De-Correct the Camera and Re-Draw the Eyes:
through my view – in his music - at her body
April 3rd, 2009, au Point FMR / Paris.
Copyright photography Cyril Genty
Because we don’t know this place. Must a name mean something? Without any doubt, it must!.. Especially if it disturbs you at first sight and moves in your minds with several possible, related or irrelevant, private or common-use questions. As it is an answer that starts with “because” and basically gives a reason to anything, it may push you to find the premium question which asks the reason by means of “why?”. What may those possible questions be then? Here are some examples that has come into my mind: Why are we here like this or like that? or Why should we go there/leave here? or Why are we positive or negative here or there? etc. On the other hand, this “because” may well be explaining a state of mind, soul or being which is absorbed in any kind of emotion, reaction or passivism. So, since it is such a name that is not directly understood and still must have a meaning, let’s go beyond the name and pass through Because we don’t know this place itself to discover what it suggests with its being. What is it? It, Because we don’t know this place, is a dance, music and video performance which is collectively created on the stage. It is a live performance in the representation of music, dance and how the videos and photographs are set on the stage and started living there. There, on the stage, takes place a dancer Emilie Carayol, a musician Mathieu Mirol and a video-film director Julien Tatham. When Julien Tatham, himself, projects all the videos and those living, breathing, dying photographs that tell the story, Emilie Carayol picks her body from off the ground of a shower and takes her movements away within the live music that comes out of Mathieu Mirol’s walking fingers on guitars, klarinet, saz and through his smoothly singing voice. So, everything on the stage is interactively created in a way basically improvised and directed by its own energy that is born and opened to others in any sense by Julien Tatham. Who is he? Julian Tatham defines himself on his myspace as an “artist working in several fields, mainly in experimental visual art”. And, I think that he surely and bravely goes behind the movement that catches him and drags him to another place. Those are the movements that stand still and ready to live, movements that show there is a rythm, there is a tune, and there is an another face yet to be discovered in the video, film. I talked to Tatham about his understanding of art that he mixes especially within the context of Because we don’t know this place which is to turn the way of his art! Let’s see how he sees his travel:
*
* *
I think, as it is your first live performance « Because we don’t know this place » can be described as a point which turns the way of your work to a more alive atmosphere, maybe to life. However, of course it still carries the basic motives and tools of expression of your art. Regarding these, I would like to know how you would interpret the change and continuity in your work?
It is yes my first live performance. As you have also underlined, this is a considerable change in my work. I can say that I’m getting out of my den: the nice marmot has decided to become a wild wolf. I’m leaving the night behind me and adventuring myself under the shining sunset.
I would like to start with my becoming mature in my art. I should confess that intending to be so demanding of me towards myself has made my creative process evolve very slowly. It is the fact that I have been in art since I was 17 years old and I realize that since that time I have worked hidden from the others. It wasn’t a decision on purpose but let’s say the result of special attention I have given to my intuitions.
All my first creations (mostly videos) are, as I call them, home movies. Most of them were made at home in different little apartments I lived in with no money, only with a poor camera and a handy I had. And characters in my movies were people I knew or me. Those other people were usually my private partners whom I was committed to. That is, my ex-girl friends were often the actresses (or wanted them to be). And hindsight I don’t think it was a good idea to work with them being too attentive to their own anxieties and doubts. I would honestly say that I was crushed into their bourgeois behaviour. (In addition to this issue, I’m of the opinion that acting must be a real commitment which should stay far away from our little navel.)
Anyway, it was a good experience for me because all my work until now was a real research, it was also time to cross mistakes and learn about/with them. They were even researches in the true accuracy of the story which is the medium and the aim of my work. I would also call that research time in my identity as an artist. By the way, this artist status of mine, I mean assuming to be an artist myself took me a long time as well. I was afraid to introduce myself as an artist without having found the right esquisse representative of my aspirations.
Also in my little experience of film festivals in the past, I realized that I was really stressed out to show films offline. The classic projection disturbed me. Being in the room with the audience without being able to govern my pictures with them, I used to get frozen. Of course I could have reacted after the screening directly in front of the audience by talking to them… but my social skills are somehow limited. And shyness could make a lot of contre-sens which I would define as misunderstanding in a way.
-So to state what continues is that it still takes time for me, I’m still taking my time. This taking time is a kind of lento method which I would define as not being slow in the “creating period” that is making films and taking pictures and writing stories over them for me, but in the period of their composition and especially while looking for the premium way of their expression. The fact of being slow in this sense when I was younger has brought me a lot of pain and doubts related to the missed years; however, within time I have learnt to understand the process of my art. I guess this being slow issue for me is the contamination of the pressure made by the media on the idea of success. Here I mean the idea of the shooting star of the ephemeral artist. I know that there is no age to complete oneself. And success may have a lot of meanings: for some people it is the synonymous of money, for some others of popularity; but it’s also managing to be the more rightful with what you want to say. I really think it takes time and I must not get frighten of that time. Of course for some, it can go quicker. But again for some others there is really nothing to worry if at the end they keep that faith in what they do and why they do it.
Nonetheless, I’m not afraid of this slowness it’s because I’m always looking for something really characteristic that has to be a true reflection to the work I want to give out. Moreover, I am very attentive to the essence of that « thing » which I don’t want to cheat on but be faithful to its scope. There is no pretentiousness in this goal; I am willing to find the proper balance between my expectations and what I need not what I feel like to produce because there is no choice in that. And this needs the necessary time to be fulfilled.
-At that moment comes the change in fact, I know “i’m going there” more bravely. Now, I concentrate my energy more on the aim of what I construct and more on the career of what I make. That is, my objective that I need to put forward comes before having a career of over it. I mean, I think more of the work part than what it brings afterwards. Eventually, my work now has found its own skin, the flesh of my expression is much stronger now. I think I have sealed the bones that were my research and reached to life surrounding them.
So logically I knew that I must present my art in a live performance. There, I can make something totally interactive. And I deeply feel that with this performance I have really found one of my mediums.
Because we don’t know this place was collectively created on scene. What is the need for a collective creation in your art? What about the improvisation that is the heart beats of this performance? How do you describe the image in this performance and how would you compare the images you used in it with those images that you had created until it?
I have one more time seen that collective is another magical source of power! It is so exciting to create with others at the same time, to bring different forms of expressions together and to build one show with different mediums.
Yes, improvisation is exactly the heart of Because we don’t know this place. I think, it’s creation process very much looks like a performance of a Jazz band on the stage which becomes by talking and answering each other. And with this performance, we had the same communication between a musician, a dancer and I who is the Vjay in this context. Nonetheless, in my work in this performance i’m not limited with vjay-ing. I mean, I only use this term as a, I think, good way to express live art; however, here I do also work in still pictures and art video (in a more “classical” way of presentation). Moreover, beside my vjay-ing in this performance I stepped on combining words with pictures as well. It’s completely a different approach. That is, technically and in narration. Thus, the subtle feeling that the story presents becomes more expressive and physical in a live performance than in a recorded one I think. Thus, the story that comes out of the event belongs more to the audience. Thus, by means of all those combinations and interactions on the stage, the public is more “free” to create his approach to the story. In my work with words and still picture, I somehow lead the reader to a world that I create with a lot of directions to take, but with a continuity of the story more structured in a way. Thus, he can make his own melody as long as he follows a particular partition. And most importantly, during Because we don’t know this place, movement was in touch with the live sound and travelling pictures and narrative words. All those frozen images and flowing words became alive on the stage with that movement and sound. What a trip!.. For me, this music is the breath and the dance is the blood of my pictures, my lyrics. And, frankly I have witnessed my images getting a life in front of my eyes by the touches of my finger for another time on them. That’s why I find vjay action so great, for you never know what movie you are going to make before any performance. You have all your pictures for a story you want to tell or for a set you are going to do with the musician. Then the combination of all of them together each time creates a new and a unique experience.
I would like to add that, so far as a graphic designer and “writer”, I have come up and got thousands of ideas to tell and I guess it’s sometimes really more suitable for me to depend only on myself to create, I mean create alone with a pencil, a computer and upcoming ideas for my case. And, If I don’t count Mathieu Mirol who has made music for many of my works, I have mainly worked alone. Except Mathieu’s being a part of my expressions, creations as a part in my heart giving the right emotion to the right image at the right time. And in Because we don’t know this place besides Mathieu there is a dancer as well, Emily. Dance is an essential item to become alive there so that I can have all the aspects of art. I mean; to see, to hear and to touch. Here, touch is the idea of a live acting performance, not a representation on a screen. And the pictures I project in this performance are totally connected to the main character played by the dancer, which is another interaction again.
Almost each and every single work of you, including Because we don’t know this place, we see the bathroom images, or any kind of reference to bath/shower which mostly includes naked body and being under the water even though we don’t always see the nude or the water. I would like to know your own interpretation of that source from which your creation takes it’s very self characteristic.
Well, I guess my first answer would be that the bathroom was the only room white in my little apartments where the poor light I could reflect correctly. If I should remember the first time I made a picture in a bathroom, it was when I filmed one of my ex- actress-girlfriend, when she was preparing herself for the coming day. She was silent, concentrating on her outside presentation. She was in her world, it was peaceful, I was there filming and at the same time she wasn’t seeing me anymore.
Bathroom is also the place where you wake up, get in touch with the reality again and also where you wash yourself. The shower cleans not only all the dirt on the body but also the bad feelings, the bad ideas every morning where you get to life one more time. There you get connected to reality with the memory of a past dream that you may erase or mix and bring to your day life. Under the water, it is also possible to think about nothing. Yes! And I believe it’s a peaceful and at same time creative moment.
And about being nude, I guess it’s more about the spirit than the body. Nudity is also a subject I like. The erotic part of it in the shower is usually close to zero. It’s a practical moment of the body. Regenerating and getting ready to live conscientiously.
What is your state of being in art and what is the action you take/you want to take with your work?
I want to open a new world !!!!! Well being in art, that is, I think for me I have no other choice!.. Art is my place. I one day tried to change this approach of mine, by telling myself “what about doing a real job?” as people always ask about that “real job” after you just tell them what you do. However, no!.. I couldn’t.
All the other well paid jobs I have done so far were too abstract to involve myself completely in them. At the moment, I am working as a graphic designer. I combine my work this other job; but as you know art is here too, it can’t go away far from beside works and we are constantly going in there fortunately.
I think, art is also a way to see the life clearly. Tear out this pre-fabricated bark which, for me, means a kind of ready made skin or to look like everyone, to wear the same aspects that power wants us to wear. All is about freedom and happiness. It’s not about being careless, but it’s the contrary, being aware, seeing and acting.
The action that I want to take is all about good experience and again opening all kinds of travel. For me, this travel is the one you make both physically and emotionally. Yes, going somewhere with others, just going over there especially if you do not know the place!..
*
* *
Thank you very much to Julien Tatham for his self-interpretations and explanations on the self-history of his work. Surely, they are so significant in his travel of art and in his self-looking for “another state” which he put in the core of his Because we don’t know this place and which should make this performance to move and to take place for many people in many different places, I believe!
Review and interview by Çiğdem Mirol
Interview at Café Belga, Bruxelles, 20 May 2009
Related posts:
- Répétition Because Photographies de Ambiome – Copyright 2009…...
- Because we don’t know this place Performance artistique où dialoguent ‘live’ les différents arts : la...
- tournage « because we don’t know this place » deux artistes qui travaillent, pas besoin d’une équipe pour trouver...
- suite tournage « because we don’t know this place » …...
- Connecting Photographies de Ambiome – Copyright 2009.…...