The meaning of an artwork is changing depending on who's looking at it - depending on what culture, depending on what time, and so forth. It's alive.
You can't create a work without being aware that it will change dependent upon the context or the society where it is developed or consumed.
Of course, art in and of itself gives me some feeling of elation or power and is in some way curative. But actually what's interesting at the end of the day is the various interpretations and conversations between us. Something that exists between us is probably better than you and better than me.
Moving swiftly between different arenas like politics, architecture or commercial design is what I would consider defintive of my generation. I am looking at reality and playing fast and loose with it.
That's what I mean by this sense of erasure. You're inside some event or spectacle and you know you're complicit in it, but there really is no external.
It's always an interesting thing that happens between an artist and their work. People collapse the two, and for any artist, there will be a long period of being considered one thing before being considered another - whether despicable, rhetorical, or poetic. But we all know that these things are made with a huge amount of will and intention. Yet ultimately they're out of our control.
With the films, it starts off with certain coordinates in the world and seeing what happens. What happens if you place yourself at an oil refinery in the Middle East? What happens if you place yourself in the White House Cabinet Room? What happens if you place yourself with Brad Pitt on the set of a film? And so on. And no matter what I capture, there is a sense of déjà vu to it, like you might have come across this visual before.
I think that people tend to look at the paintings as being resolved or finite. But, to me, a painting can be an index for all of the paintings I've done and all of the paintings I'm going to do. It's like if I'm doing a film of the Olympics, I'm not examining a specific sport; I'm interested in the overall context.
I had a big fight about how to make something come into the real, to make it physical. It sounds really antique, but it's a question of, how do I make this idea happen? You can't just will it into existence. You have to educate, you have to persuade, you have to seduce, you have to do all this stuff to make something three-dimensional and happen. It's not just a concept. It's actually a reality.
I think the films and the paintings erase each other. The paintings are extremely slow and constantly going on in the studio - they're constantly regenerating themselves in this slow, monotonous way that's a physical struggle and can be a pain in the ass. They're all based on very specific math and diagrams. And the films, when I'm making them, are very fast, very collaborative, with a lot of improvisation.
