Forest/Trees

Ghosts Don't Walk In Staight Lines

November 11, 2018

We can all recognize New York as being a hectic hybrid city, where you can easily feel lost and overwhelmed. Especially as a foreigner, it can be difficult to find your place in a city that moves so fast.

To explore this, artist and model Saskia de Brauw walked slowly from 225th Street and Broadway, all the way down to Battery Park, avoiding as much of the NYC grid system as possible, examining how people inhabit in a city that moves at such a fast pace. Together with her partner, photographer Vincent van de Wijngaard, as well as filmmaker Will Town, musician Jim Beard and artist Matt Watkins, the group has documented de Brauw’s experience, collaborating on a multifaceted project that includes a book, a New York-based exhibition and a short film featuring exclusive costumes by Haider Ackermann, all under the title Ghosts Don’t Walk in Straight Lines.

Over the last five years, van de Wijngaard and de Brauw have continued working on the project, which began while the couple was still living in Paris. Now completed, all three works capture de Brauw on her pilgrimage, along with the abandoned objects, overheard quotes and stories from people she encountered along the way. An archive not just of her experience, but of the city in general, Ghosts Don’t Walk In Straight Lines walks us through New York’s past and present, creating an ode to its people, and its landscape, in all of their messy, unpredictable and diverse glory.

Interview by Simone Nystrup-Larsen

On view at Red Hook Labs this weekend, office sat down with de Brauw and van de Wijngaard; the duo sounds off on the project, below.

In three words, how does New York make you feel?

Saskia de Brauw: I would say New York has a sense of freedom, night and insanity.

Vincent van de Wijngaard: If I were to describe it in three words, it would be: I feel home.

As a foreigner myself, I can totally relate to the need to slow things down sometimes, especially when you live in a city that moves at such a high speed, like your exhibition references. So, how do you think the city’s pace affected the ways in which you interacted with your environment?

de Brauw: In New York, when you are doing something a little bit different, it’s not that strange, because many people here are doing different things. So, walking more slowly is not even that weird—it makes certain people really angry, but many don’t even realize they feel that way. I mean, there were parts of the route I walked that were really busy. So, I adapted my pace to the amount of people—the more people around, the slower I would walk. I didn’t consider myself as an obstruction and I never wanted to be in the way of people, and I felt that I was only once—in a very, very busy area around Times Square where someone pushed me and got really annoyed with my walking. But most of the time, I was able to be present and just move around. So, that’s something that’s definitely the case in New York—there’s space enough for everyone to have their own space, somehow.

Why did you start this project?

de Brauw: It was the moment before we moved to New York. When I was traveling a lot in the city with my work as a model, I found it quite hard to be here—the high pace was something I couldn’t really deal with. Then, these slow walks started to be an exercise for me to relax and be able to find my place in the city. After that, it kind of developed into this idea of, ‘What if I would do that for an entire day? How would that feel? And should I make a project out of this?’

What was the most surprising experience during your walk?

de Brauw: For me, it was when the experience of the walk at one point finally started to feel relaxing. Suddenly, I felt relaxed with what I was doing and my mind started to feel the same way. It’s the moment where you get a flow in your head—where everything kind of makes sense; it’s not busy with thoughts about what people might think or say, and the remarks just roll of you like water.

van de Wijngaard: Essentially, I am a photographer who works on the streets. So, the whole fashion aspect of it came a lot later. But I am someone who walks a lot on the streets, and there is hardly anything I enjoy as much as walking around with a camera and just looking at things that peak my interest for a moment. When I do get interested in something, I usually wander around a little bit more and investigate—that’s how we determined the certain routes that we followed in the film. But the walk is definitely the main subject—the film and photography are just evidence of it.

The project consists of the film, the exhibition and the book. Why did you choose those mediums?

van de Wijngaard: At one point, we sort of thought, ‘What would be the ideal way to document this walk?’ And of course, film is a good way to do it. So, the final film also includes a lot of Super 8 materials that function like flashbacks. Then we finally recorded and shot the final walk over a day, and those two were mixed in a chronological order. So, it’s almost like when Saskia passes a certain point on the road, there are these little inserts or breaks. Then we also had a lot of material that we had collected, like smaller interviews with people, and different quotes, and I had a lot of pictures. So, that’s when we thought we should maybe consider doing a book—that’s how it all came together.

You said you usually just find things or places that you like and wander around from there. But how did you decide on the actual route you took?

da Brauw: I just thought it was the most beautiful line that stretches from North to South—it basically takes us across the island that way. But for most of the route we follow Broadway, which is not a straight line on the grid. At one point, we do leave Broadway because we wanted to capture different neighborhoods and fields, and we really wanted to pass through Chinatown—so we do make a little detour. On our walk, we were avoiding the grid as much as possible, and tried to capture as many stories or interesting neighborhoods as we could.

What about the title Ghosts Don’t Walk In Straight Lines—what does it mean?

de Brauw: It refers to a street in Chinatown called Doyers Street, which is actually a small bended ally. There’s an old Chinese story that says that ghosts only move in straight lines. So, in this ally there where a lot of murders, but the bend in the ally happened to protect people from the ghosts of the people they murdered.

van de Wijngaard: It was more like, they had this alley with most extensive murders in the US, based in this little bend. The people committing those murders felt safe because they could never be seen by a ghost. So, there were these expanded network tunnels below the ground leading away from this little street, and some are still there today.

de Brauw: And our title is Ghosts Don’t Walk In Straight Lines, so the reference starts from there and includes a reference to the ghosts of the past, our memories, and the stories we all have—that everyone in the city does.

It’s 6AM, where in the city are you watching the sunrise?

de Brauw: Brooklyn.

What two totally normal things become really weird if you do them back to back?

de Brauw: In this case, the walking is something very normal, but when you change the pace of something that’s very normal, it can become quite strange. But it can be anything I think—that’s what performance art is really based on—doing something really normal but placing it in a different context, where it can become something strange.

Tell me about the Haider Ackermann dress in the film.

van de Wijngaard: We had this dress made for Saskia by Haider Ackermann, who we became friends with a couple of years ago while doing another short film. Haider designed the dress made of leftover pieces of textile which represent the patchwork of New York’s different neighborhoods. The idea we had for the dress was that it would be really interesting if we actually could see the change of time in the dress, by how much it was worn and through the changes that happened when it was used. So, Haider ended up making the dress from all these leftovers and because of the length of it, it takes the dust from the route, and little objects and other things you find on the surface of the streets, with it.

We also collaborated with musician Jim Beard. I have been a big fan of his for a really long time. He did this record that I really like that uses a lot of sounds from the streets, which was actually something that we were doing, as well. So, we were recording sounds for ourselves that we liked, and we wanted to have a beautiful soundscape supporting the film. We also worked with graphic designer Matt Watkins, whose book we had that we really loved. It’s a book by a filmmaker/photographer Will Wenders called Places, Strange and Quiet, and we just always went back to the book for inspiration because it’s so simple and minimalistic—we wanted our book to be very precise and clean.

What do you want the viewers to take away from the project?

de Brauw: Emotion.

van de Wijngaard: I think there are many layers to look at. You can look at the book, you can look at the people that we saw on our walk. For me, the pace which we move around—the high speed—is, in a way, really what it questions. Also, what all people hopefully will see is the diversity of it and the richness of it, just like if you were wandering around in the city, finding all these stories and seeing all these people, just looking at the scenery.

'Ghosts Don't Walk In Straight Lines' is on view at Red Hook Labs through November 11. Photos courtesy of the gallery.

Art

Dead + Juicy

November 07, 2018

Where were you this Halloween? Were you covered in white face paint and squishing shaving cream beneath a wig on your head? Were you surrounded by CTV cameras in a simulated barber shop as you performed random acts of non-technical artistry with various uncanny objects around you?

If you answered yes to these questions, you must be the German artist John Bock, whose immersive ‘horror musical’ installation at Anton Kern opened on Halloween night. The artist’s improvised performance took place in one of various set pieces that are mirrors of those in his nearly full-length film at the center of this installation, Dead + Juicy. It is a funhouse of subversions, where the physical meets the ephemeral, the idea of the thing and the thing itself find miraculous, discordant articulation, and a performance is the central piece, one that exists only in the memory of those who witnessed it.

Interview by John Martin Tilley

office met with John Bock the day after the opening to talk about barber shops in Austin, Texas, the fleeting nature of desire and the fact that you can use anything as a medium—even Pepto-Bismol.

Tell me about your horror musical.

It’s true—it’s a horror musical. I did it for a museum in Austin—The Contemporary—and we shot the film in four days. In the end, it was 60 minutes long. The story is about an uncanny barber shop with all different kinds of people. Everything they do is abnormal—they tell stories and sometimes, they do different things with uncanny objects, then they sing. It was mostly improvised—I asked them what they like, and one of them said they like funk, or whatever band, so I'd have them sing a funk song and a song by that band. The Spanish guy was a great moment—suddenly, he said he was a singer and could play the harmonica, and it just went from there.

So, a big part of the process was that it came from Austin and the people there?

Yeah, I took an Austin barber shop and made it uncanny. The lead character disappears in a time warp into a hut, then a jungle, then suddenly, she stands in front of her own little apartment and looks in, and she sees herself. There’s the twist. What I liked most was the time in the barber shop—it’s kind of magical, they wait there and they switch off the brain and try to relax. It’s Americana, but it’s also a ritual. I thought, 'What happens when they’re there all the time?' Each day, they go to the barber shop, and they’re with each every day, with all the same guests in this same shop, and they don’t even cut their hair. They do other things though, little miracles and rituals. Then they’re singing. It’s a little bit like a '70s sitcom or a soap opera—like, All in the Family.

How did you decide on a barber shop?

We relax in a barber shop. It’s different than a coffee shop—everyone knows a coffee shop—but a barber shop is more for males, for shaving; a woman goes to a salon. I like this atmosphere where the guys are there, their shaving, cutting their hair. It’s a man’s world, but I was drawn to it, I don’t know why.

Right. But then the lead character is female.

It’s also a little erotic—this young girl and these old guys. But also, I wanted to incorporate different ethnicities—Mexican, black, white. But this is Texas. First, I looked at the faces.

What about the faces?

Oh, they look very good, right? You can tell something from them—the faces tell stories. It’s very easy to shoot animals, and to shoot old men and women because their face speaks in the so-called wrong way. They have so much experience—that's why I don’t understand why Americans get facelifts and all of that.

I was just talking about plastic surgery with another artist.

Yeah, it’s just, why? The thing is, your face is like a painting and it changes, but it’s the best thing you have. Normally, when you have a car, you keep it—only when you crash it do you need a new one. But with a face—it’s crazy.

I overheard some talk about cycles and I noticed a lot of spinning in the video.

And doubles. In the exhibition, there are pairs—two plates, two silicone creature objects in the barbershop—they are like twins, mirrors. And then I built not only one object, but two—and they come together.

How does the performance play into that?

This was a big improvisation, and it was the first time I’d done it. Normally, I work with a script, and learn text, then recite it. But in this case, I wanted only to be there and do something.

Why improvisation?

I don’t really know why I did this. It was the first time.

How do you feel about the result?

It was very new. In the beginning, I was wondering what I should do, but then I looked around at the objects and it came step by step. But the beginning was very difficult. I started with reading text and didn’t like that, so I used some objects—I worked with wigs, then later with shaving cream, then the machine.

It was really fun to watch you play with the materials. Why do you think you’re so attracted to these gooey things like shaving cream?

It disappears. Normally you fix everything, you build it in a frame, it’s a figure. Shaving cream—nobody cares about shaving cream—it’s not necessary to preserve it. The other point is the fear of these art objects. When I look at art, I feel fear because it’s art, because it’s expensive, it means something, it’s in a frame. When I work with shaving cream, or toothpaste, or liquids, then they have no detailed shape. And people don’t think about the shape with these materials. With traditional painting, you’re always thinking about shape, but when you work with liquids, you have no control over it, it flows, and people don’t want shaving cream to be in a shape.

Right. It doesn’t matter.

This is the language: it doesn’t matter. It disappears. They don’t think about the shape, they think about the material. And this is a different way to look at the world—instead of preserving everything, following the rules, speaking the right words, this is different. Art is a language—a different language than our language—and this is good, because our language is political. They check everything that you say, you can’t write without a certain shape to it—but I can. Art can say something that is not so directly political—it can talk about a sugar cube and it means a sugar cube, not a ‘white’ sugar cube, you know what I mean? So, it’s a different language that’s able to speak in many directions—it’s not physical, it’s not systemic, it’s not economic, it’s not political, it’s different. It’s political when the art is very expensive and society is interested in money, getting it, saving it, selling it. Then, it’s like a car.

Your work isn’t necessarily within that context.

It’s also difficult to buy this stuff. How can you buy art made out of shaving cream, or Pepto-Bismol? And the smell? Pepto-Bismol smells almost like candy—it’s so sweet, and it’s pink, and I handle it and you see it. But there’s no frame.

It’s kind of like something you have to experience, but that’s all that you get—the experience—then it vanishes.

But there’s also the movie—then there’s a frame, you edit it, there’s a soundtrack, you create a product. But the performance is less of a product.

So, you’re interested in this lack of control, or letting control go. It's almost like—not chaos—but something else. Maybe randomness?

Entropy, yeah. It’s like in a library—everything is in the right order, but some people say, 'No, I like this book, I don’t want to put it in M, I want to put it in B,' or 'I don’t want to put it in Art but in Politics, because nobody should see it.' Something happens in that moment.

I wanted to talk about the sculptures, as well. I love the idea of bringing something from a film into real life—I’ve seen it one other time, and it’s so interesting.

It’s very easy. When I studied art, I didn’t like to build the objects in the studio, and that’s it. Then you have to bring it in the closet, make another one, then wait for the art dealer. I said very early, 'No, the best is to do a performance and create the objects directly in front of the audience.' So, I used these kinds of cheap, secondhand materials, so the audience has no fear of the objects, because they have no larger value. Then I would do performances and combine this with language. Normally, the performances in the '70s and '80s, and also now—it’s always about pathos.

It feels like you’re breaking the fourth wall in a lot of ways—pulling people into the piece.

To me, it’s important what people see and what happens with them, not how I create the object, which material, or which technique. When I find that I have a technique, then I destroy it—that’s important. You perfect a technique and things get better and better, but the energy is lost. And when you do things, and you’re not a professional, it’s more charming. Like Jack Smith’s movies, for example—like Flaming Creatures from the '60s.

Have you ever thought about doing a professional film for a broad audience outside the category of art?

I did movies, but I didn’t show them at film festivals.

What about something more traditional?

Well, this is traditional. There’s a narrative, the editing is normal. But in the installations, they are collages, there’s more intention, they’re more expressive, you can’t explain what’s happening. The pictures come in layers. There’s a game between the object and the projection—suddenly the original object is a part of the movie. Downstairs, there’s a projection where nothing happens—it shows a space and nothing happens, and it’s across from the barber shop we built in the gallery, which is a real space.

So, they’re both spaces that aren’t moving, but one is physical, and one is an image.

And in this little flat there are objects: the bike, a rat, the two plates—always double. The character in the film creates sculptures from tinfoil TV dinner trays, and these objects are in front of the projection. So, it’s like a mirror. One is a video projection, the other side is a shadow. It’s about the possibilities of how to show something. In the movie, they do something, but in the installation, they do the same things and suddenly it’s different. I tell the story in different ways: in a normal narrative way, and then through the installation.

It’s like you’re adding layers but also removing them at the same time—or inviting the viewer to become a layer.

You can go around the screen and suddenly you see the objects. Things mutate. When you first enter the gallery, you see a projection on a curtain and when the curtain moves, the image mutates. So, there’s this idea of mutation and change. It’s a play with pictures and how you look at it—the point of view.

It reminds me of the part of the film where the main character’s describing some strange thing growing inside of her. It feels very psychological.

Most people want to buy a car—they’re interested in buying things. I’m interested in people’s brains, they’re stories. And it’s funny—when you buy something, you desire it until you have it. Once you own something, the desire for it disappears, and it becomes just another object.

So, it’s about economics in a way.

It’s about economics and how people exist within economics. I don’t think people are very happy with this system. We think it’s normal, but inside we feel weird. In the barber shop in the film, there is no money—they tell stories and sing. It’s about a connection between people in one space, and not always glued to your phone like people always are these days, even in Germany.

Right. They’re engaged.

It’s like a dreamland—a paradise. No one knows about it. It’s old guys, in an old style. And my language is more absurd in German than in English. I don’t believe in language; I actually hate it—that's why I work with it. There are a lot of mistakes and levels with language, and I want to break it down entirely.

Installation view: John Bock: 'Dead + Juicy'

'Dead + Juicy' is open now through December 1 at Anton Kern Gallery in NYC.

Photos courtesy of Anton Kern Gallery.

Art

Made in _______

November 06, 2018

Objects have personalities. Part of what builds their character is their backstories—their origin, their function, their inherent grace or lack thereof, their sense of humor.

Objects made by hand were once the only kind of object, other than those which occur naturally. Now the handmade object seems to possess an intrinsic value—as if because they were created and handled by another human hand they contain a powerful physical energy: the plot line of another person’s life, however far away, has now intersected with our own, through this handmade object.

Objects made by machines embody a seamless fluidity that, we assume, cannot be achieved by the human hand—they cue to cold perfection, mechanical precision, robotic transcendence.

Interview by John Martin Tilley
Photo by Luke Paige

What happens when the two meet? office spoke with artist Nina Beier to find out.

Tell me about the installation at Metro Pictures.

This show is very much a sculpture show. It’s a culmination of an interest in materials and objects that travel. I have been looking at how a material is extracted from wherever it’s from, how it’s traded, how it’s taking shape, and the intentions that go into the making of objects as opposed to how they’re used, and how we then understand or interpret them, and finally how they can then turn into symbols over time. I am interested in how everything that happens to the object along the way somehow sticks to that object and the way we understand it—I tend to work with objects that have encountered problems along the way and involuntarily have changed the way we understand them. For example, I’ve worked with baguettes in many sculptures. That’s just one example of something that, from one perspective, is basic nutrition—but it’s also become a symbol of colonial power and the way French culture has traveled all over the world and made a mark everywhere. So, the object has a different identity depending on how you look at it—it could even just be a sculptural material because it is shaped by hand and made into particular forms.

And you use sinks in this show?

The sculptures downstairs are based on ceramic pastel colored bathroom sinks that I’ve been collecting. They're stuffed with hand-rolled cigars, an object that carries a lot of different meaning, both as a good that has traveled the world and a power symbol, but also as a problematic trade object with a certain history. Another thing that attracts me to the cigar is the fact that it’s hand-rolled—the human effort attaches itself to how we perceive the value of the object. I’ve worked with Persian rugs with an interest in how value is constructed and perceived..

Do you feel like there’s a comparison between something that’s made by hand and something that’s mass produced?

Yes, there’s something about these ceramic sinks, which are mass produced, but are extremely sculptural in their shapes. They’re also design objects. When you look at it from the top, from the front, this is the design object—this is where the attention has been focused—and then, when you look at the underside of the sink, there's a lot of form there based on practical issues—all the piping and tubing, the hanging systems, which have come about from a practical motivation. These two ways of giving form are meeting in this one object, and depending on what side of it you’re standing on, you’ll experience one or the other. But they actually go together so well. It’s such a voluptuous shape in the end—it can almost only reference a body.

Which is kind of like the title of the show—Baby.

It’s also the title of a piece that is made out of waterbed mattresses that have been filled with water, pebbles and coins. So, there are these muddy pebbles that have been pushed in through the little hole of the waterbed where the water goes, and they’re hanging on the wall, heavily carrying all this content.

Kind of like a pregnant woman.

There’s definitely a feeling that the water may break. It’s also a very direct sculptural presence of the mass and this thin membrane that holds this heavy material inside. There’s a slight transparency to the plastic, so you can see the line of the water, and at the bottom, you can see there’s like a cellulite texture, because the little pebbles are pushing against the membrane.

How did you come upon this idea?

I watched these videos of waterbeds—the advertisements for waterbeds where they have tractors running over them without them breaking. I guess the big fear within the waterbed industry, which is a shrinking one—another part of why I’m interested in it—is the fear that they will break. The most important thing is to prove that they won’t—that they can really hold a lot. So, how an object like that, a big hat that promises to hold whatever you put into it was a sculptural proposition that I couldn’t resist. This is how I usually work: I get interested in a material, my studio is overflowing with stuff that I collect, some stuff returns, like Persian rugs or human hair wigs, there are things that I can’t seem to finish, or they’re around my studio—I don’t know what it is, but they keep popping up. I don’t always know why, when I start collecting objects—sometimes I need to live with them for a while, and then they find their way into being a sculpture.

Have you ever actually slept on a waterbed?

I’ve actually never slept on one, no.

Above: 'Plug' and 'Man's Mind,' 2018.

I love the sinks because they look like little people smoking.

The starting point was the meeting of the materials, but I love when this thing happens—there is a very direct logic of the plug, the drain hole and you close the drain, but a compressed bit of tobacco is also called a plug. I think I was thinking of these almost as ears, with the plugging, like a very straightforward gesture. But the fact that so many images come to mind once the object is there with the plug inside—there’s a broad range of references that pop up, from sexual imagery to the digestive system. Some people see corroded pipes. So, it has this potential to show you things about yourself.

I’m thinking of a little cartoon character, and the title being Baby.

So, a baby smoking a giant cigar?

Yeah! Have you ever seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit? There’s that baby that smokes cigars. That’s what I picture.

I’ve never heard that before. That’s good! But that’s what I really like, or what I’m interested in—if you focus on different aspects of these objects you can have different experiences. If you just think of them as materials, or if you just think of them as currencies in this world, or if you think of them as design objects, or as symbols, you’ll have different things to take away, and I like that those can coexist without any of these understandings having any authority over the others.

I love the pun with ‘plug'—it’s a fun reference to wordplay and language.

The most impossible object that I started collecting are thee marble lions—the guardian lions that stand in front of buildings. I have a show up in Copenhagen at GL Strand with some of these works, and here I have one, as well. I’ve been collecting the beards of some of the guys working here at Metro Pictures. I made a little nest in one of the creases of the lion, as if an animal had collected this material, or if the wind had blown the beard trimmings and they landed in these areas. But it also creates an image at the same time, that recalls this optical illusion of Freud, called 'What's on a Man’s Mind,’ where you see a naked woman in his face. I was reminded of it while I was looking at it. The nest of beard trimmings translates the marble, which is an organic shape, into a different organic shape because of this marker of the pubic hair.

Which is an actual organic material.

It’s also a nice reference to the fact that we never see pubic hair depicted in marble. It’s the one material that cannot be represented, for different reasons—there’s both a very practical one, and a bunch of other historical reasons.

It’s so conceptual and fun that you interacted with members of the gallery to remove their hair.

They were donors! It just so happened that quite a few of the people here have beards.

But it's funny too, because it’s men’s hair and you're saying it recalls a female form.

There's something about a beard that is really a mystery to someone who is not able to grow it. I’ve always had a deep fascination with this material, and I’ve been wanting to work with beards for a long time. Now, I finally got a chance.