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RONI HORN:
For me, there's this

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very hard balance between oneself

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and one's work and the audience.

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Some people live in a virtual
in-their-headspace.

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I don't.

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I like to keep my feet
in the moving water.

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My ambitions lie

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very much in dialog with my surroundings.

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I don't know that there's any one thing
that attracts me to water, you know?

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And of course,
if you start to think about water,

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it just explodes because it's
so rich and...and,

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it's kind of everything and, nothing.

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I almost feel like I rediscover water

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again and again and again.

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So it isn't me going out after water.

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I think water's come in after me.

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It's really much more,

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much more the the the prey
and not the predator in that relationship.

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The Thames has,

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the interesting fact attached to it
that it is the urban river

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with the highest appeal
to foreign suiciders.

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One of the points about shooting
the Thames

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was, was the fact that its darkness
was quite real,

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that people were in fact,
it wasn't just a a visual darkness,

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it was a psychological darkness,
and it was an actual darkness.

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And people are drawn to it...

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for that exit option.

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Even in its darkness,
it has this picturesque element.

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It's something about the human condition.

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It's not the water itself, it's humanity’s

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relationship to water,

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because that's almost a human need,

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that water be a positive force.

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Every photograph is wildly different,

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uh, even though you can be photographing
the same thing. You know, from one minute

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to the next, it's, uh...almost
got the complexity of a of a portrait.

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So, here we are.

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We're in essentially the second largest
town in Iceland, which is 15,000 people.

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and it's called Akureyri. And it has the
largest university outside of Reykjavík.

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The weather's often quite poor in this area,
so you can stay inside.

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You can move about once you're in there,

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it's like a little interior
kind of, uh, metropolis.

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And the piece is,

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very large, about 80 photographs.

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The idea is to lay it out in a way
that is a flow through the building.

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But depending on who you are
and how you use the building, it's

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a discovery process that could occur over
days, months, or even years.

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I like very much the idea

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that the scale of the work is unknown...

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but pervasive...

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not dominating it,
but setting kind of a tone for the space.

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[ man lecturing in Icelandic ]

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You're bringing the nature

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inside the university walls.

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And it makes you calm.

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You see the students flow down the halls
and with the water.

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So for me,
it's really changed the atmosphere.

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It's like a very fine
combination of people

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flowing around
and the water flowing around.

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I think it's really great
to have the water inside the building.

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HORN: Of course,

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I always thought of Iceland
as a kind of studio for me,

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or a quarry.

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Maybe a quarry

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is a good metaphor, because I always feel
like I'm involved in a process of,

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if not hunting,
at least mining of some sort.

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For Iceland, it's
not so much about memory,

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it's...it's more about that place

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and my need to be there.

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I had traveled in this area a
number of times and I knew the lighthouse,

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so I asked

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the municipality if I could live in it.

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They eventually said it was okay,
and, uh, I went up there

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and sat around and looked at the weather
for a couple months--

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a little bit of reading
a little bit of drawing.

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It was a psychological clearing,

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and then it was also a way to connect
with this island.

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There was no ambition.

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It was just to be there.

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It's just real simple.

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That was the whole agenda
for the couple months, was just be there,

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and it couldn't have been, in a way,
more simple and more difficult.

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“You are the Weather”--

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the viewer walks in and you're surrounded 
by up to a hundred images,

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which are one portrait of
a person who is a multitude.

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WOMAN: The original idea was to do this
book on me,

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which was not to be on me as a person,

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but using my face as a place.

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So the situation was just me

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going into the water,
and then she started photographing.

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And she didn't give me any directions
except for looking

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into the lens of the camera.

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HORN: It was very much of a wordless interaction
for the two months we spent together.

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And, uh, water
became a very important part of the bond

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and the image and, the subject.

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The viewer relationship

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to the portrait is, I think, very erotic,

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because there is this eye contact
and this ambiguity.

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MODEL: We were spending a lot of time together

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that affected the work, because

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that created this trust,

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which is very important.

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HORN: In the case of 
You Are the Weather,

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I was curious to see
if I could elicit a place from her face,

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almost like a landscape--
not...not in a literal sense,

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but how close those identities were.

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MODEL: And I remember when 
I went to the opening,

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I was shy to enter that room.

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But my son, who was only five years old
at the time, he thought it was fantastic

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and I would keep thinking of like,
you know, going into a room,

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but only seeing your mom on the wall--

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that must be an experience.

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And he kept calling me and saying, “Come,
come. Mom, have you seen this room?”

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It’s all you, it’s all you!”

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[ softly ]:
Oh...

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HORN: There's this swimming pool,

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actually, in Reykjavik
that I really fell in love with.

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The swimming pool itself
is quite beautiful,

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but then when I went down to the locker
room, the locker room was amazing.

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It just struck
me as not only a kind of a Mobius,

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because there are no edges,
there's all surface.

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And there's not one interior exterior edge
among this net of lockers,

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it's just an endless tiled surface.
And it's got a collection of doors

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that are both open and closed,
and it's got these peepholes.

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The peepholes are sort of
what really kind of drew me in,

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because you just wonder,

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"What the hell are those peepholes doing there?"
and nobody seems to know.

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It was this incredible

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kind of almost voyeuristic delight,
this space.

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It was designed by a voyeur
and a chess player, I decided.

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I shot it in a way
to kind of bring out more of that sensual

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aspect to balance against the antiseptic
quality of the architecture.

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I shot them as

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almost like visual kind of, uh, traces.

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There is a resemblance in the way

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you move through the space
versus across a chessboard.

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NIECE: Ronnie is my aunt,

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and we have a really good relationship.

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For a while,
we would send each other postcards

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with to animals or to people or to objects

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on them, and we would write,
“This is me,” and point to one,

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“This is you.”

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Each of the pictures in the book are taken
about two seconds or three seconds apart,

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so if you were to look at one picture...

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and then flip to the other side

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and look at the first picture,

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it would be the same image,

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but a few seconds later.

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HORN: So I really just recorded 
her in action.

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And it looks like she's performing
and all that stuff,

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but you know, there's
that period of a girl becoming a woman

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where they're trying on all these identities.

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It’s very much of a portrait of a girl,

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because all of that different dress
and the hair thing

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and the...all this stuff with
the face was not orchestrated.

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NIECE: It does take place 
over about three years,

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and just looking at it,
it's somewhat difficult to tell that it's

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the same person.

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For instance,
this one I have really, really short hair.

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And then in this one
I'm wearing some yellow

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glasses and I have longer hair.

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HORN: “Down by Water”--

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it's the interrelationship between the two
faced image, the front-back composition.

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It's the drawing of the many elements
interacting together,

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and it's the drawing of the viewer
through the space.

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And, you know,
this was originally a bank building,

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and it's very beautifully proportioned
and very full of itself.

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You can see the paneling
and the detailing and everything is...

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uh, it's so beautifully designed
and of a piece.

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It's really almost impossible to 
occupy this space without, uh...

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basically redefining it.

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The piece flickers
between a three-dimensional experience

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and a two-dimensional.

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When I was putting this work together,
I knew that I wanted

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disparate motifs
coming together in close quarter.

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It's viewable from every angle.

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That may seem like, "Oh, every
three-dimensional object is,"

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but usually the relationship to the space
is somewhat fixed.

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And here it is.
And I mean,

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as you walk around the grouping of,
you see these images are coming and going.

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You're seeing some
and others are dropping out.

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All of that has to be in a way, composed.

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So this is a work
that has a very particular way

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of moving the viewer through space
and through image space,

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which is very different
than architectural space.

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"The Cabinet Of"

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I don't think I would have thought
to do that work there if I hadn't

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seen this little room, which is so 
claustrophobic, which was a vault.

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It's a cabinet inside a cabinet,

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00:11:12,738 --> 00:11:15,741
and, uh, I love the idea 
that it's in the basement

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and it's just functioning
in a completely different way

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than everything else.

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The clown image,
even though it's a photographic

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work, has an architectural component
and a psychological component.

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You have the reference to something
figurative, but it's also symbolic.

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It's using those photographs

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00:11:37,496 --> 00:11:39,496
in the drawing technique.

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I like the idea of taking this

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very formal institution
and putting a rubber floor in it.

200
00:11:48,107 --> 00:11:52,499
I thought that is probably the right
balance. It would have, you know,

201
00:11:53,412 --> 00:11:56,248
kept things
from from getting so out of whack

202
00:11:56,248 --> 00:11:59,714
if we'd had that soft rubber floor
in a few hundred years ago.

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00:12:04,523 --> 00:12:08,239
My relationship to my work
is extremely verbal.

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00:12:08,928 --> 00:12:11,864
I am probably more 
language-based than I am visual,

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00:12:11,864 --> 00:12:14,552
and I moved through language
to arrive at the visual,

206
00:12:15,968 --> 00:12:19,807
although I think of text
as visual as well.

207
00:12:26,412 --> 00:12:27,813
I never really distinguish

208
00:12:27,813 --> 00:12:31,684
between symbolic visual language versus

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00:12:31,684 --> 00:12:34,527
descriptive visual photograph.

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00:12:35,454 --> 00:12:38,791
I don't think of myself as a photographer
or a sculptor.

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00:12:38,791 --> 00:12:41,494
I just think of myself
in a more broad way.

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00:12:41,494 --> 00:12:44,816
So that allows me
to draw upon these different forms...

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00:12:45,431 --> 00:12:48,434
without having to be identified with them.

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00:12:50,236 --> 00:12:54,740
You use metaphor to make yourself feel
at home in the world.

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00:12:54,740 --> 00:12:57,743
You use metaphor
to extinguish the unknown.

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00:12:58,444 --> 00:13:01,914
And for me, the problem is the unknown

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00:13:01,914 --> 00:13:03,936
is where I want to be.

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00:13:05,017 --> 00:13:07,199
I don't want it extinguished.

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To learn more

220
00:13:26,672 --> 00:13:30,976
about Art 21 Art in the 21st century
and to download the Free

221
00:13:30,976 --> 00:13:35,881
Educators Guide, please
visit PBS online@pbs.org.

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00:13:39,084 --> 00:13:41,353
Part 21 Art in the 21st

223
00:13:41,353 --> 00:13:45,691
century is available on video cassette
or with additional features on DVD.

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00:13:47,760 --> 00:13:50,830
In the companion book to the program
is also available.

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00:13:51,063 --> 00:13:51,730
To order.

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00:13:51,730 --> 00:13:56,135
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