Phone Tag: Interview with Sári Ember

Glorious times, Karlin Studios, Prague, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Ani Molnár Gallery

Sári Ember works in stone, clay, and fabric to create sculptural installations that evoke human culture across time and place. The Budapest-based artist brings her personal experiences to archetypal forms, which equally allow the viewer to see their own inner worlds and associations in the work. In this Phone Tag interview, we discuss collaborating during the pandemic, how time in Brazil shaped her as an artist, and her intuitive working process.

Phone Tag is a generative interview format, where I ask each participating artist five questions (plus others as the discussion meanders). At the end, I ask him or her to introduce me to an artist whose attitude and work they find interesting and/or inspiring, who I then interview with the same five questions.

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Linnea West:  What are you working on now?

Sári Ember:  Strangely, I haven’t been working for several months now. I decided during the pandemic that, as everything is postponed, I would just make what I was longing for. I took a sabbatical. It was very good. But now it’s nice to have some deadlines, and I’m excited to get back to work. I will have a dual show in October with Eszter Kállay.

She’s mainly a poet, and also an artist. I invited her to do this show. She would present her poems and I would show objects. It’s nice that this has been a process that we started in February. During the quarantine, we exchanged emails. I like that we had this long preparation period and dialogue.

I was due to have a solo show in the gallery which represents me—Ani Molnár Gallery. I had this idea: I wanted to do something about my grandmothers. My last grandmother died a year ago so now, therefore, all this generation is dead. I’ve been dealing with the death of my grandmothers a lot. I was very close to both of them, and I’ve been very close to their problems somehow too.

I was thinking about how they influenced me, the life they lived, and through their point of view how they can understand my life and my problems. I’m often nostalgic or admiring some things from their lives. I feel a lot of love and anger, pride and shame, in my connection to them, which is connected to the female roles they had to play, and the roles I do not want to play.

I very much felt connected to Eszter’s poems. They are in first person; they are both very everyday and celebrational at the same time. I felt my grandmother’s presence and related questions. The presence of her own body. Not only her mind, but also her body, how it is present on the street. What does it mean, a female body? I’m making big ceramic vessels and vases, black and grey with some drawings on them. There will be some androgynous and female figures in different situations painted or drawn on these vessels. It’s still in progress.

Pouring water (Black), 2020, ceramics, 0.3 x 5.4 x 5.2 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Ani Molnár Gallery

LW:  Do you think the work is different because you have been collaborating with Eszter over such a long period of time?

SE:  I don’t know if it’s different. I didn’t have different ideas about the exhibition, but I’m more confident about it. I understand it more. I am more involved in her poems, and she’s more involved in my works or my way of thinking, and this led to a very subtle selection of works, where I think the texts and objects will communicate in a way that it can create a new understanding for both.

LW:  I wonder if that’s a silver lining of the pandemic, that when you take more time you can have deeper relationships. I often feel like I’m having conversations with people now that are very real, very intimate.

SE:  It’s strange that when we do things fast and more superficial way, they still often happen. Exhibitions happen, and events happen. It feels so good to do it with more attention and more time.

Pile of eyes, 2019, marble, granite, lime stone, 26 x 26 x 6 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Ani Molnár Gallery

LW:  Who has influenced your artistic practice? That doesn’t necessarily have to be an artist, just anyone who influences how you approach your work.

SE:  Actually, I think what mostly influenced my works are people close to me doing artistic work or other creative processes, such as architecture.

I was very influenced by my best friend, and a very good friend, who are architects; Zsófia Kronevetter also makes ceramics. She’s a wonderful, creative person. I learned making ceramics from her. It really opened new fields for me. I was very influenced by my ex‑boyfriend, Bruno [Baptistelli], who was the first artist that I knew so closely. Understanding his process was very important for me. We made this project CHANGE-CHANGE, a nomadic artist run space. We organized five shows, and the artists and curators were all staying in our house for a week and preparing the exhibition. It was a very intense and inspiring experience for me. It was like going to a residency, but people came to our home. Among them was Daniel Lie, a Brazilian artist, and they inspired me a lot. They are a Brazilian artist. We had an outdoor exhibition space, and one afternoon while preparing, they took a little pillow and said “I’m going to sleep there.” They slept there to see what their dreams are, how they wake up, what are their intuitions. That’s wonderful.

Now I am very influenced by my boyfriend. He has a very different approach to art. It’s very critical and deals with ethical questions. I’m very fond of his way of thinking, which is very different than my process.

When I was in Brazil from 2013 to 2015, I was overwhelmed by the Brazilian art scene. I saw a lot of exhibitions, and I was in touch with lots of artists. The art scene is so open… Of course, it has its limits, but it’s very open with the forms and how you express things. It’s very much about the thought and the intuition. For me, that was very much part of being in Brazil, to see how these people work.

Blue vase with eyes (No. 18), 2018. glazed ceramics, 53 x 21 x 21 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Ani Molnár Gallery

LW:  I’m curious because you mentioned one influence is your boyfriend, and that he has a critical perspective in how he approaches his work. I wouldn’t necessarily use that word to describe your practice, but I do think you’re thinking of social roles to some degree, too. For example, when you think about your grandmothers, you’re also thinking about the role of women in society, but maybe it’s more from a perspective of how it feels to live it.

SE:  Yeah, it’s true. My starting point is intuitive. I don’t read for my topics. I work based on what I experience. Whereas he researches. He reads about the historical context, studies, articles.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why I talk about these topics in a very delicate and kind of poetic way. For me, it wouldn’t be my language to speak directly, because I like to approach more people with my work. Even with my opinions, I would like to leave more layers or ways of interpretation.

The forms or materials I use are very simple. Not simple, but I carve faces and figures in stone or ceramic vessels; these are kind of objects that we know well from ancient history. We make our own interpretation of these objects based on our point of views and connections to them. I really like that we don’t really know what they are. I like to provide this experience of my work, that you don’t really know what it is.

LW:  Right. There’s an openness to that.

SE:  Yeah. I like to keep that openness.

Untitled (Mask No 6.), 2017, marble, 29.5 x 23 x 2 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Ani Molnár Gallery

LW:  When did you first think of yourself as an artist?

SE:  I think that was also in Brazil. I studied photography, and for a few years I was a photographer. I wanted to go to Brazil, and I was looking for residencies like an art residency, a photography residency. I found a close deadline, and I applied, and I got it. In Casa Tomada, we were eight international and Brazilian artists sharing a small studio space, and having some talks and visits together. It was the first time I was considered simply as an artist and not a photo-artist. It was very interesting for me. Also, it was the first time I had a studio, so I had a table outside of my home where I can do whatever. Then I started to call myself an artist. I wasn’t very confident. In the Hungarian language, if you say, “I’m an artist,” it almost sounds like, “I’m an asshole.”

[laughter]

It sounds pretentious. At that time, all my artist friends, I asked them: “When they ask you, what do you do, what do you say?” Then they said, “I say my practice is painting.” Or, “I am doing a graphic work,” or, “I’m making sculptures.” [laughs] No one really said, “I’m an artist,” which has many layers. It’s about confidence. It’s also about the prejudice you get. “OK, but what do you do?”—I mean, you can’t make a living off it. It’s your hobby, practically, or your passion.

LW:  You mentioned having a studio for the first time, and now of course, you’re making objects. I’m curious… is your practice largely studio-based? What’s an ideal day in the studio?

SE:  My practice is not very studio‑based. I had a studio, and then for a year now I haven’t had a studio. I was away for residencies too, so I decided to just have a storage for some time. But now I will have again a small space. Otherwise I work at home. I make the ceramics at home. The stone pieces, I plan on my computer, and then I go to the stone carver and I choose the stones. I don’t actually make them, but there are smaller pieces which I bring home. Then I can live with them a little to see what to do with them. I would like my work to be more studio‑based but it’s mostly my sketchbook and computer and kitchen table.

LW:  Are you able to do all the ceramics at home?

SE:  It’s quite good to do at home because with ceramics time is very important. I let something dry for two hours, or five hours, or half a day, or one day. Then I do another step in the process, which might be 10 minutes, but I have to do it at the right dryness. It’s good to do it at home. Then I bring it to fire somewhere else.

Leporello with lying figure in green, 2019, marble, 130 x 50 x 22 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Ani Molnár Gallery

LW:  That makes sense. My final question is my favorite because people have a lot of interesting answers. Do you think as an artist, it’s more important to be in a big city—a place maybe like Budapest, or New York, or whatever—where it’s busy and there’s a cultural scene and there are galleries, or to be in a smaller place where you can focus on just making?

SE:  The ideal would be to live in the countryside. To have space and time and calmness, no distraction from work. Then spend two months in New York, or London, or whatever. It’s interesting because Budapest is somewhere between the two. It’s a small city where many things are happening but not the big important things.

It’s calm, but then it’s not super calm. It’s somewhere in the middle. Actually, I quite like it. Recently I’m not longing for too much inspiration, to see other artworks or concerts. Mostly, the input is tiring to me, so I’m very selective now.

LW:  There are moments where I really miss seeing art. But I don’t know if I need it as much as I thought I did before the pandemic started.

SE:  True! I think at some point in the next months I will miss seeing art and travelling a lot.

I remembered one more thing for the studio practice, that there is one thing I do in the studio that I can’t do at home. Since Brazil, I have a practice of making collages, even if I only do thirty a year. It’s a very nice, loose way to think about new works and projects. It’s a very different material. It’s not stone; it’s not ceramics; it’s two‑dimensional. It’s the abstract, third version of my work and it’s very free to make them. That, I miss a lot. That’s why I would like to have a studio again.

LW:  That’s great. Thank you for participating in this interview.

SE:  Thanks.

Untitled (white marble half mask on black – king), 2019, paper collage,
16.6 x 11.7 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Ani Molnár Gallery

Phone Tag: Interview with Pedro Wirz

 Installation view featuring My home is my dinner (2018) and Guard‘águas (2017) at Centre Pasquart. Photo © Gunnar Meier

Pedro Wirz uses raw and discarded materials to create sculptures and installations that invoke a synthetic, decomposing natural world and a tension between man and nature. As a Swiss-trained artist who grew up in rural Brazil, he toys with the different mythologies and cultural tropes through which we encounter and understand such discordant ecologies. In this Phone Tag interview, Pedro talks about working from his gut, how he found his way to Europe and the visual arts, and the importance of maintaining a criticality toward the work.

Phone Tag is a generative interview format, where I ask each participating artist five questions (plus others as the discussion meanders). At the end, I ask him or her to introduce me to an artist whose attitude and work they find interesting and/or inspiring, who I then interview with the same five questions. 

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Linnea West: What are you working on right now?

Pedro Wirz: I have my first solo show with Nagel Draxler Gallery, in Berlin, in September during Art Week Berlin. I’m producing the work for this show.

Saci-Baldio, 2019. Mix media on wood construction. 100 x 60 x 25 cm. Installation View at Kunsthaus Langenthal. Photo © Alex Kern

LW: One of the things that I thought was interesting looking at your work is the materials you use. Where does that come from? Does it feel natural and intuitive, or are you planning in advance the specific materials you want to work with?

PW: A lot of people ask that. It is intuitive. I grew up on a farm in the countryside of São Paulo. My mother is a biologist. My father is an agronomist. I understand soil, bees, animals… these were the things I learned about. I never had any sense of disgust toward things that make some people go, “Ugh.” The materials always seemed absolutely natural to me.

I’m working a lot with soil at the moment and I have my reasons, but I also just have to move forward. I’m just working and I do what is urgent. Intuition is a big part of us. Why not just follow it? Learn out of it. You cannot be blind all the time. It’s amazing to learn out of blind moves, but then learn how to deal with it. What is the answer behind it all? What is even the initial question?

Ministério Morto (Dead Ministry), 2019. Soil, red clay, twigs, chicken wire, paper mache. 27 x 24 cm (90 cm – plinth). Installation View at Kunsthaus Langenthal. Photo © Alex Kern

LW: You said that you first met [former Phone Tag participant] Beto [Shwafaty] in Europe. Of course, you are both Brazilian but you met working on different projects or studies over there. How do you end up in Switzerland?

PW: No one in my family is an artist, but I was long involved in theater and I was always making drawings. I never thought about whether this was art or not. It was just a sort of expression that I always had to practice. When I was growing up, in Brazil, I wanted to study music, actually, but then I didn’t get into the university. My girlfriend at the time said to me, “You should do what I am doing, studying public relations. It has a lot to do with you.” I see why she suggested this–I like to talk. So before studying art, I completed an education in Public Relations at the University of Taubaté in Brazil.

I went through some good jobs while studying communication and after graduating as well. I ended up landing a very good position in a big French company. However, I very soon realized, this was not where I belonged.

Well, I just quit. At that time, I was 23 and I told my parents, “I want to do photography.” I moved to São Paulo to work with the photographers Claudio Elkisabetsky and Moa Sitibaldi. They taught me a lot about thinking artistically, and especially how to be attentive to detail.

Mãe do Ouro (Gold‘s Mother), 2018 . Humus (black soil), wood glue, fired clay, plaster, twigs, wire. 120 x 50 x 50. Installation View at Swiss Art Awards, Basel. Photo © Alex Kern

After two years I decided to move to Europe. A young French man that I met while working at the French company had become a very good friend of mine. He said, “Why don’t you come to Europe and work here as a photographer?” I said, “OK, I’m just going to go.” By the age of 25, I moved from São Paulo to Nantes in northern France. I was trying to find work and it wasn’t happening, but I didn’t want to give up yet. I have Swiss roots, and my uncle in Switzerland invited me to stay with his family for a while so I said “OK.” I moved to Switzerland, and I started to work in whatever jobs I could to make ends meet. But I kept on working on my photography.

When I was living in Switzerland, in the very beginning, I moved out of my uncle’s place into a house with new friends. One was a singer, the other one was going to art school, and the third was a musician. As a 25 year old, who was artistically motivated but did not really possess any tool to express himself yet, to live with this constellation of people was fantastic! At the same time I also fell in love with a girl that was going to art school. I visited her at the school to see what she was working on and realized “This is what I want to do.” I prepared a portfolio and applied to all the Swiss art schools that I had heard of.

Long story short, two years after I moved to Europe, I enrolled in the art school in Basel, in 2007. I started going to school and doing more and more stuff. I studied one year in Stuttgart in Germany. I finished in 2011.

Trilobites, 2017. Rocks, bronze cast, paint. Dimensions Variable. Installation view at Cologne Sculpture Park. Photo © Pedro Wirz

LW: Across all of this time, was there a moment when you thought to yourself, “OK, now I’m an artist”?

PW: Honestly, I was thinking that from the very beginning when I entered art school. It’s terrible, but it’s true. I was absolutely convinced that what I was doing was amazing. I would talk to the teachers in my very bad German, asking “Do you get it?” Now, I realize this is pretty much a first-year bachelor student thing. It took me a long time to understand what my practice as an artist could be. Back then I thought, “OK. I’m going to the art school, people are teaching me how to be an artist, and when I finish school I will be an artist. I’m going to paint, and people are going to buy it, and I will be some sort of Picasso, I guess.” The reality is completely different!

It took me a long time to understand and accept what my practice is about. The route that led me here was one that took a lot of work and time. I think this is beautiful because artists are thinkers, and they have a responsibility towards what they bring to an audience. Alongside continuously working on my practice, I traveled a lot and found different ways to connect with people. It helped that I am good at communicating–at discovering different sources and not being afraid to establish a connection with them.

It isn’t long ago that I arrived at the work that I am doing today. That happened, maybe around four years ago. And from that very moment, many things followed in my career… I started to work with galleries, received bigger invitations for shows, etc.

Consoantes Líquidas (Liquid Consonants), 2019. Cast beeswax, fabrics debris. Dimension Variable. Installation view at Centre Culturel Suisse. Photo © Pedro Wirz

LW: You say you met and spoke with a lot of people all over. Looking back, who do you think had the biggest influence on the work that you make now?

PW: I think criticality is very important. One of the most important people that I have talked to is a very good friend of mine, Gabriel Lima. He’s a Brazilian artist who studied at the Cooper Union in New York. He also studied at the Royal College in London. From the very beginning, I think by the age of five, he knew that he would be an artist. He’s a very virtuosic person. He can draw; he’s a fantastic painter; and he’s a brilliant mind. He had all this critical knowledge that I didn’t have–I just followed my gut.

He would be very hard toward the works critically, saying, “Man, why are you doing this? It’s not working.” I would be very angry with him because I was still thinking, “This is killer.” We had a very tight relationship, and he helped me a lot. I would go from residency to residency, and sometimes when I had no money, he would also help me.

My last residency was at the Swiss Institute in Rome. A place that afforded me time to work. I was just in the studio, working, working, working, working. Calling Gabi–Gabriel Lima–all the time. It was ten months of just working, and then I had my first show in New York with my first gallery. It went very well, but in the meantime the residency had finished. So I had to find a studio. I was asking myself “How do I do this? I have to pay for a studio. I don’t want to have any other job. I just want to do art.”

Gabi motivated me to move to Porto and was very generous, offering me a place to stay for the first six months. He knew I had no money. The first six years after graduation, I had been living on the edge. So I went to Portugal. I found a studio. I also sold some works at this time and everything started to roll, more or less. I start to work with Kai [Matsumiya] and do some fairs and group shows. Suddenly, other galleries began to show interest, and I got an invitation to my first big institutional show in Brazil. I was super happy.

What also happened around that time is that my partner, Leonie Thalmann, came into my life. Soon after we became a couple she became pregnant. At that same time I received an invitation for a residency in Berlin; someone called me and said something like, “Mr. Wirz, you’ve been accepted.” Then I was like, “Oh, I didn’t apply to anything. I’m not willing to move anywhere.” Then this other curator called me like, “Are you crazy? This is one of the best residencies in Germany. I am the person who suggested you.”

My plan was to move to Zurich, to be a father and to find a job, but Leonie said, “No. You should accept this offer.” So I went to Berlin for this residency. It was insane. I worked three months non-stop, not sleeping, just producing and thinking about the work. At the end, I started doing studio visits, studio visits, studio visits. Leonie had told me, “You go there, and you come back with something.” This was two years ago, exactly two years ago. So that’s what happened. I had to close this amazing studio that I had in Porto, organize my life, and come back to Switzerland, to find a new studio, to live in Zurich, the most expensive city in the world.

Consoantes Líquidas – Notre Dame (Liquid Consonants), 2019. Cast beeswax, fabrics debris. Dimension Variable. 46 x 46 x 44 cm (150 x 50 x 50 cm – plinth). Installation view at Kuntshaus Langenthal. Photo © Alex Kern

LW: When you come into your studio, do you have a plan for what you are going to do? Do you just respond to what’s around? What is an ideal day like in your studio?

PW: I think this question has reshaped itself since I became a father. Now I have an ultra-tight schedule. The amazing thing behind the question is: how can you control creativity or tie it to a schedule? What I do is, I get all the juice out of the two hours that I have.

I think mostly all days in the studio are good days. I always think about the privilege of it. Growing up in the country where I grew up and the social level that I was raised in, I always keep this in mind while producing and thinking about art.

Breastfed Tadpole at Kai Matsumiya Gallery, New York City. Photo © Kai Matsumiya

LW: You’ve lived in different places and now you live in Zurich, a city and a particularly expensive city at that.

One of the questions I always like to ask is: Is it more important for an artist to be in a big city where you have galleries, where you have an art scene, where you have other people but it’s expensive and there can be a lot of pressure, or to be in a quiet place where you can really focus on making things?

PW: I cannot give you a black or white answer, but I can tell you what I have experienced because I have lived in many different places. During the art school, everybody was going to Berlin and I went to Stuttgart. Everyone was like, “Why?” It felt better. In Berlin, in big cities, people struggle so much to even be alive or be there. For myself, I had a lot of fears moving back to Zurich, but I love it. There’s a lot of culture here. The city is very small. I can get around quickly. In New York, I’m mad all the time; I’m lost all the time.

You do have to have a certain presence in cultural hubs. I don’t know how artists should manage this. I’m not saying they always have to have a gallery. I think artists have to understand that they are responsible for creating the economy that they are going to live in. That’s the most important thing. Once you realize that, then you’re free to go. I know people who are great artists, amazing painters, and they don’t have galleries. They have organized themselves in different ways. They get museums to pay them, or they teach. There’s no answer to say what is the best way, but I think in larger cities you meet people. It’s in these cities where you’re going to have the chance to see important artists or shows. Whereas small cities have treated me very well and have brought me to the place that I am in now.

But of course not only the place is important, but to meet the right mentors and peers. For me, for example, it was helpful to meet Rainer Ganahl, who was my teacher in Stuttgart. I met him because I decided to go there. His dealer is also Kai, my dealer in New York now. I told Kai and Rainer, “Well, I’m going to go to Portugal now, and everybody’s going to forget me.” Kai was like, “You should move to New York,” but Rainer said, “It doesn’t even matter. You have to go to a place where you can work. Is Portugal where it’s going to be? Just go there and work there. Work your ass off there. If it’s good enough, everybody is going to hear about it.”

Anyway, the most important thing is to work. That’s what it is. At the end of day, at the end of this era, what is going to matter is the work.

LW: That’s great. Well, thank you.

PW: It’s an honor talking to you. Thank you.

Breastfed Tadpole at Kai Matsumiya Gallery, New York City. Photo © Kai Matsumiya

Phone Tag: Interview with Etienne de France

The Green Vessel (video still), HD video, color and stereo, 51 min., 2019.

Etienne de France is an interdisciplinary artist who explores ideas related to nature and architecture, often through narrative and sculptural forms. In this Phone Tag interview, Etienne and I speak about travel, giving up control in filmmaking, and how to stay grounded in one’s practice.

Phone Tag is a generative interview format, where I ask each participating artist five questions (plus others as the discussion meanders). At the end, I ask him or her to introduce me to an artist whose attitude and work they find interesting and/or inspiring, who I then interview with the same five questions.

*****

Linnea West:  How do you know [former Phone Tag participant] Chris Ulutupu?

Etienne de France:  I was doing a residency in Wellington, [New Zealand] in 2016, in a program that is quite special called Te Whare Hēra. I was working on a film project—actually, an installation with a film component called The Green Vessel.

Because the residency was linked to the University of Massey, Wellington, they invited me to come a bit earlier to the residency to participate in a retreat with seminars for the master degree students before school started.

They asked me to come because, due to the nature of the project, maybe I would meet some motivated MA student who could help me out, and there I met Chris. We had a very spontaneous contact, and appreciate each other and each other’s works. I have to say that Chris really saved my life many times on this project.

At that time, like I think he told you in the interview he did with you, he was doing various assistant director work. For me his profile was great because he has one foot in the cinema, one foot in visual art. We just got along very well in that project. He helped me from casting, to production, to AD work, so we had a very intense working relationship and we became friends.

The Green Vessel (video still), HD video, color and stereo, 51 min., 2019.

LW:  I’m already a little jealous of your work because it seems to take you to the most beautiful places on earth.

EF:  [laughs] Yeah, I was very lucky the last few years, to do projects in Chile, New Zealand, and the United States. It’s wonderful.

LW:  Let’s back up a little bit. If you were going to tell somebody what you make, what do you make? What’s your practice?

EF:  I do series of works that are often quite narrative. Often, the central element is a film or a large sculpture work. I like to draw an array of related works around it. I appreciate work that exists as a long series in which parts are sometimes interdependent, or sometimes autonomous. I like a very narrative aspect—it could be even a film—and then having objects that are related. That’s in terms of my practice technically.

In terms of subject, since the beginning I was interested in questioning what the concepts of nature and landscape mean. That can be a questioning of a cultural paradigm, sometimes.

I also have a strong interest in architecture and science, and I draw a lot of influence from utopian experimental architecture.

LW:  When you are going to these very different places, is it because you’re looking for that kind of landscape, or is it just a place to stage an imaginative narrative?

EF: It depends. I don’t necessarily choose the place I’m going. I don’t say, “OK, now I want to go to,” for example, “Belgium,” but I have wishes.

I think sometime it was opportunity that arose. For example, New Zealand was a residency. I didn’t think I would apply at first, because I’m a slow worker. I make a lot of research and a lot of documentation and I didn’t have a reason to go there. I don’t like to go only one time to a place. But when I saw that I could relate New Zealand to the residency and project I was doing before, that’s how it made sense for me.

Sometimes you get surprised. At the end of my residency in New Zealand, I did a lecture in Auckland. I met a group of Chilean curators there, who later invited me to Chile! Then I see relationship between places, for example, between New Zealand, California, and Chile. You have nature policies, a colonial history that can be compared. They are not the same, but they can be put in relation to one another.

For example, when I met Chris, the project had already started in France. I knew already when I was in France that I would go to Colombia, and later to New Zealand. I started to build an idea for a film that would not necessarily document or name each space, but maybe work with the context of each space.

I also do projects based in France. I have been working on a film project in the countryside, in Burgundy, for a few years now.

The Green Vessel (video still), HD video, color and stereo, 51 min., 2019.

LW:  You live in Paris, right?

EF:  Yeah, at the moment I’m in Paris.

LW:  It seems like all of your work is not really in the city though. It’s staged outside of cities.

EF:  It’s true. I lived for many years in Iceland.

LW:  I went to Iceland the summer before last, and I was blown away by how epic, and foreign, and strange the landscape is.

EF:  Actually, I did my studies there.

LW:  I don’t know if I could spend a winter there.

[laughter]

EF:  Winter can be difficult there. I stayed seven years and I did a BA of Visual Art there, and then I stayed a few more years. I was in an interesting community of artists there. Reykjavik is a normal city, but it’s really easy to go to the countryside quickly in Iceland.

A lot of my work is located in the countryside or landscape context, but I’m also interested in urban planning. For example, I’ve been doing various projects on utopian architecture or experimental architecture, and especially one that I was developing in Iceland about mobile cities.

Icelantraincity, inkjet print on paper, 80 × 120 cm, 2010.

Currently I’m working on a sculpture and agriculture project about implementing more agriculture in cities. I don’t think you can be schizophrenic and have a representation of landscape without understanding the city context and the urban relationship to it, and how cities are connected to the landscape or what we call “nature.” I do not have an idealistic view of nature.

LW:  In terms of what you’re working on now, is it a project based on urban farming?

EF:  I have been developing a project with an agriculture and horticulture school in the suburbs of Paris. I conceived of a permanent work for the site of the school. I have also been doing workshops with college and high school students over the past year.

My project is a sculptural or landscape intervention, composed of a sort of theater architecture and sculptural elements in the middle of an agricultural field. The work can be crossed and entered. You can stand in the middle of the field and since it is located in a slope, you can sit on these architectural elements and appreciate the landscape.

This work tries to blur differences between what could be a sculpture, a garden, and an agricultural field: Trying to break down these hierarchical categories, how we can work between these lines–blending aesthetic and functional concerns… Every year, new edible crops and plants will be planted. That project will be launched in June 2019.

LW:  That’s great. When did you first think of yourself as an artist?

EF:  In my first year of art history and archeology.

LW:  How old were you?

EF:  I was like 17, 18. I grew up in an artistic context, and I was already writing poetry and doing photography. But until I went to university to study archeology and art history, I didn’t really realize that I wanted to be an artist more than an archeologist.

LW:  When you think about people who have influenced you as you were developing a practice, who do you think about?

EF:  They are so many in the visual art world, in cinema, in theory, in science. If I think about artists that have recently influenced me, I would mention Amar Kanwar. His films and his activist practice are a model for me. I like how he arranges his writings in a sculptural way. His combination of poetics and activism is unique. I could also refer to the work of Maria-Theresa Alvez, which has been very important for my practice
in the last few years.

Peter Watkins and his films blending fiction and reality have been very influential on the development of my work.  

LW:  Does your own work have this kind of activist quality?

EF:  I hope I can make bridges with various forms of activism, and do a form of activism through my artistic practice. I try to participate in the way I can in our current truly alarming situation. I also believe that you have to work hand-in-hand with activists or scientists or indigenous people, as I did for example with Mohave people in the USA. I believe in these alliances, but it has to be built carefully and always with great respect. You have to listen, know where you stand and explain how you work.

Looking for the Perfect Landscape (video still), HD video, color and stereo, 45 min., 2017.

LW:  With the project in the United States, what was your working relationship like with the people from the Mohave tribe?

EF:  I was working with Mohave people who live at the border between Arizona and California. This project “Looking for the Perfect Landscape” was researching how you can deconstruct the idea of landscape, through their perspective and experience. How can we deconstruct this notion of perfect landscape in the southwestern United States—a colonial and aesthetic concept that was imposed on Native American lands, a practice and a form of representation that is still largely embedded still in visual arts, cinema, and music video?

I engaged in a discussion with a Mohave spokesman from the Colorado River Indian Tribe. We discovered a common interest in working together on these issues. Then I was invited to spend some time with them. At the time I was based in Los Angeles for three months and so I was going back and forth to Parker, Arizona and we got to know each other.

There were four main people that I was in contact with. I built a story around them and submitted a script to them, which we discussed and choose to work from. It was a really organic process. Like every project, it was at times very easy, and sometimes very difficult. It was a very powerful experience for me, and I learned a lot from it.

Looking for the Perfect Landscape (video still), HD video, color and stereo, 45 min., 2017.

LW:  What’s hard, I think, when you work with other people in that way, you give up control. Whatever your original idea was, it changes by the time you get to the end.

EF:  I am interested in cinema, but what I blame in cinema is this idea of control. The Green Vessel, the film that I was doing with Chris, was much more scripted. It was a fiction. There was much more control even though, due to the nature of the project, we were improvising a lot visually.

But with the Mohave people, it was a very different process. I had an idea of a script I wanted to work within, but then the whole content was reality. It’s a very different way of working and you have to be much more flexible. It makes sense because there is no other choice. If I had tried to control something, it would have gone wrong. What was important to me was to show them how my subjectivity or how my sense of aesthetic could come in an interesting dialogue with what they wanted to speak about or what we were speaking about together.

It’s important to challenge this idea of control in films. Maybe you don’t have a script but rather a grid of ideas, a grid or line of thoughts that you want to put in perspective. Then you work with the people in the space or in the land, and things happen. It’s not really improvised, but it’s also not normal cinema or film creation. It’s very different.

Looking for the Perfect Landscape (video still), HD video, color and stereo, 45 min., 2017.

LW:  Given that you’re working a lot in film, but you also make sculptures, you do other things, what’s an ideal day in the studio? Do you have a studio? What’s an ideal day making?

EF:  My ideal day is I like to come early, and I like to start the day with some reading. Sometimes I like to do drawing in the morning or works on paper. In the afternoon I would do more video editing, or emails, or coordinating projects. Of course, that can shift depending on what’s happening at the moment, but that’s my ideal day. I like to work like everybody else, on a regular time.

LW:  It’s like a 9:00 to 5:00 job…

EF:  Well, rather 9:00 to 7:00…

[laughter]

EF: But it depends, because sometimes I do workshops or I teach. I like to have a full day in the studio, but it is important to be outside regularly, for research and meetings or just for seeing exhibitions and films.

LW:  Do you think it is more important for an artist to be in a big city like Paris, where there’s an art scene and there’s opportunities in galleries, or to be in a smaller place where you can focus on making and living is less expensive?

EF:  You have to do both. For me it’s a constant tension. I have one foot in a really small village in the countryside, and I also spend a lot of time here in Paris.

Reykjavik in Iceland, or Wellington in New Zealand, two cities that I experienced for some time, are smaller places that offer a lot, artistically and for you every-day life. Both have rapid access to areas of nature, forest, mountains.

I have to say, due to the different residencies I have been doing lately abroad, I don’t feel frustrated to be based in Paris at the moment.

Being in a village or a small city, or being in a metropolis just offer very different possibilities. Ultimately, in the future, I would love to have a little foot in the city and to spend most of the time in the countryside.

LW:  A lot of people say they want both.

EF:  They want both, but then you have the economic question, that was implied in your question. I am really lucky at the moment, to have a studio here in Paris and to be able to afford living in Paris, but it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense to spend to all that money in Paris or very expensive cities such New York or Los Angeles.

LW:  I feel like I know artists who go from residency, to residency, to residency for a few years. It seems like it could be very rich but also exhausting.

EF:  I have met people going from residencies to residencies. I think it’s an impossible way of life for me. I have been doing various residencies
in the past few years and being able to travel for your work is amazing, but at the end of the day, I also need to be grounded somewhere, and I need to be in touch regularly with familiar lands, familiar location, and familiar people.

LW:  Well, thank you so much.

EF:  Thanks a lot.

Looking for the Perfect Landscape (video still), HD video, color and stereo, 45 min., 2017.