark bare branches the fore in the book ‘Modern Primitives.’ more like an odour than a sign-post. Not that slashed across the frame. It always The character in Crush is interested in an long after Crush came out, a feature film reminded me of a Japanese watercolour. extreme form of body modification that will and several pop albums of the same name For both Crush and Window I was living allow him to become an animal. It is more were released, so I have certain misgivings with a camera. It changed the way I shot, I about efficiency than aesthetics. He wants about the title. But it is definitely better than don’t think I would have engaged in this kind to become an aquatic creature: a seal, or the original name (Brotherhood) which was of structuralist exercise if I didn’t have that a fish, or a sperm, something that swims scrapped for obvious reasons. camera sitting on my desk everyday. in a school. Moving from human to seal to fish, or from man to sperm, evolution runs In my reading of Deleuze and Guattari, what By the end of 1996, I had traversed the sea- in reverse. captured my imagination was the dissolu- sons in Montreal. I vaguely thought about tion of ego boundaries, the idea of becom- using the footage for an installation; some- Crush is part of a cycle of works about ing multiple. So perhaps another ‘crush’ is thing about time. But an opportunity arose animals that include Emission and The invoked: the crush of bodies in a crowd. It’s which dictated otherwise. PRIM and La Pig’s Tale. About two years after I’d finished about becoming a fish or a school of fish (or Bande Video (video production centres from Emission, I had come to feel that the tape sperm). On a related topic, I had also heard Montreal and Quebec, respectively) were was a complete failure. Out of anger, frus- about a phenomenon called ‘the rapture of initiating a project called ‘Neige sur Neige’ tration, or perhaps in a sudden moment of the deep.’ Deep sea divers, the ones who (the title translates to ‘snow on snow’, and is clarity, I scribbled out a short text that said go down very deep, sometimes experience an obvious nod to Malevich’s painting White everything I’d failed to say in Emission: a sensation of no longer being capable of on White.) Videos on the subject of ‘snow’ a kind of postscript. At a certain point, I determining where their body ends and the would be produced through PRIM using planned on making this into a second tape water begins. Here is another unresolved their new AVID. I had never edited non- and tacking it on the end of Emission. This duality: is this transcendental or a destruc- linear before, and was eager to try out this short text became the basis for Crush. tive loss of self? technology. So I pieced together a proposal for the project. I did several demo versions I had done a lot of research for Emission Incidentally, Crush is probably the work that of the tape on a Hi8 edit system. The text around this idea of the half animal/half is most indebted to experimental film. The was a paragraph I’d written for something human. It’s a powerful archetype, and it shots of the lemons at the end were a very else. I honed it down to a Haiku, and then appears often in mythology and contempo- conscious nod to Hollis Frampton. Marie ran the English and French texts forwards rary pop culture. Emission situated human Menken inspired the flowers. Even the knife and backwards over each other to beat the consciousness on a trajectory between sequence was a quote from Bunuel and dual-language problem of subtitling. machines and animals. Crush was a crystal- Dali. lization of those impulses regarding one half It had been awhile since I had completed of the spectrum: where does human begin MH: Window (3 minutes 1997) features Shimmer and Crush was far from being and animal end? a rapid-fire oscillation of seasons, entirely over. I felt that I needed a hit single in order constrained by the views outside your win- to maintain visibility for my work. I took The title, alas, is a bit of a red herring. I dow, a nearby tree blooming and icing over Holland-Dozier-Holland as my inspiration. liked the sonority of the word and I liked as the year turns. Punctuated by titles, Armed with the footage and the rough its paradoxical meaning. On one hand it this yearlong vigil offers a meditation on demos, Monique Moumblow and I edited means being ‘in love,’ and the other being knowing (how do we know what we know) Window in two eight-hour sessions. A week destroyed; the destructive power of love through theme and variations (same win- or two later, Martin and I worked out the 10

soundtrack in about the same amount of production centre where the costs were I had moved to Montreal to study cinema at time. At this time, I was under the influence higher than what I was accustomed to in Concordia. Initially I was in film studies, but of hip-hop and Chicago post-rock: De La Calgary. As a consequence, I didn’t always then I moved to film production. The 16mm Soul and Cypress Hill (who were using big feel in control of the project. Though I had footage was all shot during my second year booming bass beats), and Tortoise (noisy a production assistant, I also had to do a at film school. My first film, Silent Film, was ambiance of the first album). All through lot of the production work in French, a lan- incorporated whole into Emission. Only out the editing, I had Carole King’s “winter, guage I could barely speak. As Emission is one image from the performances ended spring, summer or fall” running through a video that is preoccupied with semiotics, up making it into the video: the newspaper my head. My partner Pierre had a copy of working in Montreal gave me an opportunity dress. The other tableaux, though theatri- Tapestry that I listened to a couple times. to explore those avenues in ways I couldn’t cally flavoured, were all developed for the I did some impromptu scratching that we have done in Calgary. But otherwise, it pre- tape or resulted from improvisations. edited together for the credits. sented a series of challenges on all fronts, many of which hampered my ability to obtain Emission is a mixed bag of stuff: newly mint- Every tape seems to have a particular effective results. ed film work and original video material were screening which marks it and become mem- combined with texts I had written for per- orable. The idea behind the ‘Neige sue Emission was based on three performances formances five years earlier. This, coupled Neige’ project was to project the finished I did in Calgary in the late eighties. I was with scripting troubles and transplanting my works on snow onto a wall of snow. The an active performance artist from 1985 practice from one city to another, accounts Quebec people had sculpted a massive to 1991, and there was a strong inter- for many of the tape’s weaknesses. This television set made of ice on St-Denis, play between my live work and the videos is not to say that it hasn’t had a certain just facing the cathedral that is integrated during this period. Performance allowed amount of success. It has been shown a into the UQAM campus. It was here that me to create in a spontaneous manner. lot, and some people genuinely seem to like Window was premiered. It was very, very Video became a method of archiving the it. But for me, its weak points outnumber cold. We drank vodka to keep us warm. best of the live experiments. Emission was its strengths. Sitting here today, it occurs Between the cold and the alcohol, I didn’t also inspired by a carpet commercial— to me that the project had probably gone get the feeling anyone was really watching ‘CRAZY CRAZY CARPET FACTORY stale on me, and I was suffering from a kind the tape. But while it was screening and you WAREHOUSE FACTORY OUTLET’—with of writer’s block. Throughout the nineties, I could hear my voice counting backwards, lots of text rolls and images flying up at the often felt I was one project behind. When I the church bells started to chime the hour screen. It was intended to be like one very was working on Conspiracy of Lies, I really (9 o’clock). It was a great moment. long, dense, television commercial (in six wanted to be making Emission. When I different languages) for sex, illness, gen- was making Emission, I really wanted to be MH: Nelson your early work continues to der, language, communications technology, working on Shimmer. This lag continued up overwhelm me. It is so unexpected, suc- animals, werewolves and evolution. Ideas until Time Passes. cinct, fragmented, unabashedly beautiful that, for some reason or another, I felt were and playful, terse and cinematic, it provides complementary. The perceived failure that was Emission a terrifying basis from which to proceed, as ultimately was productive. I channeled it if you’d written all your hits at a too young When time came to finalize the script in into more resolved works. As I said earlier, age, ensuring you would have to play them Montreal, I wanted to go into detail about Crush was an attempt to correct the errors even when they trot you out in a wheel- the connections between these themes. So of Emission. Emission tried to take on too chair. I’m wondering if you could describe I started to do research, and the script got many themes. Focusing on just one, as I the three part structure of Emission (12 longer. And longer. At a certain point, I dis- was able to do in Crush, allowed me to minutes, 1994), how you gathered material carded the idea of credits altogether, opting obtain better results. Over the years, I have and shaped it. Were there particular circum- instead for a bibliography. The tape became come to assume that the reason people like stances that led to its making? impossibly baroque. I would get into con- Emission is the same reason I dislike it: it is versations at parties where someone could incoherent. This has led me to feel that inco- NH: It’s funny that you can be so enthusias- mention almost any topic and I would say, herency is its chief strength, and I have tried tic about a tape like Emission, which I count “Oh my tape is about that.” I was getting to emulate this in certain works. Planetarium among my least successful works. It was my a lot of raised eyebrows. Then one day, I was a conscious attempt to create some- first Montréal production, based on a script realized that I wasn’t actually smart enough thing looser and open-ended like Emission, I wrote in Alberta, and I have always regard- to write the script I had devised. It was too and Satellite was probably the closest I ed it as a transitional work. Transplanting complicated. And so I radically cut back the ever got to realizing that ‘CRAZY CRAZY my practice to the east was difficult. I had structure to what it is today: twelve texts in CARPET…’ tape. Failure can be generative, to build a new crew, find locations in an three languages in a three-act structure. if you try to learn from it. This fall, I will extri- unfamiliar city, and work with a new video cate Silent Film from Emission and show it 11

Comédie, Nelson Henricks, 1994 as it was conceived: as a stand-alone piece studying film at Concordia University. I’d Morin and Lorraine Dufour’s The Thief Lives without sound. I feel good about this. It feels already been through one year-end screen- in Hell was a template: an archetypal video like a kind of restoration of sorts. ing with Silent Film, a work which people about the social reality of living in Montreal, admired for the lighting more than anything and Comédie was, above all else, a kind MH: Comédie (7 minutes 1994) is a philo- else. I wanted my second film to be a real of homage to my new home and all the sophical psychodrama, a contradiction in crowd pleaser, something funny but tough. architectural sites which fascinated me. I terms I know, psychodramas are generally And that’s where Comédie came from. I was also reacting to Steve Reinke’s work. wordless, exactly about the entry into lan- remember the idea came to me very sud- I had met Steve around this time and orga- guage, but having arrived there, the author denly and I wrote it all down on a cafeteria nized an exhibition of his work at a gallery remains a spectral figure in your movie. He napkin. Of course, this must be a false here. So if Comédie bears a resemblance is never seen, though features prominently memory: cafeteria napkins are notoriously to Squeezing Sorrow from an Ashtray from in the voice-over. He is captivated by a sta- difficult to write on. But I choose to believe The Hundred Videos, it’s probably not acci- tion in the metro, speculating that there are the essence of the story, which is basically dental. patterns in the tiles, that he is surrounded that the tape came to me fully formed, in by secret alphabets if only he had the eyes one lump. The text came from autobiographical sourc- to uncover them. At last he realizes the es, but I was definitely writing with other tile spacings represent tones, and when Comédie is indeed a very cinematic work. people’s voices in mind. I wanted C.K. he puts them through a music program It continues what I was doing with cam- Cousins to do the English voice, because I at home we hear an amateur version of era movement in Conspiracy of Lies, and liked his delivery. There was a fellow student MacArthur Park sung while the credits roll. refines it through Eisenstein’s ideas about at Concordia I wanted to do the French Is this movie a one liner, or is there some- montage aesthetics. I can’t remember if voice over. He was a young guy with a work- thing more going on? It is so beautifully shot I’d already seen Frampton’s Nostalgia ing class accent that reminded me a lot of and carefully composed, its progressions or Godard’s Deux ou Trois Choses Que Robert Morin’s voice. But on the day of the avowedly cinematic at a moment in video Sais D’elle, but it seems likely. Ultimately recording, he couldn’t make it, so the duty art when those who cared about the image Comédie was finished as a film, with a neg fell to my partner, Pierre Beaudoin. Pierre were (mostly) busy making films, and those cut, an answer print and everything, but I was terribly ill, but he came through in an who cared about other things (like content didn’t like it. Shimmer was released and emergency. His voice sounds dreamy and for instance) were busy making video. This distributed in a 16mm version, but the print disembodied because he was delirious with is a ridiculously reductive schema of course, of Comédie lacked subtitles and there were fever. He has a clearer accent—more of a but your early work, with its universalist colour-timing problems as well. Because Radio Canada voice than working class— themes, its looming black and whites, its they could only print my black and white film but he did a great job. This was the first of use of silence and dark spaces, the time on colour stock, the images would turn blue many contributions Pierre made to my work. lapse and quick edits, all these seem to during the dissolves. So Comédie has only belong to a world of film. ever been available as a video. In the end, Comédie did work very well at the year-end screening. People laughed, NH: Well, Comédie is a bit of a one liner. Or In spite of Comédie‘s cinematic pedigree, which is the result I wanted. It was easy for a two liner. As I mentioned previously, I was it has stronger allegiances to video. Robert me to make. It has a simple structure and 12

Conspiracy of Lies, Nelson Henricks, 1992 is one of the few pieces I didn’t write the twelve narrators of different race, gender, enjoy her work very much, though I sense music for. It was supposed to be a trilogy religion and sexual orientation, I attempted that she is more concerned with investigat- but the middle section got cut. Which is to destabilize my own subjectivity and chal- ing the dividing line between private and why it maybe seems a bit... partial. lenge my preexisting assumptions regarding public space. I can’t really say that this difference. The tape begins and ends with was among my chief preoccupations when So is it a film or a video? At the time, I felt two texts written by myself. This, I hope, it came to making Conspiracy though the pretty adamant that I was putting film in the helps to render the boundary between tape does obvious implicate itself in the camera and videos were coming out. My myself and the anonymous author more ethical problems related to privacy, and fellows at Concordia were mostly produc- fluid, thereby questioning the ‘authority’ of what happens when we introduce intensely ing conventional narrative work, so my stuff authorship.” private things into a public arena. looked very arty by comparison. I was con- vinced Comédie and Silent Film (and later This work recalls (amongst others) Sophie My concerns emerged from dynamics in my Shimmer) were videos masquerading as Calle’s The Address Book, which similarly own practice that needed to be resolved. As films. Looking at it now, I can see that per- turns around a found street object. Calle I mentioned earlier, I was actively engaged haps the reverse is true. I don’t know. That’s interviewed everyone in the book and pub- in performance art from 1986 to 1991. My why I am such a bad defender of inherent lished the results in the French newspaper work was autobiographical in nature, text- characteristics for either film or video. Liberation in the summer of 1983. The based, and anecdotal. At the time, I felt owner of the book returned to Paris and I could best speak about my own experi- MH: Conspiracy of Lies (12 min 1992) found that his missing property had been ence. I didn’t trust myself with material that begins with this line, “I found some papers turned into a very public artwork. I wonder lay beyond my own subjectivity. My first in a shoebox when I was walking to work if you might lend further comment on the video (after the eight tapes made while today.” What follows are, presumably, writ- relation between these two works, and still a student at the Alberta College of Art ings contained in the shoeboxes, which your very different treatments. The visuals and Design) was called The White Studio range from lists (“Things that would which accompany these voice-overs are Tapes (1987). Like Emission, it was based probably bring me happiness”) to diary blue toned, low resolution tracking shots on performance work. My second tape, entries. Here’s the description you wrote (usually), moving over supermarket shelves, Legend (1988), was created as a video which appears in distribution catalogues: emptied diners, bars and dance clubs. Why installation and was also autobiographical in “Conspiracy of Lies speaks of the alienation these pictures with that text? What does the nature. Dreading accusations of narcissism, of minorities, consumer culture, urban isola- title of the work refer to? And why do you I decided to try to take on two projects that tion and the fine balance between mental have an interest in taking apart your own looked outside myself. The first, Murderer’s order and chaos. The tape begins with my identity, or anyone else’s? Song (1991) was about a childhood friend voice recounting the story of the discovery I’d lost touch with for fifteen years, who of a series of diary entries and lists written NH: There are definitely marked similari- ended up shooting and killing an R.C.M.P. by an anonymous author. When I found the ties between Conspiracy and the work of officer on the outskirts of Calgary. It was texts, I assumed the author to be a white, Sophie Calle, whose practice I became derived entirely from newspaper accounts gay man, like myself. Through the use of aware of long after I’d finished the tape. I of the story, cut-up and reassembled à la 13

William S. Burroughs. The second was I had the whole video in my head. Making as a video artist grows (this is admittedly a Conspiracy of Lies. Both were based on it was like taking a dictation. I never once slight proposition) has your making become found text. Though they bear no real aes- doubted or questioned what I had to do. more self conscious, and how has this thetic similarities, they were deeply related As with many of my works, the soundtrack impacted on your work? You also teach, in their attempt to engage subject matter came first. It was produced for a radio does having to convert motion pictures into that was beyond my experience. show in Calgary. I did the shooting and the explanations and digestible comprehen- final video edit during a residency at the sions help or hinder your practice? The story of the discovery of the texts is Banff Centre during the summer of 1991. true. Some people think it is fictional, but it Many of the images in Conspiracy came NH: That’s an interesting question. Really, isn’t. As I said in the quote above, when I from the text: the Off Centre Eatery which I would like to think that on some level I read the texts, I made a lot of assumptions is mentioned by the author, other locations am not all that concerned with audience, about the author. I don’t think I was capable were chosen in relation to the author’s goals but this has been a reoccurring theme in of articulating it in this way at the time (or (go to more movies, visit art galleries) or many of my responses, so I can’t deny even in the didactic text you quoted, which activities (I worked at an Italian restaurant). this. The idea of audience has had greater seems awfully rigid) but I guess I was inter- I added a few generic locations that fit and lesser relevance from tape to tape. ested in the space of projection that exists with the notion of routine or the difficulty Certainly Comédie was made with a spe- between the self and the other. I felt that of negotiating social space, an idea that cific audience in mind. Shimmer was made by filtering the words of the author through impregnates the found texts pretty heavily. for my parents. Window was conceived for many people, many voices, some essence a specific context. Handy Man was to a cer- of that person would emerge; something The treatment on the images is another ques- tain extent conceived for queer audiences. that exists outside the space of projection. I tion entirely. I deeply wanted Conspiracy to When I am making the work, I’m engaged don’t think the piece is an attempt to break be a beautiful video. I felt that the facilities in a dialogue with my peers, whoever I per- down identity per se. It’s about destabilizing at Banff would allow me to do this. But ceive that to be at a given time. Other tapes the position and privilege of the reader. This in those days, artists only had access to weren’t really affected by these questions. is another distinction between Calle and 3/4” gear, not BetaCam. Still, I had a good They were just things I was working on, and Conspiracy. She is engaged in a kind of camera, so I was sure I could get beautiful I didn’t consider the public beyond the fact detective work. I never really wanted to find images once the footage was dumped onto that I wanted to make something that was the author in such a specific way. Beta and put into slow-motion. When the satisfying to watch. So perhaps my sense process was complete, I realized the video of audience contracts and expands. When The bulk of the tape is made up of found footage was full of jumps and jitters, which I’m in the edit suite, I am really just thinking lists and diary entries. There are two texts hadn’t been visible when it was running at about one person, one viewer. The works written by myself: the introduction (obvi- full speed. I was very angry. In frustration, I are literary in that sense. The relationship ously) and the last monologue. The title— refilmed all the slow motion footage off of a between the work and the audience is Conspiracy of Lies—is the last line we hear monitor. It was like taking a beautiful, tightly like that between a reader and a book. It’s in the tape. The closing text is one of the rendered drawing and then scribbling all intimate. most over-wrought, pretentious and self- over it. Still, the final result is intriguing and pitying things I have ever written. I felt that if it is probably better than what I originally My popularity, fame or notoriety for me as I had put the author on display to his or her intended. an artist is difficult for me to quantify. I feel disadvantage for so many minutes, it was a certain degree of entitlement because I only fair that I expose something embarrass- In the end, Conspiracy wasn’t that suc- have been committed to making work for ing about myself, to achieve some balance. cessful in evading autobiography. After the twenty years, so some recognition is not So I suppose if we want to know what the first screening, people came up to me and exactly unexpected. But I don’t imagine for title means, we need to go back to that text. said, “That video is about you!,” which I a minute that there is a throng of people It seems to be about the necessary illusions found more funny than frustrating. It was waiting for my next tape. For this reason, I “…we maintain to continue our existences.” the first of my tapes to show outside of haven’t tended to be overly self-conscious This seemed appropriate to the subject mat- Canada, though initially it didn’t do very well. from work to work. Perhaps this is a minor ter of the tape. It was a real improvement on Because of the move to Montreal, I don’t benefit of limited success: you don’t really the working title, Shadow Song. think it really started showing until 1992 or have to obsess about these things. This 1993. I feel it still holds up rather well. I think is one thing that makes me sad about Conspiracy was conceived in late-1990 or many people feel that it is my best tape, and independent film and video, and visual art early-1991. Like Comédie, it came to me that I haven’t made a good one since then. in general. There is a very low level of dis- fully formed, in one lump. I remember some- course around the work. I would like to go one asked me what I was working on one MH: Does the reaction shot to your work on a site like allmusic.com and see all my day, and I said, “Well, the tape will open like figure in your making? How do you contend tapes rated and reviewed, but that is never this…” and I described it from start to finish. with your audiences? As your “popularity” going to happen. Every video seems to have 14

its own career and it can take years for a in the plural ‘you guys’ or ‘you people:’ the any more and have people sit through it (let director to get a sense of whether a tape audience as a mass. But for me, ‘you’ has alone distribute it). Our sense of pacing is ‘worked’ or not. Some tapes show every- always meant ‘tu:’ singular and informal. different than it was in the seventies, so where in one or two years and never show Describing the narrative as the ‘viewer’s working in a gallery permitted me to explore again. Others show one or two times a year journey’ is a good way of putting it. I want those impulses. I was grateful to have that for many years. And other tapes surprise people to feel that what I am describing is option. you by doing things you would never expect. happening to them. The gallery context also allowed me to work In order to teach, you need to learn. Much MH: Are you concerned that the singular with multiple screens, which is something I of what I have learned as a teacher has ben- attention of a black box (cinema) audience can’t adequately explore in a theatrical set- efited my work in some way. It has probably will be missing when you present your work ting. I know there is a history of expanded deformed my practice as well. Again, it’s in galleries (the white box), that viewers will cinema extending from people like Abel difficult for me to quantify. I tend to feel that arrive “in the middle” and leave after just Gance through Warhol and up into the teaching has little bearing on my practice a few minutes (a length of time which is late-sixties/early-seventies, but I feel freer as an artist, but has an enormous effect on already greater than most spend watching to do that type of work in a gallery. The me as a writer, curator, and a person who is any piece of art)? ability to edit spatially was something that called upon to speak about screen-based slowly evolved in my work. Handy Man (in art in various contexts (juries, panels, and NH: If people decide just take a peek and its installation form) was a triple screen so on). Teaching gives you a perspective walk away, I have to accept it. It is part of piece, as was Happy Hour. Satellite was a on how young artists see video fitting into the conditions of working with the gallery double screen piece that ran synchronously, their practices. Beyond this, teaching forces as a site. Map was built from a series of as does Map Of The City. The ability to edit you to return to those fundamental ques- short episodes, so you can jump in at any both linearly and laterally is very exciting to tions and articulate a conscious response moment and have an experience. And I am me. The two pieces I am working on now to them. Why make art? What does art do surprised at how patient installation audi- (one about Africa and another about singing that nothing else can? Hopefully when you ences can be. In pieces like Fuzzy Face and music) will both use multiple screens. have answers to these questions (at least (2001) or Happy Hour (2003), which are provisional ones) you can move onto other unedited performances that clock in at thirty MH: You adapted some of your text from the things. It’s like peeling an onion, but you minutes and twenty minutes respectively, Bible and the Gospel of Thomas, uncom- never get to the centre. people did sit through the entire loop, which mon sources in a media arts scene which is astonished me. That said, Map does have largely godless. Why these texts? MH: Map of the City (21 minutes 2-screen a narrative arc of sorts: it is a video with a installation, 2006) presents itself as an beginning, middle and end, so people who NH: Actually Gary Hill used the Gospels inventory of fragments: neon signs, maps, duck in and out will definitely miss some- of Thomas as the basis for Disturbance book shelves, the feet of statues, the faces thing. It’s always a compromise. (Among the Jars). In the end, I don’t think I of statues, graffiti tags, and these collec- used much of the Gospels, partly because tions are juxtaposed with or interrupted by Working with gallery space has allowed I knew that Hill had already been there. titles which interrogate them, trying to make me to do things that can’t be done in There are just four lines that made it into meaning of all this. Many titles are written in a cinema. Both Fuzzy Face and Happy the final edit. The majority of the text is from the second person, to “you,” is that because Hour were unedited duration performances. the book of Ecclesiastes: this appears on this is the viewer’s journey after all? They emerged out of the same performa- screen whenever you see small objects on tive impulse that fuelled Planetarium, and coloured backgrounds. NH: I have used this style of direct address were a return to tapes like Emission and writing since my first videos and perfor- The White Studio Tapes, which were also The decision to work with The Bible was mances. It’s something I probably borrowed performance-based. I deeply admired the difficult. I usually do my own writing. I had from Laurie Anderson, and have since made bravery of a lot of seventies video: people used found text before but referring to The my own. I like how the second person pro- like Colin Campbell, Lisa Steele, as well Bible as ‘found text’ is an impossible under- noun involves the listener. I suppose this as Americans like Bruce Nauman. They statement. You can’t. It has too much weight also gets back to what I was saying earlier would do these long boring works that were to it, but this weight is paradoxically what about audience and a certain literary quality almost aggressive in their refusal to enter- attracted me to it. that the works aspire to. Really I am just tain. I adore these works, and I wanted to do narrating to one person: that is my ideal something in the same spirit. Planetarium There are two stories I need to tell you audience. This became apparent when I was supposed to be about twice as long in order to explain my decision to use began translating the works into French. as it is now, but I knew people wouldn’t Ecclesiastes and the Gospel of Thomas. Translators would always write ‘vous,’ as stand for it. You just can’t make long work As you know, Map was conceived during a 15

six-month residency in Italy. One evening I background (or myself anyway) have been all interchangeable, there is no punctum, no was with a friend in Viterbo, a small city just too quick to dismiss it. Reclaiming this as a place in any of these pictures to “look back,” north of Rome. It was a cold evening and lefty queer was very empowering. It was like to hurt or touch the viewer. Why this sealed we were walking by a wall. You could see saying, “Look! The Bible is very contradic- simulation of exchange, the impossibility of the Renaissance wall built on the medieval tory and vague and even kind of bleak and the Other? wall, built on the Roman wall, built on the existentialist!” It’s a slap in the face to all Etruscan wall. My friend ran his hand over those people carrying ‘Corinthians 1 6:9’ NH: I find it a bit depressing that you feel the Etruscan block at street level and he placards at anti-queer rallies. My interest in there is a lack of engagement with the said, “One day, someone put that rock engaging with religion as a discourse also outside in this work. In my practice, there there.” Not long after I was in Pisa, looking emerges from my experience in Africa in are two streams: one that is more outward at a museum filled with Madonnas. Many the summer of 2002 and 2003. My part- looking (Conspiracy, Comédie, the Window women, all holding babies. It is that pre- ner and I were in Senegal for ten weeks. trilogy) and others that are more inward Renaissance Byzantine style which is more It was amazing to me to see a culture that looking (Shimmer, Crush, Planetarium). I iconographic than representational. I look at is organized around a spiritual paradigm, usually alternate between one style or the virgin after virgin. Suddenly, it occurs to me rather than a scientific one. I had read so other, though occasionally both appear in that these images emerged from matriar- much about modernism and its connection the same tape. Map of the City is inward chal pagan cults that pre-date Christianity, to the scientific paradigm, but I don’t think looking, like Shimmer, trying to reproduce and that this narrative, this history, is still I really understood what that meant until I the texture of mental space, and built from embedded in these images. Many women spent time in Africa. Satellite was definitely a documentary approach. I lived with my were represented here: a woman of the a response to that experience: destabilizing camera and took thousands of photos for 13th century is standing in for Mary, who is the scientific. And so is Map of the City, in months on end. Though the small objects herself standing in for a Roman or Etruscan its own way. It’s an attempt to reconsider are definitely staged (more on that later), goddess. Suddenly I could sense the tex- the spiritual as a discourse that is several other sequences emerged from reactions tual depth in these paintings. These images thousand years old, and recuperate it. to certain places: museums, people’s apart- were the sum of something much greater ments, cinemas, hospitals, as well as the that they appeared to be. In the end, I am not sure that the text is streets of Montréal and Rome. These imag- immediately recognizable as ‘biblical.’ Most es were born from a lot of wandering and The words from Ecclesiastes and the people I have shown it to assume I wrote it, a high degree of responsiveness to my Gospels attracted me because they also but I am sure people who know their Bible surroundings. I hoped some sense that had this kind of textual depth. And there will spot it immediately. I rewrote the pas- these images emerged from lived experi- was no way I could write it. One day, several sage a bit (which was also a bit daunting), ence would be apparent in the work. thousand years ago, someone wrote this changing some punctuation and making down. And we are reading it today. These certain passages less gender specific. But That said, I do know that from very early on texts come from Greek philosophy and otherwise, it is unchanged. I am also afraid I wanted Map to feel cold. Because I knew from Hebrew cultures that are much older that it will scare people off or alienate them the subject matter (and material) I was deal- than Christianity. So all that history is there, from the work. Again, it was a hard decision ing with was emotionally charged, I felt that though superficially, what we are left with is to make, but I needed to follow this impulse I needed to counter-balance it with a more The Bible. to its conclusion. reserved approach. This really dictated a lot of decisions I made musically. I went back I was astonished when I read Ecclesiastes, MH: This installation refuses (for want of and raided the soundtracks for Planetarium especially the translation I found, which uses a better word) “the real,” or some docu- and Time Passes, as well as generating a ‘meaningless’ in lieu of ‘vanity.’ “Meaningless. mentary trace, some engagement with the lot of new sounds that had a neutral emo- Everything is meaningless.” You don’t expect outside. Everything is reduced to simulation tional register. I was thinking about clicks The Bible to say something like that. It’s and model, all experience is leveled out and beeps: bank machines, alarm clocks, not supposed to be bleak and existentialist. (granted the same amount of time, pre- slide projectors and roulette wheels. So It’s supposed to be dogmatic and crystal sented without context), design elements perhaps this antiseptic quality that you clear. I would define myself as an atheist, of an overarching consciousness belonging sense is linked to certain aspirations I had and I have a general antipathy towards to the narrator/author. Everything is air tight, for the work not only in terms of mood, but Christianity because it has been grafted to controlled, and clean above all, this is a very how it would ultimately be displayed. a right-wing political agenda that I disagree hygienic display, there is scarcely a sign with. The Bush Administration has a lot to that any of this has been lived. You write, The twin poles of Map of the City are the answer for. Yet, as a discourse, I believe that “Millions of images, each crying for atten- book and the building. The building as the spiritual has enormous value, and per- tion” and certainly your animation technique book, the book as building. I was thinking haps people of my generation and political delivers a steady flow-but these pictures are about places like Giotto’s ‘Cappella degli 16

Scrovegni’ that is like an immersive, three- to me after a screening and asked, “Do you ally enjoy experimental work, and I assume dimensional book. This is typical of many know so-and-so?” because she had seen there must be other people out there who basilicas and chapels, where the Bible is an image he had made that was incorporat- like things that are incomprehensible, illeg- presented spatially. So on one hand, Map ed into one of these sequences. And again, ible, hateful and ignorable. I get a definite is like a book (which you can infer from this amazed me because the photos are up frisson from discovery. I am awed by the the double screen format, which looks like for FOUR FRAMES EACH: less than a sixth ability to think outside of conventions so I try facing pages), but meant to be projected of a second. But she recognized this image to emulate that in my work. Even though we large enough on the walls of the gallery to and had a very specific experience. So that have dispensed with the avant-garde in this surround the viewer. It was conceived as a was encouraging for me. It seemed to sig- post-modern age, I am still part of that tradi- design element in relation to architecture, nal that, yes, these images, these objects, tion. Whether I have managed to bring new like paintings or mosaics in chapels and could work in the way I hoped they would. content to the screen is not a question I feel basilicas. And its graphic quality refers back I am in a good position to answer. My voice to books and page design. The possibility There are images in the tape that have teeth as an author is original, but the content? for exchange is perhaps simulated, but not for me. Hadrian’s face. Certain drawings. Perhaps that is for others to say. any less so than it is with a book. Or archi- My mom in that crazy fur-lined coat. So per- tecture. It requires an active reader. haps punctum is in the eye of the beholder. As for how queerness fits into that equation, I have a lot of strange and arcane theories As for the ability of the images to “’look MH: You’ve raised the specter of experi- about that. When asked why Canadians back,’ to hurt or touch the viewer,” I am not mentalism, a notion I once imagined every are so funny, comedian Mike Myers said really sure that was my primary aspiration. artist embraced. There are few rewards for something like, “When Americans watch Again, I was trying to create a work that had invention, to produce something incom- television, they are watching television. But a certain emotional neutrality. In any case, prehensible, illegible, hated and ignored, when Canadians watch television, they are this type of response is a deeply subjective, what could be the point of that? Part of watching American television.” This little and will shift from one person to another. the problem is that only received forms interval, this space of reflexivity, is crucial. For example, the small objects are things I are intelligible, but surely part of the rub in Perhaps we queers participate in society have been collecting since I was a kid. The new shapings is to allow new contents to with the same built-in distantiation. We see green turtle was on my sixth birthday cake. issue. Do you feel that your work has been everything that transpires in the straight Other objects have very specific meanings engaged with bringing new contents to world from a distance: as artifice, as a per- that obviously won’t be apparent to anyone the screen? Do you feel that being queer formance. So authenticity and ‘the real’ in but my family and me. They are a physical puts you “outside” somehow, lends you a both perceptual and ideological terms have manifestation of my memory. I wanted to productive vantage through which, from to be parsed in more complex ways. I know use these objects because I liked them as a which, to view the onslaught of mainstream that instability and removal have infected my texture and I felt that, at the very least, they medias? vision in other ways as well, whether it was would communicate a sense of the reposi- my knowledge of being colour blind from tory, an accumulation of data. I was worried NH: Stephen Merritt from The Magnetic an early age, or my experiences with drugs that they wouldn’t act as memory triggers Fields pop group says he only likes two when I was a teenager. The outside world for other spectators. Yet, people connect kinds of music: pop and experimental. And has always been provisional. Being queer with very obscure things. A woman came up this pretty much sums up my ethos. I actu- has compounded that sense.

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