(upbeat music)
ANDREA ZITTEL: Painting and sculpture,
they're forms of representation.
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 a 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 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 of 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 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 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.