It's Not a Time for Dreaming
Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery.
©Copyright Pierre Huyghe 2004. All rights reserved.
PH: It’s different in the earlier projects, like
Third Memory and Snow White. They’re playing a pre-existing
scenario that’s interpreted. John Woytowicz in Third Memory
originally interpreted Al Pacino from
The Godfather, using one of Pacino’s lines to actually rob the bank.
The fiction influenced him and then the robbery was televised and became a
storyboard for director Sidney Lumet in Dog Day Afternoon, and then
I asked Woytowicz to make a film I directed. I’m interested in how the
mind embodies these different moments. In the Antarctic project, someone
is first an interpreter and then an actor.
There’s a constant
process of claiming and reclaiming identity.
It's Not a Time for Dreaming, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman
Gallery. ©Copyright Pierre Huyghe 2004. All rights reserved.
PH: It’s a kind of feedback. In Le Corbusier
, there’s a parallel story between Le Corbusier and Harvard. They sold Le
Corbusier to the Harvard dean saying we don’t have a
Picasso in our museum, so we need a Le Corbusier on campus.
The
building became a souvenir.
PH: It’s a collage of
fragments of modernity.
Was Le Corbusier resentful of the
commission?
It's Not a Time for Dreaming
Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery.
©Copyright Pierre Huyghe 2004. All rights reserved.
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PH: He was disappointed. He
should have done the UN in New York, but it didn’t work out. The Harvard
commission was his only chance to do something in the U.S.
Two
years later, in 1965, he drowned in the Mediterranean. Again, your work is
dealing with error and lack of narrative resolution.
PH:
His death marked the drowning of modernity. Le Corbusier died before the
building was built, which is why there are mistakes in the building and in
the theater where the puppets played. I’m using this gap between what was
planned and what was actually realized. I like mistakes. Nothing functions
without mistakes. In this last project, the human has been nearly removed.
The recent projects are without resolution, I let a question fly around,
but I like the fairy tale structure. I’m interested in something that
presents a matrix and the idea of return and restarting.
Shooting for "A Journey That Wasn't", Central Park, October 2005
©Copyright Cheryl Kaplan 2005. All rights reserved.
For the Whitney Biennial, you’re creating a multi-part installation and film,
having shot on both 16mm and also
high definition. This is the first high definition film you’re shooting.
PH: The first part was shot in super-16, a classic documentary. I’m
shooting the Central Park ice rink in black with little light, so I need
an HD camera that can record in darkness. HD is very interesting.
Are you shooting multiple angles?
Pierre Huyghe working on the storyboard for
A Journey That Wasn't, Central Park, October 2005
©Copyright Cheryl Kaplan 2005. All rights reserved.
PH: Yes, like a sports event. I was planning to have
an MC narrate, someone who opens the show and tells what’s going to happen.
Like in vaudeville?
PH: Exactly, or like in classic theater with a voice-over. I’m still
thinking about that for the film. The narrator is still very important for
me. The narrator is a human with doubts, someone who makes mistakes.
It’s a good thing to be driven in the wrong direction sometimes.
PH: Exactly. Everyone trusts the narrator, but the narrator can be wrong.
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