19 November 2005 – 5 March 2006
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Interview
Catherine Sullivan
The Chittendens, 2005 © The artist Courtesy Catherine Bastide, Brussels and Metro Pictures, New York  enlarge
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Tate Assistant Curator, Vincent Honoré, spoke to the artist:
VH: You called The Chittendens a ‘hysterical film noir’. Could you
explain that?
CS: The first component, Chittendens Scenes (Morbid Naturalism),
takes place in the maze of small offices, and the interaction of the
characters would seem to establish a vague narrative. A camera moves
at random and repeatedly through the waiting room, pantry, bathroom,
conference room, and executive office, creating a narrative that mutates
according to the status of the room and how the characters play, or
perform, their individual scores. This heightened behaviour never coalesces
in any way, and I wanted to create the effect of the camera
in flight, as if it passes through each room only long enough for a
glimpse of the most hysterical aspects of each interaction. The camera
seems to enter each room almost accidentally, and then leaves when
the activity becomes too intense. The cinematography and setting are
film noir-ish, and I wanted to create a sense that the camera witnesses
the office breeding this heightened behaviour.
VH: How did you work with the composer, Sean Griffin?
CS: We began with a choreographic method that we had developed
for an earlier piece called D-Pattern. Sean and I were both interested
in composition or scoring strategies from the 1960s that use numerical
sequences. I was interested in how a numerical scoring system could
be applied to an actor’s performance, which is impossible to break
down into quantifiable units. Through work on D-Pattern, I became
interested in developing these scores further, and in what would
happen through the combination of music and performance with
mise en scène and other elements of film language.
Catherine Sullivan
The Chittendens, 2005 © The artist Courtesy Catherine Bastide, Brussels and Metro Pictures, New York enlarge
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VH: How do you consider the performers’ bodies in this work?
CS: I am interested in what produces or generates the behaviour of
performers. I have always viewed the devices – be they texts, reenactments
of historic performances or received styles and gestures
– as a means to animate different qualities in each performer according
to their individual biographies. Performers, especially actors, absorb
aspects of the behavioural norms we all experience, and in this sense
all of my projects have begun with a certain anthropological interest.
VH: What is some of the background for The Chittendens?
CS: While driving in Phoenix, Arizona, I passed an unassuming brick and
glass building, outside of which was a sign depicting a lighthouse, a tall
rigged sailing ship and the name: ‘The Chittendens’. I found out that The
Chittendens is an insurance agency, and I was reminded of how common
maritime imagery is to American business culture. At the time, I was
reading Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class, and the
iconography of the Chittendens insurance agency in some strange way
became the context for my reading of the book. Veblen associated social
pathologies with the ‘pecuniary’, with acquisition and ownership and the
structures that determine those processes. For Veblen, the circumstances
of life are economical and thus inherently pathological. All of these ideas
in some way informed the making of The Chittendens.
Catherine Sullivan
The Chittendens, 2005 © The artist Courtesy Catherine Bastide, Brussels and Metro Pictures, New York enlarge
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Catherine Sullivan
The Chittendens, 2005 © The artist Courtesy Catherine Bastide, Brussels and Metro Pictures, New York enlarge
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Catherine Sullivan |
Catherine Sullivan |
Catherine Sullivan |
Catherine Sullivan |
