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| Liam Gillick in New York on Exhibition: "The problem is essentially a crisis in representation. These people in the film thought they were beyond difference." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
A married couple live in a fantastic house in London designed by late architect James Melvin. Their relationship to each other and to the building, their work as artists and how it relates to their bodies are exposed by Joanna Hogg in Exhibition.
Liam Gillick and I continue our conversation with an examination of a crisis in representation, the influence of Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray, and how Valie Export and early Marina Abramovic informed Viv Albertine's portrait of the artist D. Ed Rutherford's cinematography, Liam's future in acting and the meaning of bare feet are also explored.
Anne-Katrin Titze: Where did you first see the finished film?
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| Liam Gillick as H on his belly in the grass with Viv Albertine as D: "When he felt he was part of a counterculture, even if it's an elitist one." |
Liam Gillick: It was very important for me to see it before the première, which was in Locarno. I was nervous, because I'm not a professional. I said, don't let me see it in the middle of 500 people. To see a film for the first time in an international film festival and then answer to a group of journalists, I would say what I think, which may not be what people want to hear. Seeing it in advance, at least I knew.
AKT: How was it, watching yourself? You are quite exposed.
LG: I knew the film would look good. But I can't see myself really. I can't watch myself. I'm disgusted.
AKT: Something that makes you vulnerable in many scenes, I felt, was your exposed feet. Barefoot with guests in the house for dinner or in flip-flops, sweeping the puddles on the roof.
LG: Some of those things are my deliberate little games. I decided at some point that he would mainly be barefoot, as kind of a legacy to an earlier freer time in his life. When he felt he was part of a counterculture, even if it's an elitist one.
AKT: Can you relate that to the scene in which you are lying on your belly in the grass in the park?
LG: Absolutely.
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| H - Liam Gillick on what he learned from Joanna Hogg: "To have a vision but to let other people in." |
AKT: The audience expects him (H) to explode at some point. The only person he does get angry with is the guy who parks the car in his spot. Very classic and not progressive at all - the man and his car and his parking spot.
LG: Joanna said, I don't know how this would work - do it! Do something! The guy in the scene was a construction worker, a builder. We shot four or five takes and I was really quite aggressive. He said to me, in real life, he would have punched me.
AKT: Relationships are revealed in the body language. Sometimes one gesture or the distance you walk with each other have to say it all.
LG: I'm completely untaught but I'm not an idiot. The body movement in the whole film to me was almost 90% of the work. I found out that I have a good body memory.
AKT: H keeps saying that he wants to help his wife with her art and in general. "I can be useful," he insists.
LG: You see characters who have high principles. They're the products of a kind of liberal, progressive education environment in the Seventies and Eighties. They find themselves at a point where their principles aren't good enough anymore. The new wave of feminist and deconstructivist teachings in the Seventies made him, H, but when he speaks like that now, it makes it worse. He means it, but it's still a patronising and patrician position.
AKT: D's work, functions as an excuse for everything. Torture under the guise of work, is what I noted.
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| Liam Gillick, Viv Albertine, Harry Kershaw and Tom Hiddleston in Exhibition: "Yes, I would do it again, but it would have to be in a collaborative way." |
In 2013, Marina Abramovic spoke with Antonio Monda on films that influenced her life and work.
LG: Yes, I think people do that. That's their artwork. It's so embedded in their own existence. It does seem to be a kind of torture-pleasure. There's definitely a sadomasochistic aspect. What Viv is using in the film are artists who are deeply serious like Valie Export or even early Marina Abramovic, who had a really hard edge in the Seventies. Pretty tough work. It's about body control and body image. If you read certain feminist theory, [Julia] Kristeva or Luce Irigaray and people like this, they are talking against the phallus. The phallic is their thing and they want to get back to the female body as a kind of source.
What's happening in the film is that this is what Viv is grappling with. She is caught between the theory and the practice. This is my theory - her character has all of the theory of feminism but none of the practice. She doesn't know how to enact it.
AKT: It is difficult for anybody. Women as commodity, as Irigaray says, is what is going on, but how does it affect your behavior? What does it mean to write with the body? What Viv as D does when she molds herself to the architecture. How do you transpose the theory into the world?
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| On Viv Albertine as D in Exhibition: "She is caught between the theory and the practice." |
LG: I agree with you. The problem is essentially a crisis in representation. These people in the film thought they were beyond difference. They were the post-feminist generation who thought they could have a true partnership. In the end, it's all about identity and the body and loss and breaking apart.
AKT: We don't know where they are going. The scene at the end when the two of you are packing one box - what does it say about you when it takes two people to pack that small box? It's a great scene.
LG: I decided in that scene that we're both dead. It is such a strange ending. They have a kind of togetherness that's almost impossible, as well. In a way they are kind of nauseatingly together, in fact. The bit that is really key to the film is at one point when you see Viv, all bound up doing her thing in the window and you see me down on the street looking up and then I smile. Maybe this is all a game that we do all the time?
AKT: How did this experience influence the art you are doing now? Did it?
LG: Oh, absolutely. I spent all this time with two really great cameramen. Especially Ed [Rutherford], the director of photography. I learned a lot technically. I've been using photography a lot more since then. And also, your relationship to cinema changes. You can suddenly see who is good and who is bad. I can suddenly see acting. The weird things people do.
The final thing is the degree of work. It was really hard work and I liked it - the degree of focus. Contemporary art is different. I became less anxious about time, spending three years on producing one thing made me think I can just calm down. And also letting other people in more.
AKT: A question of control?
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| D and H packing for an Exhibition move: "I decided in that scene that we're both dead." |
LG: Yes. To have a vision but to let other people in. To see Joanna change course so many times, the logistical effort of changing direction. We were filming many scenes in a country house.
AKT: Which we never see?
LG: You do see it at one point. The whole scene is black and you hear crying. That's in the country house.
AKT: Did you get other acting offers?
LG: I've had people talk to me. Absolutely, but I don't want to take any one's work away from them and I wouldn't be able to do exactly the same thing over and over again like professional actors have to do. Yes, I would do it again, but it would have to be in a collaborative way.
In part 1, Liam Gillick talked parallel lives, what cinema means to contemporary artists, and how it felt to become material. Robert Bresson and Hermann Hesse were assigned as homework by Hogg to prepare him as a first time actor for his role. Cary Grant improvising for Leo McCarey, Alain Delon with Maurice Ronet in Purple Noon, and his newfound appreciation for the Grudge Match antics between Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone were also disclosed.
