Gilbert & George

from Audio Arts Magazine Volume 23 Number 4, 2005

Transcript

Introduction to Venice Biennale 2005: Vol. 23 No.4 and Vol. 24. No. 1

The 51st Venice Biennale is the tenth occasion that Audio Arts has attended and made ‘on the spot’ recordings with artists, curators and visiting commentators. The aim being to ‘catch the mood’ of this unique event and to participate in the dialogues and discourses that characterize and define the views, ideas and critical responses to this major bi-annual art world event.

As always, the recordings were made with individuals from over 20 countries who were represented in Venice during the opening days of the Biennale, resulting in a diverse mix of voices.

As a result of the ever expanding character of the Biennale, actually being able to ‘see the Biennale’ within the confines of a short visit has become an issue over recent years. However, the ever present diversity and richness is, not only on view in the art display but also through the many ways in which artists, curators and commissioners have responded to the context of Venice and its spaces.

Once again, Audio Arts co-organized an Agendas event: Neighbours in Dialogue, which examined the issues and concerns of artists beyond the usual ‘Biennale circuit’.

Although the increasing number of international Biennales was called into question during the Agendas meetings, the Biennale in Venice is unique and has revitalised itself in recent years as a result of the increasing number of countries, organisations and individuals who are present and who create interventions and exhibitions beyond the ‘official’ Pavilions in the Giardini.

William Furlong: I’m in the Metropole Hotel and we’re about talk about Gilbert & George’s, spectacular exhibition at the British Pavilion. What was particular about making imagery for the British Pavilion?

Gilbert: We knew that this was going to be one of the most important shows for us. We did our best, or our worst.

WF: Is that what Venice is for you, the opportunity to go on a stage that is the largest for contemporary art?

George: I think to almost to get it out of the way because we’re always asked about the Venice Biennale, ‘are you going to be next?’ So I think to have done it, and to have such an amazing warm reception, is very very good for us.

Gilbert: If you have a very big show, like we had in Paris, and that was a very big success, but only 90,000 people no, but here it’s concentrated because the whole of the artworld, is here these three days no. It’s incredible for us.

WF: There are 25 new works in this exhibition and the title is Ginkgo pictures.

George: We changed, over two and a half years ago I think, from using the darkroom technology to printing technology. We now have our own four printers. In many ways it’s a sort of overlap because the language is very similar, only with the old technology they came out black and white and this way they come out already coloured.

Gilbert: It’s an amazing step forward. We really believe that this is the beginning of being able to do whatever we want, because the moment that we have the negative it’s turned into a pixel and we are able to manipulate it in many many different ways. It is only the beginning. Three or four years ago we would not have been able to do what we’re doing now because the computers don’t have enough memory to make it, so we have special computers built because if not we are not able to turn the subjects. It is extraordinary for us because we really are able to manipulate art, and that is what art is all about, manipulation. We are quite amazed that we, who are called ‘the old gentlemen’ are doing it, not the young ones, who go back to bad paintings.

WF: You’ve embraced the new technologies in a very full-blooded way; it’s actually given you permission to move into another gear.

Gilbert: But we have spent a fortune, unbelievable, and without having touched a computer before. Two years ago we had never touched a computer ever.

George: I think all the young people are super experts on the computer and stay up half the night doing it but they cannot create a group of 25 Ginkgo pictures.

WF: You actually manufacture the actual panels in your studio?

George: That’s very important to us. We never did send things out to companies. Once the pictures are finished they leave the studio to be framed and put into cases. Whilst it’s art we only want to be there alone and our one technical assistant goes away for a month, so there’s nothing in the studio apart from our own imaginations and ourselves.

Gilbert: That’s not actually new, we always did that. We always did the artwork ourselves from the beginning to the end, except framing. But we are able to concentrate much more instead of having to go up and down ladders, and we can do it sitting down. It feels like the computer is in our brain so that you don’t have to think too much because you’re already inside yourself.

WF: It’s interesting, you ask people to leave your studio at the moment of negotiation between yourselves?

George: Yes, it’s not so conscious in that way. We have a huge quantity of images but just before making the pictures we know roughly, without being too conscious, the area of life that we’ll be dealing with. We always try to scrape with our fingernails from the city surface, something. This was just scraped from the walls and the floors of London; we scraped the leaves from the ground.

Gilbert: If we have a person there when we are making our designs, if they would say ‘Oh, I like this’ or ‘that’s too much’, we don’t want that.

George: That’s the problem.

Gilbert: We don’t want to be interfered with. It has to be a total virgin soul in front of you.

WF: Tell me a bit more about this wonderful metaphor of scraping your nails through the surface of London?

George: Absolutely, I don’t know whether it’s odd that this time we should be in city parks, it’s probably incidental because Ginkgo trees are now all over the world and we have fossils of English ones, 160 million years old, and then they became extinct in Europe and were re-introduced. We like it because we just feel that all of this stuff on the street, which is swept up and thrown away, we can actually celebrate.

Gilbert: Our sensibility is completely accidental always. So when we were in New York, we felt we are smelling dog shit, no, in fact it wasn’t dog shit they were the female ginkgo leaves smelling, because they have to attract the boys by smelling. We didn’t even know the name of the Ginkgo tree, but we always wanted to compare ourselves to flowers or trees, we always did that, that’s not new, you know. But once we finished designing these pictures, everybody was telling us about Ginkgos, everybody.

George: It’s just extraordinary stuff.

Gilbert: It is the magical tree. It is the oldest tree in the whole world, it is extraordinary.

George: Even when we were creating the designs for these pictures, we were determined not to have any knowledge; we didn’t want to talk about it or anything. But once we’d finished the designs then we realised that a whole world of stuff opens up. Even here in Venice, everybody has a Ginkgo story; to do with their aunt or some missionary uncle. But what we like most of all about it is realising that it was the great witness, the Ginkgo tree has seen everything. It was here before mankind, it was here before insects, it’s seen nations come and go, faiths fade and come and go, and it will continue to.

Gilbert: We were attracted by the golden colour, because we wanted to combine them with all what we feel; all these Arabic writings, Jewish writings, everything that is in East End of London at the moment, it’s a melting pot of the world. It’s like Babylon; everybody’s climbing the tower with their different languages and different kind of ways of seeing the world. We are in the middle of it and we want to open up our self, that’s why we’re cutting and mirroring our self, we don’t want to be normal anymore, we want to be the scream that is inside our bodies.

WF: Everything you do seems to rise out of this reaction to where you live.

George: We always say that a typical planet earth place is the East End of London. There’s nothing that’s happening in the world that is not also happening in Whitechapel, Bethnal Green Road, Brick Lane. Even in the modern times, since it’s become so fashionable; but it has always been fashionable for other people before, now it’s artists and there are upwards of 20,000 artists from all over the world.

Gilbert: And we have a bank of images, maybe like 100,000 images and an index for subjects. For 10 years or 15 years we took small images of these leaflets that are near the mosque where we live. They were so violent but nobody would take notice of it. They only took notice of these violent writings when they hit New York and we already had pictures before that, all those slogans like that ‘white people are the infidel’, ‘we have to kill the infidel’ or ‘democracy is not allowed’, and all this extraordinary stuff.

WF: You reflect the sorts of constituencies that are often demonised in our society. One of which, of course, is the ‘hoody boys’.

George: We always like to celebrate something that is despised or discriminated against. That’s why we did all these pictures called The Perversive Pictures of the tagging. Nobody has a good word to say for it and it’s too simple to be very cruel and say tagging is bad, and taggers should be stopped. They’re all individual people with problems and loves and hopes and fears and this should be realised. It’s rather amusing; we had to go out earlier and earlier in the morning to take images of the tags, because we were being beaten to it by the council with huge sprays, removing them.

Gilbert: It’s quite interesting because we like them but they are frightening at the same time. But the hoods go back to Robin Hood or the monks, the Christian monks or the Muslims. For a lot of young people, it’s a fashion item, no. They are not all hooligans, but there are some as well. We felt the danger in there, that’s why we showed it. It’s very funny that we’ve never been able to see one person doing it as they disappear like goblins. Again and again I look in very dangerous places where they leave them. They are like signatures; they want to be famous, no so they are putting themselves, with that one signature, all over the world.

George: We like it even because they remain for such a long time sometimes. We’ve seen some that are dated from the end of the last century. Those people have probably given it up or got jobs or moved on in life, but they’re still there. We can’t help but be moved by the idea that people are driven to do that. It must be an amazing force inside them.

Gilbert: We are very against being ruled by the State, so that’s why we love them.

George: We feel in modern society there is a tremendous tendency for people to not realise that they’re being taken over.

Gilbert: Even England is being taken over totally by the State we feel. Cameras all over, you have to behave you have to be part of the State.

WF: Talking about the pictures, they sometimes come over as extraordinary evocations of ritual, of ceremony. It’s a non-secular event that we’re looking at.

Gilbert: Like a non-secular altar, that’s what it is roughly. We like it very much because they are very picturesque and we are able to do that for the first time in a more powerful way. Very few artists do picturesque pictures anymore because they all do some kind of fluxus, found objects, but we are able to express ourselves pictorially.

George: We believe very very much in the frozen single image, we think it’s so powerful. It can be a matchbox or a tablemat, we don’t need to have buckets of water on the floor, umbrellas hanging on the ceiling, just pictures; it’s an amazing power.

Gilbert: Even we believe in the negative; that’s unbelievable.

George: Trapping that information. We were amazed to discover when we went over to the computer system that the negative, instead of putting it into the enlarger and projecting it onto the wall, we had to put it on a drum scanner and scan it. We were absolutely amazed to discover it takes half and hour to scan a tine 25mm negative. It just shows how much information is there.

WF: Let’s finish on some sort of overview of this whole Venetian experience. There must be things about Venice that have struck you as being unusual and interesting.

George: The city itself I think is one of the weirdest we’ve ever been in. How people decided it was worthwhile to settle here is still an amazement to us.

Gilbert: We only concentrate on those rooms. We are quite narrow minded in our way of thinking. The most important thing is the viewer in front of our pictures, that’s what we think all the time. When they walk into that room, what will they see, what will they say? That’s it, that’s how we feel it, all the time. All our shows are based on that. How are we able to hypnotise the viewer.

George: We designed the whole show with a small-scale model and then scale models of the blank pictures. They start out as just little white shapes, so the whole show is installed in the model and then we fill in those pictures.

Gilbert: And we never change, once we’ve designed it. Even when we came here ten days ago to decide the heights of the pictures. It was done roughly in five hours, that’s it; then we left. We came back two days before the opening to see how the light was working, because we wanted the light very very high, that it doesn’t create reflections. And it worked very well.

WF: You didn’t want the natural light?

George: we wanted a clear distinction between being out of doors in wonderful Venice or in the wonderful Giardini and being in an exhibition. We didn’t like views out of galleries.

Gilbert: No, we don’t like views because, even like the Tate Modern, many people think, even we think, that the best picture of Tate Modern is at the top floor looking at St. Paul’s Cathedral. When we are going to have a big show there, the windows are going to be closed.

WF: Very finally then, the show at Tate Modern, when is that and is it going to be a new group of works?

George: It opens in February 2007 and that will be a retrospective that will include whatever the latest pictures we’re working on then.

Gilbert: The biggest retrospective ever, we believe. It’s now or never.