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Phyllis Baldino in conversation with Cecilia Dougherty and David Kalal Interview date July 6, 20178 September 1, 2018 Podcast here Cecilia Dougherty This is Cecilia Dougherty with David Kalal for the In-Between Theories podcast. In this edition, we are talking with artist, Phyllis Baldino, whose underwater piece, which is still in progress on a larger scale, is the most recent project to appear on In-Between Theories. Phyllis Baldino began working in video in 1993 with her "Gray Area" series, which encompasses practices of sculpture, performance, and video. She has recently returned from France where she installed a nine-channel video called, Nothing From the Future, as well as a single-channel piece called, Now Is Here, for the Videoformes Festival of Digital Arts. The untitled video for In-Between Theories is a forty-one second loop. The content of which is a shag rug, two feet clad in nice Italian socks in a tub of water. The combination is both funny and playful, and knowing Phyllis' work, it has connections to the way she uses video as an extension of the body, rather than the eye, and also connections to ideas of fluctuation in both, time and space, and the simple deconstruction of domestic objects. One of the objects being a small, underwater video camera. David Kalal Also, I just wanted to kind of chime in at the beginning and say, I think that we have an interesting opportunity to look at an initial fragment from a work that's just beginning. Because a lot of the discussion Cecilia and I have had when we've been looking at different work, and at this clip, was about the context of, or the moment, of what initiates work for you. And how you work, in some of the series you've done, with the primacy of a single take. And also how the materiality of the initial recordings that you're doing inflect and inform some of these larger ideas that are underneath the work. So, it seems like taking the 41 second fragment -- I'm hoping to use it in a conversation to position different ways that we talk about the way the ideas emerge from the work, and the work emerges from the ideas. CD Right. And our question basically is, what initiates work for you? I just want to talk about how this piece got started and how you're working on it, or it's emerging. But is there something general you can say about how your work generally initiates. [Buzzing noise from construction in background] Phyllis Baldino That [construction noise] was really great. Gee. Each piece is different. It's hard to say exactly how it starts. [Buzzing noise from construction] No, this is a great background buzz, which is pretty funny. It's easy for me to talk about each piece as to how it evolves, rather than talking about the work in general and how it evolves because each piece is different, if that makes sense. The last piece, Nothing From the Future, well, that was not last, I'm sorry. Now Is Here was the last piece, which ended up turning into a political piece because of just what happened. It was literally a process that changed over time. It was the idea of "Now", and then during the idea of "Now" was when there was a presidential election here. And then I happened to go to Cuba, and all these other things happened and that was so much about time more than any other piece I've done because it evolved over time and so many things happened. So, with this piece that I just started shooting, this underwater piece, I always really want to challenge myself and I always feel like - I don't know. This is hard to explain in words. CD You bought an underwater camera. PB Yeah. I bought an underwater camera because I was actually thinking a lot about the sea level rise and how the climate is changing a lot. I always kind of knew someday I would do a piece kind of around that idea of climate change. But I didn't really know what was going to happen and how it would be. When I was in Europe, it snowed in Paris. I came back home, it was snowing in April. I know that's nominal compared to other parts of the world that are completely being devastated by flooding. CD Right, but climate change isn't always about devastation. PB Right, right. CD We want to notice what's happening, rather than get to a point where we're devastated. PB Yeah. Right, right, right. So, I was just kind of aware of all these things. And then I came across a book, "The Water Will Come", by Jeff Goodell, I think. DK Well, I just wanted to also jump in and add, It's interesting when you said, "It's hard to describe in words", and then, Cecilia also talking about the necessity of noticing small, interstitial change in time. A lot of what the work does is that it takes things that are hard to describe in words, and creates them as moments, sometimes moments floating in time, in temporality, like you were doing with the piece in Paris. But, also, it seems to be an answer to that, “It's hard to describe in words”, therefore, you go into this intimate, close up, deeply material video work -- that is describing that which is hard to describe- PB Hard to describe in words. DK ... in words. Right. PB Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, after I read that book… the book is amazing. I mean I always knew what was happening in the the book is happening. But when you actually read it, it's kind of like, "Oh." It goes into a lot of detail. So, I was thinking a lot about water, and I then I was like, "Water. Let's shoot underwater. How cool." So, It's another challenge. I've never shot underwater. And technology has changed so much since I've been working, since '93. It still kind of is amazing to me that you could buy a camera now, and literally plop it in water and it still be fine. I don't need a casing. It's a really good resolution, it's an Olympus camera, it's only 400 bucks. For doing something like that ... that alone got me really excited. And It's just so great. I didn't want to shoot in the pool. I didn't want to shoot in the ocean. I didn't want to make it this big project that would be cumbersome and crazy, and expensive, and just like blah, blah. It's not about that. It's about just having the ideas be created in a different kind of way. And so, I knew I had to have more of a controlled environment. I mean, it's very simple, and luckily, my new studio has these amazing windows, and I have tons of natural light. Which is the first for me, actually. And I just got these big plastic bins. It's so basic. It's just like the bins you would get if you were moving. I filled it with water. And I put this camera on a tripod. And this is my first shoot -- of the shoot that you have here, playing with these. I bought these mod socks, in Rome years ago. And I just remembered that I had them. That's what also happens. I don't know if this happens to you guys, but my brain remembers things that I wouldn't normally remember, of things that I had bought at some point. And it comes to the fore when I need it. I forgot I had these socks. And I was like, "Oh, I have those socks. And I have this rug." It was just like, I don't know, as worlds collide. It's such a basic idea, but I took these socks, and I found this great rug at, actually, one of those cheap New York stores, which I love. It has this slight sheen to the rug. I just placed the rug in the tub and put these socks on. I just started walking around. And I still can't believe this, this footage, there's no edits, it's totally raw. It just has this kind of thing that's happening. That I can't even describe. It's kind of nice to not be in control of the image for the first time in my life. It really is just kind of happening on its own, with the reflection and with the water, and just movement. And I also feel that we have no control, sadly ... the earth is kind of screaming, and we have no control over what's happening, literally, right now. I mean, we could control it to a certain degree. But, the floods, the water, things are coming, but we can't really control it. And I thought that was interesting. That was an afterthought after I shot this. CD So you were reading the book, and then you got the camera. PB Right. CD And you started putting this together. PB Right. CD And realized that, in the afterthought, you actually were making a piece that is political. PB Yeah. CD Because, when I look at it, I'm looking at things like, there is this little horizon that ... now I know your studio has a lot of light. PB Yeah. CD I'm looking at the really enclosed landscape with, not grass, but I could identify it as a shag rug, but it just looks like some substance. PB It doesn't even look like a rug? Really? That's funny. CD Well, yes, it looks like a rug, but no, it's like things in your videos that become something else when they're in your hands. You know, they have a different function. PB That's the other thing that happens. Yeah. Because what happens a lot, people ... they'll see a piece and they'll go, "Oh, what is that?" And I used to describe what it is, and then they kind of don't care. They're kind of like, "Oh, is that all it is?" Because the camera creates the image. And if you tell someone exactly what you’re using – I literally detail what the object is – they kind of have this glazed look in their eye, and they're so unhappy with the answer and they want something completely different. But that's really what it was. CD You should just tell them it's something else. PB I should make up this other, like, "Oh, it really was lava." Whatever, just make up something that's not real, because when I tell them, they're so uninterested. And they're so like, "Oh, is that all?" And I'm like, "Well, that's because the camera does these things." That's why I love camera. The camera is right. CD I feel the opposite. When I know what this is, it makes me happy. DK It has this really interesting relationship because it's like -- there's a basis or a connection to a really big idea, like a paradigm shifting idea there. PB Right, right. DK And then, it feels like the impulse to begin to explain or explore it is in the smallest, visual grammar. Because you could do something really contained and illustrative, but also like a syllable, rather than a book. PB Right, right. DK The small ideas come from this huge idea. And I see that throughout the work. I mean, in the way you've described it. PB Right. DK Just in its presence. So, for me, I found this fascination and this image too -- before I knew the premise behind it, before I was in that conversation that's either about disappointment, or, reward with the artist, right? But for me, it felt oceanic. [Construction noise] I saw like, a wall of anemone. But an anemone is a continuum. It's circular. So, I didn't know what it was. I wasn't trying to figure it out, exactly. I was in the kind of sensual pleasure- PB Yeah. DK ... of watching it. CD Maybe the wrong question, but others are asking is, "What exactly is that?", or whatever. You don't need to figure it out. If they want to figure it out, they also want there to be an element of mystery. PB Exactly. Right, right. CD There does not need to be an element of mystery. It's completely not about that. Those things are both narrative elements that will take you to another place. It takes me to a reimagined, familiar place. It takes me to a reconstructed possible space, not an impossible space, and not a fantasy space. I like being able to see, like, the feed. This is inhabiting these possible spaces, giving them a structure that functions on an intimate level. But it's strange ... Intimacy usually refers to personal psychology. Your narratives are not confessional narratives, they're not autobiographies, they are narratives more about human presence. PB The process, yeah. CD You said not to generalize. So, what is in between generalizing theme and the other end of that, which is how specific an individual history is? And I think that your work is in that space, in between things. That is a space that's not that other work. Art work and literature actually situates a lot of things in that space, but does not highlight it. It uses it more as a foundation. Your work is very much in an intimate space. In the piece where we're in The Great Salt Flats, that space is not an intimate space. PB No. CD But it becomes so specific, and also never becomes landscape. So how does that happen? PB I don't know. That was intuitive. I don't know how to really talk about that. But, the Salt Flats to me, it's one of my favorites. What's that great word? Topophilia? Is that the word? It's the love of a location. I could have that word wrong. But when I heard about that word, I was like, "That's me in the Salt Flats.” It's like when you go to a space, in a place, in the world, and you have a love for that location. CD And it's not because you grew up there? PB No, no, no. No. CD Or, you have no memories there. PB No. It's just that when you go there, you're in love with the location. I feel that when I'm at the Salt Flats. And I have complete topophilia there, and I just kind of want to embrace it, it's so ridiculous. I want to embrace it, but I can't because it's too big. I don't really like being in a body sometimes but I'm in a body, because I have no choice. If I could be out of my body, I would love to just fly around that space. But I'm not capable of doing that. When I went there I was really very excited. I did these shoots there because the landscape to me is just like ahhh, so amazing. I, of course, prepared those shoots before I even left. I didn't just get on a plane and go, "Oh, what I'm going to do?" Those shoots were prepared in advance and I had to ship all the props up in advance. I did 13 shoots in 13 days. It was pretty insane but it worked. It was very stressful, but it came together. DK This is another example of an environment, right? PB Yeah. Right. This is another environment. It's kind of great that you're doing this, but I'm also kind of in uncharted territory right now. Because this is new for me, to shoot something that I don't know what it's going to look like. And like I said, when I shot this, I didn't know what it was in. And then I got out of the tub, and then I looked at the footage, and I was like, "Oh, my God." It just was this other thing that I didn't even know that it was doing. So, it was a surprise even to me, which was kind of cool. CD The camera is just right here. It's like against the side of the tub? PB The camera is on a tripod. And it's low- CD Oh, it's on a tripod. PB It's on a tripod, it's in the tub, it's low, and it's angled. I mean, this is really hard to describe, of course, you know. DK So, you're in the water with the camera? PB I'm in the water with the camera. But what I think happened ... and this is also interesting because I've done at least five more shoots since this, so I'm shooting other situations as well in this kind of scenario, every shoot is completely different even if the camera seems like it's in the exact same place. And that to me is fascinating. But I also love that because you can't duplicate it. There're so many factors that happen unexpectedly because it depends on where the sun is in the sky, the windows, if it's cloudy, if it's sunny, the exact angle of the camera, the lens. And the reflection happens with the water and with the lens. And the water actually isn't literally covering the entire lens, because then you would just see underwater footage, which is, to me, extremely boring. It's like, "So, who cares? It's just underwater." But, it's the reflection, it's the motion, and it's other things that happen that make it kind of interesting for me. But I didn't ... when I did it, I didn't realize it would look like this. I just had no idea. But I also like the experimentation and that's something, even when I'm shooting other shoots, all my shoots I don't really ... I don't like being completely prepared. I think that's really boring and why bother? I mean if you know exactly what you're doing, it's done. There's no point in doing it. I always had an element of surprise and experimentation whenever I'm doing any shoot, at all. I kinda know what I'm doing but I never know exactly, which is how I want it. DK: There's an interesting relation to objects, right? Which they're often ... when I think about your work or read about your work, it's often described as connected to domestic objects, right? Which you're really de-domesticating. |
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PB Right. DK Sometimes deconstructing? But I also think taking out of ... and domestic objects is a loaded term also. PB Yeah, I know, I know. It's just there aren't many words out there that describe- DK Right. But I think it's often used in a very gendered away- PB Yeah. DK -it's talking about objects from the home and they somehow have an antiquated notion of things that are cared for by women. That might kind of conventional old-school family structure. What was interesting to me about this is, it's almost as if by placing the camera in a fully different environment like water, the camera for the first time also becomes a kind of domestic object which is participating. This one in a different way than say in the Gray Area Series where it stands off and the objects are taken apart right? It is very much about the object, it's not about your body. Performer in that is de-emphasized. For me anyway, the narrative seems to be about the rediscovery, deconstruction, reconstruction of these objects, and there again, attached to a larger idea. PB Right. DK You're also breaking ... it's like there's a grammar of performance and then there's a grammar of intellectual exploration of a large idea like fuzzy and crisp that you're looking at here. But here I feel like there's a beginning of a thing where the camera ... it's like you said, it's no longer at that particular observational recording wall. It's become involved in a new, unexpected way. PB Yeah. DK I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you choose the objects that you're gonna experiment with and set up these kinds of environments. PB I go shopping, (LAUGHTER) I know how that sounds but that's how I ... it's very funny. But I go shopping. I have ... 'cause you have to shoot something. You can't just shoot air and then I would ... I don't know, you can't just shoot nothing as far as I'm concerned. Unless I wanted to do that but that's not the way that my brain works. But I think that shooting something is obviously why I work in film. But yeah, I go shopping. It sounds really funny but it's totally true and when I found this rug, I was like, "Oh my god, this is like the perfect ... 'because it has this slight shimmer." And I knew that it would catch the light. It looks so much better than I thought it would look. Actually, when I was actually in the water doing this, looking down on it, it looked like shit. I thought I was just not gonna. Then the footage, it looks great. When I'm looking down as a human being at my feet, in the water looking at this, it just looked mush. It looked brown, it looked like nothing. But I am not the camera and that's what ... I guess over time, it's like any medium, you just kind of, it's an unexpected intuitive thing happening is when I go shopping, I actually kind of now can sense what something will look like in the shoot. I'm not always right, sometimes things aren't what you think. But there's sometimes when I don't use the objects that I buy, but most of the time, I've gotten really good at deciding what will work and what won't work. But again, it's also experimentation and I kinda like things ... I just kind of, it's like anything, you kind of go, "Oh look at this. Wow, look at this thing. Someone made this thing. It's really ugly and stupid but this could look great on film." DK It kind of brings back also the thing, I know Cecilia and I were talking about earlier, which is that there's a way in which you seem to use the camera as an extension of the body but not as necessarily as an extension of the eye. It records material that you see, backlight or so obviously, it's clear you're producing visual material. But in the way you place the camera and the way that you experiment with it and objects, it seems like it's more an extension of the limb than it is like a visual field. PB Yeah that's actually really true 'cause even when I'm shooting ... if I'm shooting something ... I'm having this memory a while ago but I was luckily friends with Nancy Holt. When I first met her, I was with her and Elena Williams, the friend that did Nancy's show that traveled and did Sightlines, the book. We all went up to the Sun Tunnels together. I had my camera and I was like, "Nancy, is it okay if I film you?" She was like, "Sure." I actually have this great documentary of me filming her at the Sun Tunnels and I was so ... whenever I'm filming, even if it's something with that situation or even with my work, it really feels like I'm not there. I'm filming and it's just such a natural thing to do that it really is just my body filming. It's almost like my body knows what to do and it has nothing to do with me. It's hard to explain in that. So yeah- CD I think that's really clear, in fact. One thing I was thinking looking at the Gray Area series and this [underwater project for In-Between Theories], is about body consciousness in terms of the body as somehow an equal actor in whatever scene you're shooting or whatever scene you're performing. Equal actor to the space and the other elements, in this case, the camera too. The body also moving and moving in ways that we are trained to move in social spaces. And In your work, moving in that way, say in these objects that you find when you go shopping, things actually change. It actually ... well we were talking about representation. What is the work in terms of representational value. But what it literally represents meaning what you see. DK We had a moment in the discussion, I'm not sure if this is what you're ... the point you were at, but we had talked about the difference between the kind of representations happening and also ... I think it's happening where your work seems to be enacting and demonstrative theory. Well, jumping off of what you were talking about in terms of ... we were talking about whether it was performative or what we ended up talking about was the space for the work, where it's not simply about performance. Although that's a thing that's happening and it's even in a genre of a thing that's happening, but that it is in these visual chunks or pieces enacted and demonstrating theory. I think that that often attaches to the larger idea that you're exploring. It Brings me a little bit back to ... when you say it's difficult to say in words. I'm like, "Isn't it fascinating to see theory. Whether of time, or of a political moment, enacted visually?" I think we were interested in talking about what it's like to write theory in a visual language. PB Yeah, it's just ... I know exactly what you're saying and it's hard to talk about it. That's why I work visually, hello. DK Yeah. PB Yeah, I know, and it's always ... the whole ‘word’ thing. Whenever I'm told to write about my work, it's always ... the hardest thing, not the hardest thing, but one of the hardest things in my practice is to write about my work. Which I don't know why- CD Which means you have to try to separate it out into different parts. PB Yeah, I mean, it's like that's my work visually. I'm not sure if it's because we're living in a time period, literally this point in time in history where they expect the artist to do everything. You have to write about the work, you have to make the work, you have to do all these things. I felt like in the past, if you make the work that was enough. “Enough” is the wrong word, even still ... it was the wrong word. But making the work, that's why I'm not a writer. Obviously, I work visually and that's just the way my brain is. That's something I kind of ... that's just who I am. CD Okay, I just came across this definition of metaphysics. PB Aha. CD The branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space. I think that's a useful place for my eyes on this page, because I think that kind of describes all those things ... generally being equal. I'm looking at your work as the different parts that make it up. If there is a person in the work, there's a body and there's movement and then there are objects and substances. All these things equated as common things that are in and of themselves useful outside of that context. Then also, often used narratively to represent something else. In your work, they don't represent something else. They represent themselves very steadfastly, then work in the creation of, I think, a very specific type of space. It is not about expression. It's not about making statements. It is much more about visualizing the statement. As you're saying, this is why you don't write about your work or talk about your work as much you just make it. I think the really correct way of looking at your work is to take it literally and to see each element as an equal element of the work. PB Yeah, yeah, I agree completely. I just recently had a studio visit with the young curator from L.A. and he said something very similar. We were talking about it and he was saying how the audio - I was showing him Nothing from the Future - and that piece, I think, it's hard to say ... but I think that that piece more than any other piece, I really worked a lot on the audio, and I brought in audio from the outside which ... it's a mix of audio that happened when I was doing the shoot, it's a mix of audio that ... are you okay with the beep? [Construction noise – beeping] DK Audio from the outside? PB Audio from the outside. Beep, beep, beep. CD Yeah, yeah okay PB There's construction outside you guys, just so you know, that's why now and then you hear these weird sounds but I don't care about that, whatever. What happens is everything in my work has to be there. It's not like one element can't be there. It's interesting to talk about this because there's a lot of work that I see or not ... I shouldn't say a lot, but when I see work when there's something ... well why is that element there? That doesn't fit with the rest of it. I'm really aware of that and it's all intuitive. When a piece is done, I know it's done because everything there has to be there. It has to be the way it is. In that situation, it took a longer time to finish Nothing From the Future because it's thirty-five clips with audio and twenty-five abstractions. The audio, because it was set in the future, I was combining different kinds of audio to make it feel like it was not now. Not in the present. CD Okay. So, what are the abstractions? PB The abstractions ... is the silent footage that is playing in between the thirty-five clips. Because there's thirty-five clips and because they're actually synchronized. It's a wireless installation, which for me, was really kind of something that I've been dreaming... I actually, literally, have had dreams of wireless installations over twenty years ago, so the fact that this happened for me is a miracle. That's a whole other conversation, I won't go into detail but it was pretty great to have this finally realized and it was great to do this in France because they were totally behind it, which was really cool. The pieces, they're synchronized but it's kind of ... they're synchronized but it's not frame accurate so it's not so tight, which I didn't want it to be that tight. But the silent abstractions, but I really like having footage, having it be real footage, so that abstraction, I actually created in my studio. Actually, I created that in my home because my studio at that time didn't have windows. It's really simple but it works really well. I created a mirror box. CD Right, okay. PB Did I tell you this story? CD No, I know the footage that you're talking about. PB Yeah. CD Yeah. PB I created a mirror box and I filmed inside the box, without having the camera reflect in the situation. The light would come in from my windows in my apartment and then there would be reflection of just whatever it was around literally. Then that would be in the footage. The footage is mostly kind of darkish, blackish, grayish. There's sometimes some color that might be my kitchen towel or something in my kitchen. It was a really cool abstraction. It was kind of a nice way of creating abstract footage without having it be literal, and so I really wanted something kind of like that, to have it be what I call the in between footage of the other footage from the Piece. CD Right. PB Why am I talking about this? Wait, we got kinda sidetracked. CD Because I asked, because you were calling the footage “abstractions” and I just- PB Okay, okay no I'm sorry. Okay, I forgot because I just went on this long thing. I was like, "Oh my god, why am I talking about this?" CD Because it's interesting. DK Number one reason. Also, on the thing with Nothing From the Future, which the large idea you're exploring there is time right? Which is a thing that we know is difficult to describe in words, right? Narratives about how we always fail and it has usually like a recourse, in my mind anyway, to a mathematical equation, right? Even if I can't understand it, I understand that that's how time is theorized and described. But when you say that everything in the work has to be there, all those elements have to be there. PB Yeah. DK It seems almost as ... for me I had this resonance where it's like you're building an experiential equation, right? What better way to describe the theory of time than for people at the installation to have to ... you have to experience it. PB Yeah, you do. DK Right? It's an experiential but everything needs to be there, like everything needs to be in a mathematical equation of greater sophistication than I can understand, in order for it to tell the truth about time or build a theory about time that we don't even know. It's a final truth. When you're working on that, everything has to be there. PB Right. DK What is the process of understanding how you build that equation? What all those elements are? PB What all those elements are? Oh okay, this is also hard. I mean I'll try to explain this but it's also an organic process for me just from the start. I have the idea about the future for this piece, for Nothing From the Future. Then I start going shopping. Then I buy objects and then I alter them accordingly. That's completely intuitive. Then I create the process to decide what I will actually shoot with the objects and how that will happen. Then I always, like I said before, I have this experimental aspect so I don't know exactly what I'm doing because things happen on camera completely unexpected, which I love, and the idea of chance is really important for me. I hate when things are perfect. It's like it's so boring. That happens but with Nothing From the Future, the audio was a huge element. Like I said, I really wanted to play with the audio but I didn't know - I think this was kind of important and this is another part of the process of it being kind of organic is - for example, when I went to the Salt Flats I did those shoots, I didn't know what kind of audio I was gonna add to that footage, I had no idea, and when I came back, it was ... over time, I would just start playing around with audio and pulling stuff from YouTube, or, you know… you steal stuff. That's just what happens. It would be like, "Oh my god, this goes with this." It was just choices like anybody chooses. Even a painter, they'll like, "Oh okay this needs to be over here in this part of a canvas. This needs to be over there." Who knows why you decide these things? But then it just works and then you're done. DK And that organic process is reproduced in the room or in the space- PB Right, right. DK When you're looking at Nothing From the Future or when you're in the room with it right? PB Yeah. DK Because audio and visual also- PD -are combined. DK The way that you have described, that the future has to be understood also as a series of moments the way present is understood. It's like, it's reproduced in the process of making the work, right? In that series of moments where you build it and then it's reproduced for the- PB For the viewer. DK For the viewer. Maybe viewer's not the right word. PB Yeah, yeah, yeah. DK That's the thing, it's the abstraction of audio and the happenstance or organic mixing, so the temporal loop between creation and the experience for the, I don't know, audience member . |
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PB Yeah, yeah, yeah. CD Yeah, the audience member. That's an interesting point because what you are kind of eliminating is that this, like, the apparatus theory of film, which has the audience member through in some kind of geometric situation with the screen, the projector, the camera, the subject, etc. That is the description of the voyeur, and so you have eliminated the voyeur. There's no voyeur in your work. So, you're talking about time. We're not looking at an event in order to experience like a transference phenomenon not with a character … PB Yeah, yeah. CD Which is, I think, pretty essential to film narrative. They wanted to draw you in. I am drawn in by sort of like purely different things. Those things are... actually some are visceral, like I like what I imagine this feels like. They're also intellectual, and for me there is an element of humor, although now I know it's about global warming so that's not so funny. PB But, but you have to remember, this is just one clip of many shoots and humor is gonna come into this peace. I don't know how yet, so you have to... sorry to interrupt you...- CD Is it the socks? I love those socks. PB I love the socks, I mean these socks, like I said I had these socks in my drawer for, I forgot, years. I bought these in Rome and I am just like, "Oh my god, my socks", and Like I said, I remember when I have to remember. Who knows why I thought of these socks. And then, it's just one... I don't know. CD Because they have those big circles on them. They create a different shape than the rug. PB It's just- CD Are they circles or- PB No. It’s actually … I was calling them “mod” socks, they’re kind of ‘60s. They’re not circles less, they're like this abstraction. It's almost like an abstract stained glass window, but not really. CD Right, right. I was gonna say window pane. PB Yeah, and it's like a geometric, but it's just like... I mean they're just knee highs, they're not anything. CD They're very special. PB Yeah. CD And I'm saying I get draw in not because I wanna know what happens, I do kind love what happens but you know, I'm not identifying with the character. I'm not a voyeur in this situation, but it gets rid of all this stuff that can easily come between the person who's looking at the art and what the art is doing. So, your art does do things, and it does do things I think more than it says things. Except the piece that you shot in Cuba. That actually says a lot. PB Well, that's more of a political piece because I could not not make that piece. That makes too many negatives there but I had to make a piece about our current administration because I was going, I'm still going crazy, but I'm trying to live my life like you know, it's really hard to kind of... we're all in the same boat. It's a hard time. DK It's interesting that you bring up that that is a directly political piece right after you're talking about that eliminating of the apparatus and voyeur because it means then this is how I've been looking at the work as well, and particularly some of the stuff also then in Now is Here, where the political came in. But if you remove voyeurism, if you move away from apparatus theory it means that if your audience member is not a voyeur, they’re in some form of active authorship, of viewing, right? Which is a call to action in and of itself. It’s a different relationship. And when you were talking earlier about how when you were making Now Is Here -- the political moment of the now added an urgency to the way that you were creating that piece, that seems to be implicit in what Cecilia is talking about, also, as in building a practice of active authorship. I'm not sure if that's what I'm trying to say, but some kind of active presence of the audience member, not the viewer, is where we're looking at more senses out there. It is a thing, at this political moment, right, which is about time and urgency and now, which is a key element of all this work. How do you find that... I can see the Cuba work is at a place where you in some way is you release a valve by doing explicitly political work, but when you find it coming into work that is gestural, talking in these smaller visual moments- PB Yeah. How's that's gonna work out? DK Right. PB Yeah, I know. CD I mean it actually closes this huge gap of the performance in conceptual work and work that is "About something." PB Thank you. With this piece in particular, I’m trying to combine both. I'm not sure about you guys but what's .... I mean even with Now Is Here, I was really, really compelled to make that piece. It was very, very strong and I just happened to be going to Cuba. It was just like, that was on my calendar. Pre-existing. That piece really just kinda made itself. I just had no choice. I was just like running down that road and doing everything possible to finish it and to get people to help and to be in it, and just to kind of... because it was so, and it still is, so ... there's no word to describe what's happening now in our country in my brain. I can't think of a word, that's just so awful, the word doesn't exist. So, making that piece was really important. But it was also really hard because things are so insane that you can't even parody it, because it's beyond parody. It's really hard to comment, and I did the best I could, given the situation that I was in, and I don't like being blatant. I don't like hitting people over the head with ideas. I think that's really... it's just my style. I'm just more organic that way. But that's why now making this piece, this underwater piece, I'm in a different kind of struggle. I can't make it as blatant as... not as blatant, but like that last piece Now Is Here, is very political but it’s not as abstract as this work. I have to infiltrate political stuff in here but I don't want it to be literal because that would be just “why.” It makes no sense ... it's not gonna come out that way anyway because that's not the way my brain works. So somehow, it's gonna be political, funny, and other things that I don't even know yet. DK It’s also this fun, playful thing for me where it's like you're working with extremities. You're literally working with extremities and in the first one, you don’t go for the easily key things likes eyes or faces, but instead hands. PB Now it’s feet... yeah. DK Yeah. I do feel like, when you talk about the playful is funny aspect and there's visual pun and visual play and expressiveness as well. Like, that gesture seems to me, like, yeah, we can't figure out what's going on so it is all like at the very tips of your perception - where it enters your body. PB I don't really know how this is gonna turn out. It’s always the case. I never really know what's gonna happen until you start working, and then all of the sudden it's done. CD It's just really fun to watch. You could say that. DK I did think though it’s done in the sense of a certain kind of work for you, it's completed. But I think the resonance and the ideas have gone on much further than you know, whatever catalog dates for when piece is completed. There's an experimentation and authorship process for you but the work itself and the largest ideas that are going on seems to me that's why we're talking from The Gray Area series through now. There's red connective tissue there. PB Through all of it. Yeah. DK I think also about like what this kind of concept of evolution is in that's what Cecilia called, the “so called history of her work”... because the work makes... you can't say history of the work. You immediately start to question it because there were questions time and future and comprehension, so you start to mediate inside of where we go, but if you can think a little bit out loud about this trace DNA that goes through the work in terms of actions and objects and the kind of ... the interweaving of these larger ... I mean like big mind-blowing concepts, right? That goes into the work ... do you have that same experience that I have that whether you have to work overtime I've seen a kind of connective tissue or trace DNA that runs through it? PB I actually don't, just personally. I like moving … I mean it has nothing to do what I understand what you're saying, but for me, I actually like moving forward. I don't really like looking back at my work that I've done in the past because for me it's about what am I gonna do next? I understand that there obviously is a connection because I made all the work and it's me and it comes out of me somehow. CD I think there's more to it than that and if we don't look at all of your work as having a history, David ,it's kind of like calling it the .... you said , “the trace DNA” or something? DK Yeah, and again I do a call back to myself because as I try and build it into a temporal narrative, I'm like, "That's a lot of what it's about -- freeing up, like, not doing that." CD When people are ... say somebody's writing about your work and they talk about your early work and this and that, they are creating a space for the work that's not necessarily related to how you work. It's not related to how the work actually exists as something that is more along a continuum than as something that is a process of production, that is a product. Looking at your own work is a product is alienating, but looking at your own work as part of a story- PB That's like a lineage you mean, like it's - CD Yes, a lineage. Exactly. PB Well, that makes sense. I'm just remembering that working in video , I always have to archive my work and it actually takes away from my mental space to go backwards, to go forwards, and I don't like doing it because it actually changes... I'd rather move forward all the time, rather than having to basically maintain my archive, which is emotionally exhausting sometimes and it takes away from my ... the part of my brain that I would rather be doing something, working on making new work. But, I see what you're saying it makes sense that it is this kind of continuum. DK The push and pull. This happens a lot when I'm thinking about and watching you work. You have just said earlier you talked about like "oh, it was this great moment” when you were putting the clip together ... “I suddenly remember that I had these things”, and that's not the hyper consciousness of working on your archive, that's the organic call back through time, and you bring that thing forward from time, but it's not contentious. PB Exactly, it's completely different. It's a completely different process. DK Something more joyful in its action. PB Yeah, and I have to remember like we all do. I didn't have all this stuff I had to deal with, and so now I have to kind of balance that part of my brain to deal with showing and all that stuff which is “wudl wudl wudl wudl”, and then making me work. But if it's just of nothing work and nothing else, that's great. Obviously. It's a lot easier. DK More freeing. PB Yeah, it's a lot more freeing. DK And it also speaks to that both the now and the future are all experienced in these moments. Again, I keep going back to saying that the work is “experiential” in ways of understanding temporality. So maybe part of the push and pull is that it starts with a straight idea narrative, but it is the idea of a lineage, of a heritage because that is a helix model and that's ... it's different. CD But I think maybe it's different for the maker than it is for - PB Yeah, for the audience. CD - for the audience. CD Lots of people’s so-called earlier work, because I like to see how they were thinking, like to see where those thoughts show up again later, things like that. PB Yeah. It’s true. CD And I also think that artists have particular areas that they explore over many years, that one thing can take decades to finish that thought. PB It comes out unexpectedly, you don’t even know that it's there, and it's there. It just kinda shows up. When I am shooting and I am using my body, my body is just a tool by the way, it could be ... you know it just happens to be a body. It could be anything else, but it's just a body. Yeah, we all have bodies, we know how our bodies work and it just something that I just use because it's whatever... I know how to use it. When I was on the Flats and I was shooting. Because it was a stressful time and I was mostly by myself, except I had friend come for two days to help for a few shoots, this actually was a surprise to me. My body knew what to do, and I got some of the shoots in one take, which still, to this day shocks me because some of them are very complicated and it's like your body kind of knows what to do. I don't know how else to say it except explain it like that. That was kind of interesting to me that that was kind of a revelation. That happened when I was out there. DK I mean, one of the things I'm enjoying about the conversation is that it occurs to me that it is also interesting that this expansion of media space currently and the ability to have podcasts and different kinds of conversations and more things -- It kind of breaks up the archival thing, right? It is made to speak complicatedly around the narrative and for and against curation and all that, and then each opportunity like this to articulate and talk about work- CD On your own terms. PB Right. And about anything else to - CD Yeah, there is no agenda. There's just conversation. DK And it adds to an archive that's not archival, it's just the organic discussion of the work that we all have more capacity, like you were talking about how easy it is to shoot underwater now. And now we have more capacities to produce and preserve and distribute this kind of conversation. I don’t know if this goes into podcasting or not, but I'm really interested to see how we can structure this conversation around both this initial moment in this work you’re exploring doing, and amongst all the different work we’ve been discussing. It will be interesting to place the podcast, to place the transcript and craft that. PB It’s another process DK I’m already interested. CD Yeah, me too. PB I want to thank you guys both because it’s the first time I’ve ever done something like this, so I was excited that you asked I really appreciated … CD No, it just happened, because we went out to dinner. DK We didn’t ask, it just happened. CD It did. It just happened. You had this [new work], and it was like oh my god. PB It really was serendipity. We went out to dinner and I was like I did this [underwater recording], I just started shooting. And I sent you the clip, just for the hell of it. And you were like, “Oh That” and it went boom boom boom CD This has been the In-Between Theories podcast with David Kalal and Cecilia Dougherty. IN this episode we have been talking to artist Phyllis Baldino. Phyllis thank you very, very much for your beautiful underwater, in-progress, untitled piece -- and for coming here to speak with us today. You can visit us at inbetweentheories.com and see Phyllis Baldino’s work and also read up on Phyllis, her work and also what In-Between Theories is all about. Thank you very much for listening! |
