ANDREA ZITTEL: Painting and sculpture, they're forms of representation.
I don't think that anything that I do is so dissimilar from that.
In some way, these are all attempts to talk about
my own subjective interpretation of the world,
and to also do something that will relate to other people's experiences within it.
I grew up in very suburban southern California.
I think my parents had this fantasy
about building a country home in the middle of nowhere.
So my dad built our home on the edge of a mountain.
By the time I was in high school, it was completely built up, it was suburbia.
It was only after I moved to New York that I realized what a gift it was
to come from someplace so normal.
I moved to New York in 1990, and the first place I lived in
was this really tiny storefront, also in Brooklyn.
At that time I was doing really different work.
I was actually working with animals and breeding them.
For instance, a breeding unit, not only would it influence
the way that the animal would develop,
But it would also have everything built into it that the animal would need for living.
So, you know, after doing this work and living in this tiny space for a while,
I think that it started to make perfect sense to
try and create structures like that for myself to live in.
The living unit was meant to function for every single thing that I needed.
You know, I didn't have a shower or bathtub, so it had this large plastic sink
that I could take baths in as well as wash my dishes in.
It had a built-in kitchen area, it had a desk area, it had a sleeping area.
It was sort of like building a house, just something that I could own
and would be permanent and it would just go inside
of the houses that other people would own.
I literally believed that when I made that piece
and I had it completely perfected
That it would solve all of my problems, you know?
And it was this really wonderful period in my life of feeling like
I was moving towards this concrete direction.
And the irony is that when I finally finished the living unit
and it was perfect and there was nothing left to do to it,
I felt completely despondent and very sort of, like, listless and depressed.
And at that point, in sort of gauging my own reaction,
I had this revelation that no one really wants perfection.
We're obsessed with perfection,
we're obsessed with innovation and moving forwards,
but what we really want is the hope of some sort
of new and improved or better tomorrow.
I think that my work's always been really influenced by the places that I've lived in.
In fact, if you look at every body of work, you can trace it back to
particular circumstances that I've had to deal with.
Well, I mean, the kitchen is a good stop, sort of, on the A-Z tour
because what I said about the kitchen and how I used the kitchen.
Andrea is not a cook, right?
Which is really obvious because she's got a teeny, tiny refrigerator and –
my chicken lived in the kitchen.
And her chicken lived in the kitchen.
But you have this huge table in the presentation room
which facilitates big dinner parties.
we did stay strict to Andrea's, you know,
sort of utilitarian bowl system of the small, medium, and large bowls.
–So you just used bowls for your dinner parties?
There were times when we just used –
–I've always wondered if you cheated.
–Oh, yeah.
I think it's a really nice thing to talk about, is this floor.
I always felt it was this modernism put into a domestic framework.
One of the things, too,
that I wanted to do with this house was to sort of
reflect the earlier generations of modernism.
I usually point to the outside, because that's really one of
the most beautiful parts of the house.
Particularly a garden in Brooklyn.
The bathroom at the A-Z, Andrea's house,
is the tour de force of the house.
It's sort of the epitome of organization, comfort, and utility.
I mean, the floor is really particular in that Andrea hand-laid every tile, right?
Painstakingly.
Well, they come in square foot sections, but I did that by myself.
And then you'll notice that the medicine cabinets, instead of throwing all of your stuff
under the sink abyss,
is organized in "Correction," "Tools and implements,"
"Subtraction," and "Addition."
And "Addition" is sort of obvious things of –
cosmetics, skin lotion, deodorant.
And "Subtraction"?
Is things for cleansing and taking away.
And then everything on top is organized, labeled accordingly.
That's sort of it for the bathroom, huh?
For nine years I've been doing the uniform project,
where I have one garment that I'll wear for a season.
Originally it was for a six-month season,
now it's for a four-month season.
Oh, this is a really good one.
This is from last spring.
And it's rayon.
They kind of get worn out and tattered by the end,
after wearing them for four months.
It started because I had an office job
and I was supposed to wear something respectable to work
but I didn't have that much money.
Sort of colorful spring dress.
You know, most of the time, we can afford, like, one fabulous outfit
that you really love to wear.
But there's some sort of social stigma
against wearing the same thing two days in a row.
So I decided that, you know, in my case, actually, like,
variety seemed more oppressive or restrictive than continuity.
So this is basically your standard personal panel.
For several years, I could wear anything,
as long as it was made out of a rectangle.
It ties in the back, and the top ties behind my neck.
The Russian constructivists made clothing that was very geometric.
They felt like when you weave fabric, it's in a rectangle.
So when you actually take that rectangle and cut it into other shapes
and then sew it into even different shapes,
that you're completely ruining the integrity of the fabric.
I thought I would just take it and for fun push it to its furthest extreme,
which was making garments only from rectangles.
But with just some subtle changes, you have this huge array of, you know, kind of references.
After a while, I got sort of tired of wearing rectangles all the time.
But keeping within that set of parameters,
the only thing that I could think of that would be like
a first-hand form of creating something,
where you're not making one thing and changing it into something else,
was making something from a strand.
So that's why I've been crocheting my dresses now.
It's that, you know, everything becomes like this one sort of continuous strand.
The most insane dress is the one I'm going to wear next summer,
or this summer.
This is actually – this is the dress
that I've made to wear on the island in Denmark.
And I started making this over a year ago, when I started traveling to Denmark,
and I realized how cold and rainy it is there all the time.
So this is kind of like the Alpine fantasy dress.
You know, my parents liked to travel,
but we didn't have that much money because they were school teachers.
So we would always have these sort of crazy summer schemes,
you know, like going to Europe and camping across Europe.
They had a Volkswagen bus.
So I spent a lot of time in a very, very small space with my family.
When I was 12, they bought a 31-foot sailboat.
And so we did sailing trips in that.
I always hated sailing, but I was really obsessed with the way that the boat would function.
This is actually a model for a second variation on a piece that I've been working on
for the last few years called "A pocket property."
It's about a 54-foot by 23-foot concrete floating island.
The idea is that it's meant – it's, um, your property
and your dwelling and your vehicle all in one.
One mass-reproducible component.
Last summer we basically built the entire island.
And then it was opened in conjunction with an architectural exhibition.
This summer, actually, in about 3 or 4 days,
I'm going to go to Denmark and live on it for a month.
And for one part of that, for one week of that month actually,
some friends are going to come out, and we're going to make
a film about the experience of living on the island.
–Hello.
–I'm Axel.
I'm from --
This is Jorgen, my photographer.
I've actually been trying to call you.
I'm actually really excited about this project,
because, you know, in the beginning,
my art was always very experience-based.
I mean, in some projects, there's not even a tangible product, you know,
object that comes out in the end.
Okay, so there's no way we can wait and do it, like tomorrow or the next day?
It's a long trip.
I feel that having these, like, really wonderful experiences,
which are completely unpredictable –
you know, like setting up a scenario where I test some sort of living situation.
You know, partially because I'm terrified of doing it,
partially because I'm really, like, you know, enchanted by the idea of doing it.
But not really knowing beforehand if it's going
to be a great experience or a horrible one.
Can you see the new plants growing?
No.
You have the small ones here?
Yeah, I planted them a few days ago.
They're finally starting to grow.
It looks like what I'm trying to remove in my garden,
you know, with going like this all the time.
Weeds?
Yeah.
Yeah, but on an island, you're even grateful for the weeds.
Don't you have a need to get in contact with people?
That's why I'm out here, to get away from you guys.
Most of your work is like being alone, isn't it?
Yeah, most of my work's about creating really sort of intimate, personal, controllable situations.
Yeah.
Like, all of my ideas, they're sort of humorous,
but they're also a little dark at the same time.
You know, it's like I have this fantasy of being
completely autonomous and independent and, you know, at peace.
And, like, not having any of, like, the day-to-day problems.
But then there's also the sense of, like, isolation that comes along with it.
People say that my work's about design or it's about leisure.
But really, I think that it's much –
like the main issues are much less tangible than that.
The issues that I'm really interested in are,
you know, human values and perceptions
and how you think that you understand certain,
you know, fundamental values that you, you know –
within your life, and you think you understand what they are
and that you need these things.
But then they're constantly inverting into each other.
It's like things that you think are liberating
can actually become extremely confining or restrictive or repressive.
And things that you think are controlling
can actually give you
a greater sense of security and liberation in the end.