WEBVTT

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[ ELI SUDBRACK ]
All of this,

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the work in general,

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it's about being free.

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You should express yourself
the way you want it to be.

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Go after things in your life
that bring you pleasure.

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Gay politics,
human right politics, whatever,

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it's always about being free.

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We're making a series
of 58 drawings

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for this art fair in Sao Paulo.

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So this was my proposal email.

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Me and Christophe are making
cyclops trannies portraits.

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Trannies–
transvestites– portraits.

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[ CHRISTOPHE HAMAIDE-PIERSON ] 
We had the concept,

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"Okay, let's make all these
portrait of cyclop trannies."

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We had to work separately.

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One of these few project
where, actually,

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I did 20-something drawings,

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and he did, like, 20 other,
like, something drawing.

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and then they were all, like,
framed together

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and displayed on the wall.

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I always like this thing
of leaving your ego behind

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and merge with other people.

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I think that's something
quite magical.

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I love this idea
of collaboration.

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In 2005, we were invited
to be part of this big show

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for the L.A. MOCA.

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This is the first ever project
that we did together, full-on.

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We conceive everything together,

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so that was always driven
by this collaborative dynamic.

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We spent three months
in L.A.,

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and it was also during
the Bush administration

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and there was all these thing
going on with Scientology.

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And so we decided to connect
all this different information

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for that installation.

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We decided to turn
all of the museum into a disco

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and wanted the disco to actually
function as a nightclub

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during the course of the show.

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[ ELI SUDBRACK ]
This disco was an homage

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to the birth of gay rights
in America,

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which, a lot of it happened
in the disco space,

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like this communion, you know,
of people of the same sex,

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and, like, quite often,
very hedonistic,

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but also, there was a lot
of politics happening

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at that–
in that environment.

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That was the first time

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we actually worked
with this tranny symbol.

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We want to turn everybody
into trannies,

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so we gave out 
the tranny masks

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with these pictures
that another friend of ours took

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of these trannies from Paris.

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These masks–they have
this special lenses

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that multiply the amount
of light spots.

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People were fascinated,

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because once they put
the mask on,

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they would see all these
different colors

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and different shapes.

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[indistinct conversations]

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- Remember I was doing,
like, the thing with–

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pumping the ink from the thing? 
- Yeah, yeah.

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- That's what this was.

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- Oh.
- That's where that came.

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Can you tell which ones
are mine

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and which ones
are Christophe's?

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- Um...
- I think it's a bit obvious.

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But I'm not sure people--

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- This is Christophe.
- Yeah.

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- This is you.
- Yeah.

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- Christophe, Christophe...
- Yeah.

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- Christophe. You?

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- Yeah.

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The thing is, I--
- You're more...

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- Yeah, I'm more...

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- Intricate.
- Intricate.

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This one is in the catalog.

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Actually, this was
the very first one I made.

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- Oh, yeah?
- Now I remember.

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This was the very first one,
the one I made here.

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And then...

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[ ELI SUDBRACK ] 
When I was three years old,

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I was fascinated
by this magazine

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which was called Disneylandia,

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which is "Disneyland"
in Portuguese.

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My mother would read it for me,

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it would be gone
in five minutes,

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and I would get
really frustrated.

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And then my father taught me

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to cut the characters
out of the magazine,

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put them on cardboard,
and I could make my own stories.

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And that evolved along the years

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to Marvel superheroes,
especially the X-men.

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So I would cut the little
characters out of the magazine

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and the power rays
or the architecture.

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And I had a board,
and I would lay on my bed

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and start playing with them
and create my own stories.

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[indistinct dialogue]

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I think it's a lot
related to the wallpaper.

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It's the same sort
of flat-surface approach

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to the imagery.

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My father was really
my creative connection.

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When I was born,
he was already 60 years old.

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He was very social,

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but my memory of him is this guy
who's always at home.

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My father was a general
from the army.

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He was not in favor
of the military dictatorship.

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He was forced to resign.

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He was also a literature critic
and a poet

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besides being a dentist.

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He would constantly tell me,

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"Oh, my god, you have to do
something with color.

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you're such a colorist."

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My mother was, like,
quite the opposite.

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Super-conservative, but she
didn't have much education.

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My father had been rewriting
his last book forever.

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He would be typing
little pieces, different words,

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and pasting those words
on top of the old words.

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His last book is a whole collage

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of different words
that he'd keep replacing.

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[indistinct conversation]

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He spent a whole year in '68–

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the year I was born,
which was the year

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that the dictatorship
got more oppressive—at home.

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A lot of what I do nowadays
is due to him.

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And to my mother too,
both of them.

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It was a very good combination,
in fact.

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[alarm beeping]

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[motor whirring]

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This was the very first drawing
I made for the show at Deitch.

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The core concept of that show
was demolition.

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We were looking at a few
different demolition sources

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related to demolishing the city,
because at that point,

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a lot of the Long Island City
and the Brooklyn neighborhoods

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were being demolished

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to give birth
to these big high-rises.

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Me and Christophe,

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we were interested
in the demolition sites,

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and we were actually making
a lot of installations

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which replicated that imagery.

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These are sketches
from that show,

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and a lot of these things

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are actually things that
we'd never end up producing,

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Like this.

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This was the DJ booth

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made of all the trashed wood
with plastic ribbons.

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This was supposed to be a space
that you go in.

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There's, like, a staircase here,
and it had a little door.

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and it had– this is a sausage,

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and these are french fries
over here.

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I don't remember, like,

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why we came up with this
french fries and sausage thing.

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It was–I was sort of obsessed
about that at one point.

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Everything had a look
of construction,

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so there's, like, a tarp–
Like, a blue tarp–

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on top of the trash wood
structure here.

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So we create sort of, like,
a shanty house structure.

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We created this neon box.

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it was like a hole,

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and you would put
your head through

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and then you would see
your face reflected.

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You had all these neons
around your face.

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It was like a one-way mirror.

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From outside,
it was actually transparent,

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so you would see this
person's face

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with all these neons around,
flickering and stuff.

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This is a zine that we made
for that show.

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And this was, like–

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we had, like, 16 different
people working with us.

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A lot of our friends from Brazil
were working in the show,

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and we were
giving out this zine,

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so everybody had one or two
pages for this collaboration.

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There was one facade

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that struck
both me and Christophe:

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these pink stones and, like,
gray plastic shingles.

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We spent two months collecting
all the trash wood

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from all these houses that were
being demolished in that area

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to use in that installation.

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At the same time,
we connected with Kenny Scharf.

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And then we remembered
nuke bombs–

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paintings he used to make
in the '80s–

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and then I said,

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"What if we turn one
of his nuke bombs into a neon?"

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This place was
right on the water,

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and it had this most
idyllic view of Manhattan

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right in front of you.

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I said,
"Let's nuke Manhattan."

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"Let's put the bomb
right in front of the skyline."

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"The history of the city
is being demolished."

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"Let's point that out,
and then let's point out

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that people should also make
their own history in the city."

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Related to that,
we brought another subject

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which we were working on
for a while,

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which is the tranny,
the transgender image,

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and we used that as another
symbol of demolition:

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demolition of identity,
a demolition of your own body.

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We had this giant doll
with a woman body,

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but one side was a man face;
other side was a woman face.

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We wanted to reuse that doll

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and to somehow
demolish her as well,

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because that's something
from the past

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that we wanted to connect
this demolition idea–

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we wanted to demolish
our own work.

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So we broke her apart,

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as if the Brooklyn facade
had just popped right onto her.

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I can never remember
which witch is the one

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that is dead in the beginning
of Wizard of Oz,

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which you just see the shoes.

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The west, the east--
I don't know.

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A lot of what we make
starts by writing

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or ideas or words or lists
of things I need to do,

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and it's like creating
a universe, somehow.

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Working together, it's very–

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it's lonely, because I'm–
what happens that, you know,

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I'm at my studio in New York,

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and Christophe is in his studio
in Paris.

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and then we exchange emails.

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I have an idea for a show,
and I write–

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I describe this idea
in the email.

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And then he writes back to me,

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and then he gives me
his thoughts about it

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and I give my thoughts
about his thoughts.

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So we're always, like,
kind of exchanging emails

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about each other's vision
or ideas for a certain show.

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[percussive rhythm]

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[ CHRISTOPHE HAMAIDE-PIERSON ]
We were, in some ways,

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meant to work together.

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I think we have, like, the same
sort of view on life, on art.

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Eli is one person;
I'm somebody else. [laughs]

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And we have our own differences,

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and I guess that's the great
thing about collaboration, also,

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is to have those
two differences connect.

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[indistinct conversations]

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[ ELI SUDBRACK ]
I think there's a strategy

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in what we make,

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which is for everything
to become one.

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the viewer become one
with the installation.

00:11:35.753 --> 00:11:37.440
The core of what we make,

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it's not object;
it's energy.

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You know, we create this energy,

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and then this energy,
it's there.

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It happens in one moment,
and then it's gone.

00:11:46.440 --> 00:11:49.179
You can't save that energy.
You can't sell that energy.

00:11:49.880 --> 00:11:52.551
You can share that energy
in that moment.

00:11:53.077 --> 00:11:56.945
But you can't really take it
somewhere else.

00:12:21.618 --> 00:12:24.914
[ ANNOUNCER ] To learn more about 
"Art in the Twenty-First Century"

00:12:24.914 --> 00:12:27.077
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00:12:27.077 --> 00:12:32.035
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PBS.org/Art21

00:12:35.129 --> 00:12:38.347
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00:12:39.243 --> 00:12:41.802
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00:12:41.802 --> 00:12:45.742
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00:12:45.742 --> 00:12:50.212
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