WEBVTT

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PIERRE HUYGHE: As I start a project,
I always need to create a world.

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Then I want to
enter this world

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and my walk through this world
is the work.

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What take me a long time is to
create the world.

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Celebration Park at the Tate
is a collection of exhibition.

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The set of very singular experience.

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What people can think if they enter the Tate
and they see, “I do not own Snow White.”

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Everyone who saw Snow White owns Snow White.

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Of course.

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You need to play with this culture
in order to be part of it.

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I think someone who see
I do not own Snow White,

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he understand that maybe
he can start to play with it.

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It’s about the circulation of stories.

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It’s about how we can tell story to
each other and how this is really fluid

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or how this is not so much fluid.

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That’s why there is these doors
moving in this room, the threshold,

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you say that you are
inside something

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or you are outside something.

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If the threshold is moving,
the doors are moving,

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there is no more threshold.

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There is no more inside and outside.

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It is definitely about boundaries.

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About culture and boundaries.

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These neons and these doors
are in a certain way linked.

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Somewhere should exist an island.

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I heard, it’s a rumor, I read,

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I met people and they say there
is this white creature on this island.

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I’m actually now taking a boat across the

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Drake Channel to find out 
if this is true or it is not true.

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To find this territory and this creature.

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I’m filming the actual journey
and I’m filming an equivalence,

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a kind of translation of this journey
in the form of an opera in Central Park.

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(MUSIC)

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I asked the composer to take the shape of
this island.

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(MUSIC)

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And transform the shape into a musical score
for a symphonic orchestra.

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(MUSIC)

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So he’s playing the mountain,
he’s playing the island.

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The space is transformed into time.

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We have walk on the moon,
we have walk in the snow of the Antarctic,

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we have conquest the world,
so you have to have a certain distance,

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let people know that you know and they know.

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So then another play can start.

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The other play is that now
we don’t know if I went there.

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We don’t know if I uh saw this
island, if I uh saw this white creature,

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maybe I did,
maybe it’s a special effect,

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people don’t know.

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What is important for me is to create
holes in the map.

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Put white on the map.

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By doing so you bring back some myth,
create zone of non-knowledge.

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Blur certitude.

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I’m trying to be less narrative,
more an emotional landscape

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that I’m trying to reach here.

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I want people to experience more an emotion
than to experience just a simple narration.

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I was invited to do something
on the building of Le Corbusier,

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the only building he built in North America.

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This building is part of the Harvard Campus,

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it’s an art center and it’s also an art department.

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I start to have some
problem with the commission,

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I don’t know what to do and finally
I find a book on how the…

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Le Corbusier had
some problem to do himself his commission.

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I decide I’m going to do a play,
kind of a satire,

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an ironic parable of the two situation.

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(MUSIC)

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It’s nonverbal, music is from
Xénakis and Varèse

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who collaborate with Le Corbusier at one point.

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(MUSIC)

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There is the curator who
invite me actually to do this project.

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And then of course you have
Le Corbusier and the people who

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commission Le Corbusier
so there’s a perfect symmetry.

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You have this black figure who look
like a prey mantis, Darth Vader,

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who is the Dean of the Dean, the institution.

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(Bird Chirping)

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(Wings Flapping)

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There’s this little red bird which come
from an

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anecdote that Le Corbusier wrote.

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He was dreaming that birds will
bring some seeds on his building

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and the seed will grow.

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The theater has been built in
collaboration with this architect.

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The idea was to build something
between the roots and a tumor,

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something that you feel will grow
as a tumor from the building

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and within this tumor you will have the play.

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(SONG)

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There is something irreverent that I’m trying
to embody in a certain way.

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I always thought humor was
a way to broke the rule of power.

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(SONG)

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When it come to the transcendental
beauty of the work,

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even the poetic of the work,
even the critical level of the work,

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I think humor is really important to
break even the possibility of critical judgment.

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To be above that.

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And I think what’s a language
that is very imagist.

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I really like the
speed of humor.

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I’m not interest about filming
the reality as it is given.

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And I’m not interest
about building fiction.

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What I’m interest in is
to set up the reality,

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to produce a reality,
and then only then document this reality.

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I did for example the celebration
north of New York,

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Streamside is a little town
under construction.

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I’m looking for what all these
people have in common

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and I find something
very basic which is they all meet the nature,

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which is this place that I’ve found.

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And on that very, very simple base,
I invent a script program and I film that.

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What you have here is a reenactment of the
beginning of Bambi,

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the idea of a pure, ideal nature
and what you have is this deer getting

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from this nature to this new town.

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This deer go from something which
has a certain complexity,

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the nature to this kind of
white cube,

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and then the film start again

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and now you see a little girl
at her home and then

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she’s just going to travel from
her old home to her new home.

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So it’s exactly the same movement.

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Once is by the animal,
once is by human.

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That is the base of this tradition.

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This celebration, this custom.

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What you see in the second part of the film
is the actual celebration, the celebrate that..

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I organize a whole celebration

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from the parade to the concert
to the food to the mayor, uh…

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and in a girl’s speech to
the kids playing to everything.

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MAN: Testing…

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HUYGHE: In a certain way, it’s a script.

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It’s a recipe.

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WOMAN: Good afternoon everyone.

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My name is…

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HUYGHE: It’s a score.

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The score can be play again.

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Next year at the same time on October 11,
just take this sheet of paper

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and you say parade and you say
and park, and the day and fold.

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For me, the most important thing,
this idea that you can set up this performance

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because it’s in the loop of the year,
you will just come back and come back and

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come back.

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That’s what I’m interests me to produce a time,

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the duration that will just come back in time.

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(SONG)

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I’m building a kind of mythology.

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(SONG)

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Then people play this mythology in the form
of a party which we call celebration,

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one time a year, we have a score,
and then you have an interpretation.

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My works since ’94 has always been about this

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time-based protocol, time-based work.

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It has always been about the exhibition itself,
the exhibition being a starting point.

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Usually an artist think an exhibition as an endpoint,

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a resolution of something.

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He’s working in his studio and then
there’s a process,

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at the end of this process he’s presenting
his work

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in what we call an exhibition.

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I’m not interest about that.

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I’m interest that the exhibition
is not the end of a process,

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but is the starting point
to go somewhere else.