Interview by: Esperanza Rosales With: <strong>Trisha</strong> <strong>Baga</strong> Page: 1/3 Hands-on <strong>Trisha</strong> <strong>Baga</strong> interviewed by Esperanza Rosales A work in transition. It all thrives on precariousness, on the brink of collapse. But obviously also on that of improvisation and possibility. Top – Found Cheetah, 2010. Courtesy: the artist Middle, left – Flatlands, 2010. Courtesy: the artist Bottom – Peacock, 2011. Courtesy: the artist Un lavoro in transizione. Che vive nella precarietà e sull’orlo del fallimento. Ma ovviamente anche su quello dell’improvvisazione e della possibilità. 110 Hands-on, 05/04/2012 1/2 Bülow Wichelhaus GbR / Genthiner Strasse 36 / 10785 Berlin / Germany / +49 30 261 03283 / contact@societeberlin.com SOCIÉTÉ
Interview by: Esperanza Rosales With: <strong>Trisha</strong> <strong>Baga</strong> Page: 2/3 Esperanza Rosales Your • lms are very intricately layered. How do you begin working with material from so many sources? <strong>Trisha</strong> <strong>Baga</strong> I always begin with a few elements I’ve been thinking about for a while. I have a collection of interests that I nourish, and whenever they get kind of full, I see what goes together and how they go together. With Peacock (2011), I had The Joy Luck Club, my Dad’s old super 8 fi lms and footage from a residency I did in Florida, where we took some machetes with which we cut a path through the woods. I wanted to remake The Joy Luck Club, but more about the objects than the people. This makes me think about the New World, and concepts tied to freedom. Once I had those things, it became a matter of fi nding the musical qualities of the relationships. My structure and timing come from really common movies, like the ones they show on TBS. Lately I’ve been interested in the way commercials operate on Hulu, and how if you watch a show on Hulu it’s hard to tell what you’re watching – the ad or the copy of the ad. It’s a question of layers of representation. ER You tend to work with what’s around you, and in terms of the props you make, not everything seems built to last. TB Yeah, generally it is made with what is within arm’s reach. I try to keep a lot of glue, foam and things that sound good, or that I relate to in a tactile way, within easy reach. Most of what I produce ends up in my work somehow. I really like making objects, but I’m terrible at it. They fall apart after fi ve days, or I forget where I put them and sit on them, or I put my projector down on them or something. So it’s not really practical to make them unless I have a good excuse. But I’m not that interested in product. I think that everything should be an experiment and lead to something else. Formally, I’m most interested in making transitions. ER Where else does frailty and impermanence enter into your constructive vocabulary and working process? TB In my work hands and thumbs get in the way, things get dirty and I throw stuff on the fl oor, because I like distractions, the way they divert attention to diff erent parts of the screen. I try to make the failure of everything transparent, because I think there is a rhythm about the way things fail. I’m getting more familiar with the way I always forget to bring one thing or another to the performance, so I have to improvise. I’m working with that, in a way, through editing. Because something that occurs rhythmically can gain thematic meaning, just by the way it’s structured in time. ER When did you start making props and sets? TB I made a sitcom where I played all the parts, and I had to solve a lot of object problems there. I made episodes for two years and used them as a way to teach myself how to make video, edit, and make objects that had some kind of fi xed structure, to avoid the fear of the blank canvas. I could make a painting in one day and put it in the background. It was a way to get my hands on things, maybe eve- rything I do is just a way of getting my hands on things. ER In Madonna y El Niño, 2009, you compare the evolution of Madonna’s musical career and her stylistic choices to the water cycle and the extended use of a metaphor she was so fond of: light. How did that project develop? TB I worked at a video store for a while, and every night at closing time we would play “The Immaculate Collection”. Looking at what Madonna did, I was really overwhelmed by this idea that she was trying to have sex with the whole world at once, through a camera. I realized that if eyes were hands, that if looking at something was touching something, then that’s the kind of sex she was trying to have. In so many of her songs she talks about how we can’t really see her, or how we can see her, but we can’t touch her, or how we can touch her, but there would be no warmth. It was basically her interaction with modes of technology as they evolved throughout her career. Like, True Blue is a tribute to the blue screen. Then there’s the Take a Bow video where she very literally has sex with the TV and puts her hands all over it. Madonna y El Niño was a weird piece for me. Normally I just improvise with materials and see where they go and what forms they make of themselves, but with that piece it felt like I had to say something. ER How did this compare to the starting point for The Love Story of the Painter Balla and a Chair, 2009, the video you made for Performa? TB They were remaking Vita Futurista, a lost Futurist fi lm, and had the director’s notes for several chapters. They took eleven artists and randomly assigned each of us one section from the notes. The section I got was “Balla falls in love with a chair and marries it.” I tried to express a waiting, avoiding any specifi city, just trying to use colors and light through the screen. ER Tell me about your performance last weekend, The Garden Party 1 . You said it was an object play? TB During my fi rst site visit to Stamford I noticed that every Christmas they have someone dressed as Santa Claus rappel down the side of their tallest building. At some point during the summer, I asked if I could rappel a sandwich down the side of the building as a part of a performance. I got permission, but then a week before the event they denied it to me. ER When you say rappel, do you mean glide down the side of the building, or...? TB Basically I was going to dress as a cow and lead people from the gallery where the group exhibition was taking place and then after the procession we would watch the sandwich go down the side of the building at the same rate as the sunset; it would have been kind of poetic. But then everything got really messed up, it needed corporate approval. I got really upset and staged a protest, and then waited for the sandwich to come and it never did. 111 ER So the actual performance came together as a procession with signs instead? TB It was born out of the remnants of the thwarted plan. I spent the performance inside a two-person cow costume. I was the front half of the cow and my friend and collaborator, Nick Parker, was the back. We built the outfi t ourselves, out of all the black and white clothing we could fi nd at a thrift store, and when we were in it we were mostly blind and wearing high heels, just trying to put one foot in front of the other without falling apart. After the procession to the building we showed a text piece I’d written in washable marker on a pad of newsprint, and we tore the pages off one by one, tossing them into the corporate park fountain. Then we played the Moonlight Sonata on the piano. ER What did the signs say? TB It wasn’t really a protest, but more like a declaration of being there, of having a body and being a little bit loud about it. So they said things like “We are Here”, “Changes”, “Singles, Couples, Friends and Family”. Another was a pizza box taped to a stick that said “God Bless America”. ER Do you already know what you’ll work on next? TB I’ve wanted to make the story of Plymouth Rock 2 into a fi lm since I was fourteen, because it’s just the saddest story of an object, where it becomes a symbol, and then is moved from place to place through overly elaborate processes, broken in half and brought back together, chipped away, all of this to accommodate various presentation modes – portico, pedestal... Right now, they’ve built a gazebo around it to protect it from the rain. A rock protected from the rain. It’s my favorite sculpture story. NOTES 1. Part of the group show “Fernando” at Franklin Street Works in Stamford, Connecticut. 2. The traditional site of disembarkation by the Mayfl ower Pilgrims, the fi rst European settlers in North America, who founded the Plymouth Colony in 1620. Bülow Wichelhaus GbR / Genthiner Strasse 36 / 10785 Berlin / Germany / +49 30 261 03283 / contact@societeberlin.com SOCIÉTÉ Hands-on, 05/04/2012 2/2
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