contemporary art magazine issue # sixteen december ... - Karyn Olivier

MOUSSE / MATHIAS POLEDNA / PAG. 16
Mathias Poledna, Version, 2004 - courtesy: Galerie Meyer Kainer, Wien and Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne / Berlin
Mathias Poledna, Adolph Loos/Max Schmidt, Elefantenrüsseltisch (Elephant trunk table), approx. 1910, 2007 - courtesy: Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne / Berlin
& Albert Museum di Londra; mentre la videoinstallazione
Fondazione si concentrava sui politici della sinistra italiana
attraverso la Fondazione Feltrinelli di Milano – un importante
archivio della storia dei movimenti sindacali. Quanto conta, nel
tuo lavoro, la ricerca negli archivi?
Il lavoro del periodo che hai citato si basava, in un modo o
nell’altro, su archivi esistenti e sui documenti e i materiali che
vi si potevano trovare. In un certo senso, si tratta di ritratti
istituzionali, ritratti di archivi. I video ai quali ho lavorato negli
ultimi anni funzionano in modo piuttosto diverso. Pur essendo
chiaramente basati su un interesse simile e spesso sulla ricerca,
non c’è niente di tangibile nel loro legame con gli archivi. Non
solo non documentano nulla, ma lasciano in gran parte allo
spettatore il compito di collocarli dal punto di vista storico e
culturale. Stranamente, pur non essendo molto prolifico, sono
arrivato a vedere in questi video un impulso che, in modo assurdo
e utopico, ambisce alla completezza, alla creazione di una sorta
di catalogo, enciclopedia o collezione, virtualmente di tutte le
immagini esistenti. A questo si deve il mio forte interesse per
l’etichetta discografica statunitense Folkways, che è stata fondata
da Moses Asch e che, tra la fine degli anni ’40 e l’inizio degli
’80, ha prodotto oltre 2.000 album, spaziando dal blues delle
origini alle registrazioni etnografiche, con l’improbabile intento di
documentare “l’intero mondo dei suoni”.
Quanto contano nei tuoi film la performance dell’attore e il
montaggio?
Jean-Marie Straub una volta disse che, quando scegli gli attori,
è sempre perché, per qualche ragione, ti sei innamorato di loro.
Questo può valere per una prova di recitazione ma, per quanto
riguarda la regia e il montaggio, le decisioni devono essere
subordinate, a volte persino piegate, all’idea globale di un lavoro,
anche se, strada facendo, questa stessa idea si è sviluppata
in direzioni impreviste. Anche se la cosa urta profondamente
l’artista concettuale dentro di me, certe qualità recitative
sono tanto scontate, quanto impossibili da razionalizzare. Per
quanto riguarda il montaggio, i singoli lavori generano esigenze
specifiche e, se c’è un principio, o un’ideologia, alla base
del montaggio di tutti i miei video, devo ancora capire quale
sia. È vero, non ho ancora prodotto un lavoro che utilizzi un
montaggio invasivo e forse non succederà mai; d’altra parte, per
parafrasare Diedrich Diederichsen, c’è posto sia per Webern che
per LaMonte Young.
Sei nato a Vienna e ti sei trasferito a Los Angeles. Ho
l’impressione che tu guardi alla cultura popolare degli Stati Uniti
quando affronti, per esempio, la storia della musica, eppure, al
tempo stesso, i tuoi interessi filosofici e teoretici si riferiscono al
“Vecchio Mondo”: Theodor Adorno, Bertolt Brecht ecc.
Adorno e Brecht erano acuti interpreti e analisti della cultura
popolare, e si dà il caso che entrambi, a un certo punto, abbiano
vissuto a Los Angeles. Credo che, senz’altro, la cornice teorica
sviluppata attorno agli anni ’30 da loro e da altri (soprattutto
da Benjamin, naturalmente) per l’analisi della cultura di massa
– come allora veniva chiamata – continui a offrire alcuni degli
argomenti più stimolanti nel dibattito. Anche se all’epoca deve
essere stato inimmaginabile che l’“industria culturale” di cui
parlava Adorno, a un certo punto, sarebbe sembrata uno scherzo,
rispetto alla totalità della nostra attuale sfera della cultura e
dell’intrattenimento.
Investigating the multiple dimensions of
cultural representations through a near
encyclopedic interest in music, history
and film. This is what Mathias Poledna
does. Born in 1965, Poledna is of Austrian
origin and moved to the West Coast of the
United States. His work in the Nineties focused
on interviews and repertoire images
to make clear references to historic documents
and archives; then films inspired by
Cinéma Vérité or the traditional of ethnographic
film. In Poledna’s work, high and
popular culture coexist without any apparent
clashing. History becomes memory
and then myth. It is up to us to place the
events recreated by the artist in a historic
and cultural perspective, as they are not
documentary in themselves.
A man stands in a recording room of a sound studio and listens
to the instrumental track of a song through his headphones.
During a number of takes he performs the vocals to a song. The
studio is no ordinary one: it is Western Recorders, Studio 3 in
Los Angeles, a historically important studio that had remained
unchanged until a few years ago, and where several hits were
recorded in the 1950s and 1960s. The song is City Life and was
recorded in 1969 by Harry Nilsson, a singer-songwriter whose
songs have been used for the soundtracks of many musicals and
films, such as Midnight Cowboy. The atmosphere, colors, and
style are perfectly reconstructed and recall the late 1960s. This
is a basic description of your film installation Western Recording,
from 2003. The piece is emblematic of the relationships
between modernity, historicity and temporality that seem to be
fundamental elements of your investigations.
While a number of my film works deal with popular culture,
oftentimes through music and sound, I have always found it
rather limiting to think of them solely in these terms. When in the
past, I frequently described my work as suggesting “ephemeral
moments from 20th century culture”, this was meant to imply
that modernity was the main underlying force. Popular and pop
culture are of course not the first thing that comes to mind when
talking about modernity, yet this seeming incongruity always
held more appeal to me than some of the rather authoritative
connections at hand.
Some of your film works refer to ideas of Cinéma Vérité, or,
as you once told me, to general types of filmmaking such as
ethnographic films or musicals. You also often employ historical
footage. What films, filmmakers and artists have influenced you
the most? When I think of your film Actualité (2001-2002) an
immediate connection could be Jean-Luc Godard’s One Plus One,
a film-collage about late-1960s Western culture, built around
a Rolling Stones recording session; or your recent film Crystal
Palace – shot on location in Papua New Guinea – in which you
refer to Hermann Schlenker’s ethnographic films about, among
other things, the social and cultural customs of nations like
Afghanistan or Venezuela, also reminds me of Jack Goldstein’s
sound pieces.
It is difficult to talk about influences, not because there are no
models or practices that were and are important to me and my
work – on the contrary, it seems unjust to only point to a few –
but rather because it feels like an impediment to talk about them
without being very specific. I would rather think of the examples
you mention as references, a notion which in itself has become
somewhat dubious in recent years. Referring to precedents and
contexts at some point became a way for artists to provide a
framework of thought, while simultaneously undercutting any
claims of artistic originality and autonomy. Ironically, while the
latter seems to have become a moot point, references are now
the cheapest and most facile way of associating one’s work
with meaning and cultural significance, or, in some instances,
replacing it altogether. There is no philosophical or moral lesson
to this, but it has produced a lot of art that is less interesting than
the things it refers to.
Your work in the 1990s often relied on interviews,
conversations, found footage and historical documents. Scan
was based on discussions with people who were involved with
the history of punk at various levels, such as an archivist at the
Victoria & Albert Museum in London; and the video installation
Fondazione focused on left-wing Italian politics through the
Fondazione Feltrinelli in Milan, a major archive for the history
of labor movements. How is research into archives important in
your work?
The work you mention from this period deals in one way or
another with existing archives and the documents and materials
one can find there. In some sense they are institutional portraits,
portraits of archives. The film pieces I have worked on over the
last few years function quite differently. While clearly based on a
similar interest and often on research, there is nothing tangible in
the way they relate to archives. Not only are they not documents
of anything, they also leave it by and large to the viewer to situate
them, be it culturally or historically. Strangely, for someone who
does not produce a lot of work, I have come to see an impulse
in these film pieces that, absurdly and implausibly, strives for
completeness, the creation of some sort of catalog, encyclopedia,
or collection, potentially of all images. In keeping with this is
my strong interest in the US record label Folkways, which was
founded by Moses Asch and produced over 2000 albums between
the late 1940s and the early 1980s, ranging from early blues to
scientific and ethnographic recordings, all with the improbable
intention of documenting the “entire world of sound”.
MOUSSE / MATHIAS POLEDNA / PAG. 17
How is the actor’s performance and the editing process
important in your films?
Jean-Marie Straub once said that when you choose actors, it’s
always because you fall in love with them for whatever reason.
That can be true for an actor’s performance as well, yet in both
directing performances and in editing, decisions have to be
made subordinate, sometimes slavishly so, to the overarching
idea of a work, even if this idea is itself only developed in the
process. Although it runs completely against the conceptual
artist in me, there are qualities to a filmic performance that are
as obvious as they are impossible to rationalize. As far as editing
goes, individual works create specific demands and if there is
a principle or ideology that guides the editing of all of my film
works, I have yet to realize what it is. It is true that I have not yet
produced a work that employs editing as montage and who knows
if I ever will; but to paraphrase Diedrich Diederichsen, there is a
place for both Webern and LaMonte Young.
You were born in Vienna and you moved to Los Angeles. I get
the impression that you are looking at US popular culture when
you deal with the history of music, for instance, yet at the same
time, you refer to the “Old World” in terms of philosophical and
theoretical interests: Theodor Adorno, Bertolt Brecht etc.
Adorno and Brecht were of course extremely conscious readers
and analysts of popular culture, and incidentally, both lived at
some point in Los Angeles. I do believe that the theoretical
framework that was developed by them and by others (most
notably Benjamin, of course), in and after the 1930s in order to
analyze mass culture, as it was referred to then, still provides
some of the most compelling arguments in this discussion. It
must have been unimaginable, though, that the “culture industry”
Adorno talked about would come to seem quaint at some point
when compared to the totality of our current cultural and
entertainment sphere.