WEBVTT 00:00:09.843 --> 00:00:11.011 RONI HORN: For me, there's this 00:00:11.011 --> 00:00:14.714 very hard balance between oneself 00:00:14.714 --> 00:00:17.717 and one's work and the audience. 00:00:18.985 --> 00:00:22.055 Some people live in a virtual in-their-headspace. 00:00:22.055 --> 00:00:23.790 I don't. 00:00:23.790 --> 00:00:26.793 I like to keep my feet in the moving water. 00:00:30.630 --> 00:00:32.065 My ambitions lie 00:00:32.065 --> 00:00:35.602 very much in dialog with my surroundings. 00:00:36.736 --> 00:00:40.573 I don't know that there's any one thing that attracts me to water, you know? 00:00:40.573 --> 00:00:42.542 And of course, if you start to think about water, 00:00:42.542 --> 00:00:45.545 it just explodes because it's so rich and...and, 00:00:46.079 --> 00:00:49.082 it's kind of everything and, nothing. 00:00:49.916 --> 00:00:52.385 I almost feel like I rediscover water 00:00:52.385 --> 00:00:55.388 again and again and again. 00:00:57.824 --> 00:01:00.627 So it isn't me going out after water. 00:01:00.627 --> 00:01:03.129 I think water's come in after me. 00:01:03.129 --> 00:01:04.431 It's really much more, 00:01:04.431 --> 00:01:08.201 much more the the the prey and not the predator in that relationship. 00:01:09.436 --> 00:01:11.337 The Thames has, 00:01:11.337 --> 00:01:15.175 the interesting fact attached to it that it is the urban river 00:01:15.175 --> 00:01:19.312 with the highest appeal to foreign suiciders. 00:01:19.879 --> 00:01:22.682 One of the points about shooting the Thames 00:01:22.682 --> 00:01:25.785 was, was the fact that its darkness was quite real, 00:01:26.052 --> 00:01:29.355 that people were in fact, it wasn't just a a visual darkness, 00:01:29.355 --> 00:01:33.626 it was a psychological darkness, and it was an actual darkness. 00:01:33.626 --> 00:01:36.629 And people are drawn to it... 00:01:37.297 --> 00:01:40.300 for that exit option. 00:01:43.903 --> 00:01:46.806 Even in its darkness, it has this picturesque element. 00:01:46.806 --> 00:01:48.608 It's something about the human condition. 00:01:48.608 --> 00:01:51.845 It's not the water itself, it's humanity’s 00:01:51.945 --> 00:01:54.614 relationship to water, 00:01:54.614 --> 00:01:57.450 because that's almost a human need, 00:01:57.450 --> 00:02:00.453 that water be a positive force. 00:02:01.621 --> 00:02:03.456 Every photograph is wildly different, 00:02:03.456 --> 00:02:06.693 uh, even though you can be photographing the same thing. You know, from one minute 00:02:06.693 --> 00:02:11.631 to the next, it's, uh...almost got the complexity of a of a portrait. 00:02:14.400 --> 00:02:15.301 So, here we are. 00:02:15.301 --> 00:02:21.174 We're in essentially the second largest town in Iceland, which is 15,000 people. 00:02:21.508 --> 00:02:26.479 and it's called Akureyri. And it has the largest university outside of Reykjavík. 00:02:27.313 --> 00:02:31.251 The weather's often quite poor in this area, so you can stay inside. 00:02:31.251 --> 00:02:32.819 You can move about once you're in there, 00:02:32.819 --> 00:02:37.157 it's like a little interior kind of, uh, metropolis. 00:02:37.891 --> 00:02:40.360 And the piece is, 00:02:40.360 --> 00:02:43.363 very large, about 80 photographs. 00:02:43.530 --> 00:02:47.400 The idea is to lay it out in a way that is a flow through the building. 00:02:48.201 --> 00:02:51.337 But depending on who you are and how you use the building, it's 00:02:51.337 --> 00:02:55.975 a discovery process that could occur over days, months, or even years. 00:02:57.677 --> 00:02:59.145 I like very much the idea 00:02:59.145 --> 00:03:02.148 that the scale of the work is unknown... 00:03:02.649 --> 00:03:05.251 but pervasive... 00:03:05.251 --> 00:03:09.556 not dominating it, but setting kind of a tone for the space. 00:03:10.256 --> 00:03:12.525 [ man lecturing in Icelandic ] 00:03:13.359 --> 00:03:15.228 You're bringing the nature 00:03:15.228 --> 00:03:18.331 inside the university walls. 00:03:18.831 --> 00:03:21.834 And it makes you calm. 00:03:21.868 --> 00:03:26.439 You see the students flow down the halls and with the water. 00:03:26.472 --> 00:03:29.442 So for me, it's really changed the atmosphere. 00:03:29.676 --> 00:03:33.213 It's like a very fine combination of people 00:03:33.213 --> 00:03:36.182 flowing around and the water flowing around. 00:03:36.449 --> 00:03:39.586 I think it's really great to have the water inside the building. 00:03:42.722 --> 00:03:43.056 HORN: Of course, 00:03:43.056 --> 00:03:46.059 I always thought of Iceland as a kind of studio for me, 00:03:46.326 --> 00:03:49.329 or a quarry. 00:03:49.729 --> 00:03:50.563 Maybe a quarry 00:03:50.563 --> 00:03:55.001 is a good metaphor, because I always feel like I'm involved in a process of, 00:03:55.201 --> 00:03:58.171 if not hunting, at least mining of some sort. 00:03:59.105 --> 00:04:01.374 For Iceland, it's not so much about memory, 00:04:01.374 --> 00:04:04.377 it's...it's more about that place 00:04:04.777 --> 00:04:07.780 and my need to be there. 00:04:08.982 --> 00:04:12.785 I had traveled in this area a number of times and I knew the lighthouse, 00:04:13.886 --> 00:04:15.288 so I asked 00:04:15.288 --> 00:04:18.291 the municipality if I could live in it. 00:04:19.225 --> 00:04:22.895 They eventually said it was okay, and, uh, I went up there 00:04:22.895 --> 00:04:25.898 and sat around and looked at the weather for a couple months-- 00:04:26.833 --> 00:04:29.836 a little bit of reading a little bit of drawing. 00:04:33.273 --> 00:04:35.108 It was a psychological clearing, 00:04:35.108 --> 00:04:38.911 and then it was also a way to connect with this island. 00:04:41.281 --> 00:04:42.615 There was no ambition. 00:04:42.615 --> 00:04:43.716 It was just to be there. 00:04:43.716 --> 00:04:46.019 It's just real simple. 00:04:46.019 --> 00:04:50.490 That was the whole agenda for the couple months, was just be there, 00:04:50.790 --> 00:04:53.793 and it couldn't have been, in a way, more simple and more difficult. 00:04:56.863 --> 00:04:58.531 “You are the Weather”-- 00:04:58.531 --> 00:05:02.368 the viewer walks in and you're surrounded by up to a hundred images, 00:05:02.368 --> 00:05:07.273 which are one portrait of a person who is a multitude. 00:05:09.709 --> 00:05:14.013 WOMAN: The original idea was to do this book on me, 00:05:14.280 --> 00:05:17.650 which was not to be on me as a person, 00:05:17.650 --> 00:05:20.653 but using my face as a place. 00:05:20.687 --> 00:05:22.322 So the situation was just me 00:05:22.322 --> 00:05:25.758 going into the water, and then she started photographing. 00:05:26.192 --> 00:05:29.762 And she didn't give me any directions except for looking 00:05:29.762 --> 00:05:32.765 into the lens of the camera. 00:05:34.100 --> 00:05:38.438 HORN: It was very much of a wordless interaction for the two months we spent together. 00:05:38.871 --> 00:05:43.409 And, uh, water became a very important part of the bond 00:05:43.409 --> 00:05:46.412 and the image and, the subject. 00:05:47.480 --> 00:05:49.315 The viewer relationship 00:05:49.315 --> 00:05:53.152 to the portrait is, I think, very erotic, 00:05:53.152 --> 00:05:57.390 because there is this eye contact and this ambiguity. 00:05:58.458 --> 00:06:01.294 MODEL: We were spending a lot of time together 00:06:01.294 --> 00:06:04.130 that affected the work, because 00:06:04.130 --> 00:06:06.933 that created this trust, 00:06:08.634 --> 00:06:11.637 which is very important. 00:06:12.105 --> 00:06:14.006 HORN: In the case of You Are the Weather, 00:06:14.006 --> 00:06:18.911 I was curious to see if I could elicit a place from her face, 00:06:18.911 --> 00:06:21.647 almost like a landscape-- not...not in a literal sense, 00:06:21.647 --> 00:06:24.650 but how close those identities were. 00:06:25.651 --> 00:06:28.454 MODEL: And I remember when I went to the opening, 00:06:28.454 --> 00:06:31.457 I was shy to enter that room. 00:06:32.425 --> 00:06:37.663 But my son, who was only five years old at the time, he thought it was fantastic 00:06:37.663 --> 00:06:40.666 and I would keep thinking of like, you know, going into a room, 00:06:40.800 --> 00:06:43.770 but only seeing your mom on the wall-- 00:06:43.770 --> 00:06:46.172 that must be an experience. 00:06:46.172 --> 00:06:49.909 And he kept calling me and saying, “Come, come. Mom, have you seen this room?” 00:06:49.909 --> 00:06:52.111 It’s all you, it’s all you!” 00:06:52.111 --> 00:06:53.312 [ softly ]: Oh... 00:06:59.752 --> 00:07:01.220 HORN: There's this swimming pool, 00:07:01.220 --> 00:07:04.223 actually, in Reykjavik that I really fell in love with. 00:07:04.524 --> 00:07:06.259 The swimming pool itself is quite beautiful, 00:07:06.259 --> 00:07:10.029 but then when I went down to the locker room, the locker room was amazing. 00:07:10.530 --> 00:07:14.333 It just struck me as not only a kind of a Mobius, 00:07:14.333 --> 00:07:16.836 because there are no edges, there's all surface. 00:07:16.836 --> 00:07:21.140 And there's not one interior exterior edge among this net of lockers, 00:07:21.174 --> 00:07:25.778 it's just an endless tiled surface. And it's got a collection of doors 00:07:25.778 --> 00:07:29.282 that are both open and closed, and it's got these peepholes. 00:07:29.515 --> 00:07:31.884 The peepholes are sort of what really kind of drew me in, 00:07:31.884 --> 00:07:32.718 because you just wonder, 00:07:32.718 --> 00:07:35.721 "What the hell are those peepholes doing there?" and nobody seems to know. 00:07:35.988 --> 00:07:38.324 It was this incredible 00:07:38.324 --> 00:07:41.327 kind of almost voyeuristic delight, this space. 00:07:41.327 --> 00:07:44.897 It was designed by a voyeur and a chess player, I decided. 00:07:44.897 --> 00:07:49.502 I shot it in a way to kind of bring out more of that sensual 00:07:49.502 --> 00:07:54.273 aspect to balance against the antiseptic quality of the architecture. 00:07:55.541 --> 00:07:56.809 I shot them as 00:07:56.809 --> 00:08:00.079 almost like visual kind of, uh, traces. 00:08:03.649 --> 00:08:05.184 There is a resemblance in the way 00:08:05.184 --> 00:08:08.187 you move through the space versus across a chessboard. 00:08:15.161 --> 00:08:16.863 NIECE: Ronnie is my aunt, 00:08:16.863 --> 00:08:19.832 and we have a really good relationship. 00:08:20.199 --> 00:08:22.535 For a while, we would send each other postcards 00:08:22.535 --> 00:08:26.372 with to animals or to people or to objects 00:08:26.906 --> 00:08:30.476 on them, and we would write, “This is me,” and point to one, 00:08:30.476 --> 00:08:31.944 “This is you.” 00:08:31.944 --> 00:08:36.516 Each of the pictures in the book are taken about two seconds or three seconds apart, 00:08:36.516 --> 00:08:40.052 so if you were to look at one picture... 00:08:41.420 --> 00:08:44.423 and then flip to the other side 00:08:44.790 --> 00:08:47.326 and look at the first picture, 00:08:47.326 --> 00:08:50.329 it would be the same image, 00:08:50.329 --> 00:08:53.099 but a few seconds later. 00:08:53.099 --> 00:08:56.269 HORN: So I really just recorded her in action. 00:08:56.269 --> 00:08:59.272 And it looks like she's performing and all that stuff, 00:08:59.705 --> 00:09:03.009 but you know, there's that period of a girl becoming a woman 00:09:03.009 --> 00:09:04.710 where they're trying on all these identities. 00:09:04.710 --> 00:09:06.812 It’s very much of a portrait of a girl, 00:09:06.812 --> 00:09:09.582 because all of that different dress and the hair thing 00:09:09.582 --> 00:09:13.819 and the...all this stuff with the face was not orchestrated. 00:09:16.022 --> 00:09:18.257 NIECE: It does take place over about three years, 00:09:18.257 --> 00:09:21.961 and just looking at it, it's somewhat difficult to tell that it's 00:09:21.961 --> 00:09:23.696 the same person. 00:09:23.696 --> 00:09:27.300 For instance, this one I have really, really short hair. 00:09:27.934 --> 00:09:32.505 And then in this one I'm wearing some yellow 00:09:32.505 --> 00:09:35.508 glasses and I have longer hair. 00:09:36.542 --> 00:09:38.044 HORN: “Down by Water”-- 00:09:38.044 --> 00:09:42.782 it's the interrelationship between the two faced image, the front-back composition. 00:09:42.782 --> 00:09:46.185 It's the drawing of the many elements interacting together, 00:09:46.185 --> 00:09:49.188 and it's the drawing of the viewer through the space. 00:09:51.624 --> 00:09:53.459 And, you know, this was originally a bank building, 00:09:53.459 --> 00:09:56.462 and it's very beautifully proportioned and very full of itself. 00:09:57.263 --> 00:10:00.266 You can see the paneling and the detailing and everything is... 00:10:01.067 --> 00:10:04.138 uh, it's so beautifully designed and of a piece. 00:10:04.138 --> 00:10:09.675 It's really almost impossible to occupy this space without, uh... 00:10:09.675 --> 00:10:11.695 basically redefining it. 00:10:12.411 --> 00:10:15.881 The piece flickers between a three-dimensional experience 00:10:15.881 --> 00:10:17.550 and a two-dimensional. 00:10:17.550 --> 00:10:20.920 When I was putting this work together, I knew that I wanted 00:10:20.953 --> 00:10:25.278 disparate motifs coming together in close quarter. 00:10:26.292 --> 00:10:29.295 It's viewable from every angle. 00:10:29.295 --> 00:10:32.198 That may seem like, "Oh, every three-dimensional object is," 00:10:32.198 --> 00:10:36.243 but usually the relationship to the space is somewhat fixed. 00:10:37.036 --> 00:10:38.404 And here it is. And I mean, 00:10:38.404 --> 00:10:42.208 as you walk around the grouping of, you see these images are coming and going. 00:10:42.208 --> 00:10:44.844 You're seeing some and others are dropping out. 00:10:44.844 --> 00:10:47.346 All of that has to be in a way, composed. 00:10:47.346 --> 00:10:50.449 So this is a work that has a very particular way 00:10:50.449 --> 00:10:55.054 of moving the viewer through space and through image space, 00:10:55.054 --> 00:10:58.057 which is very different than architectural space. 00:11:00.092 --> 00:11:01.751 "The Cabinet Of" 00:11:02.595 --> 00:11:05.264 I don't think I would have thought to do that work there if I hadn't 00:11:05.264 --> 00:11:09.712 seen this little room, which is so claustrophobic, which was a vault. 00:11:11.070 --> 00:11:12.738 It's a cabinet inside a cabinet, 00:11:12.738 --> 00:11:15.741 and, uh, I love the idea that it's in the basement 00:11:16.008 --> 00:11:18.644 and it's just functioning in a completely different way 00:11:18.644 --> 00:11:20.000 than everything else. 00:11:23.649 --> 00:11:26.185 The clown image, even though it's a photographic 00:11:26.185 --> 00:11:29.864 work, has an architectural component and a psychological component. 00:11:30.282 --> 00:11:34.244 You have the reference to something figurative, but it's also symbolic. 00:11:34.960 --> 00:11:37.496 It's using those photographs 00:11:37.496 --> 00:11:39.496 in the drawing technique. 00:11:41.200 --> 00:11:43.002 I like the idea of taking this 00:11:43.002 --> 00:11:47.882 very formal institution and putting a rubber floor in it. 00:11:48.107 --> 00:11:52.499 I thought that is probably the right balance. It would have, you know, 00:11:53.412 --> 00:11:56.248 kept things from from getting so out of whack 00:11:56.248 --> 00:11:59.714 if we'd had that soft rubber floor in a few hundred years ago. 00:12:04.523 --> 00:12:08.239 My relationship to my work is extremely verbal. 00:12:08.928 --> 00:12:11.864 I am probably more language-based than I am visual, 00:12:11.864 --> 00:12:14.552 and I moved through language to arrive at the visual, 00:12:15.968 --> 00:12:19.807 although I think of text as visual as well. 00:12:26.412 --> 00:12:27.813 I never really distinguish 00:12:27.813 --> 00:12:31.684 between symbolic visual language versus 00:12:31.684 --> 00:12:34.527 descriptive visual photograph. 00:12:35.454 --> 00:12:38.791 I don't think of myself as a photographer or a sculptor. 00:12:38.791 --> 00:12:41.494 I just think of myself in a more broad way. 00:12:41.494 --> 00:12:44.816 So that allows me to draw upon these different forms... 00:12:45.431 --> 00:12:48.434 without having to be identified with them. 00:12:50.236 --> 00:12:54.740 You use metaphor to make yourself feel at home in the world. 00:12:54.740 --> 00:12:57.743 You use metaphor to extinguish the unknown. 00:12:58.444 --> 00:13:01.914 And for me, the problem is the unknown 00:13:01.914 --> 00:13:03.936 is where I want to be. 00:13:05.017 --> 00:13:07.199 I don't want it extinguished. 00:13:26.071 --> 00:13:26.672 To learn more 00:13:26.672 --> 00:13:30.976 about Art 21 Art in the 21st century and to download the Free 00:13:30.976 --> 00:13:35.881 Educators Guide, please visit PBS online@pbs.org. 00:13:39.084 --> 00:13:41.353 Part 21 Art in the 21st 00:13:41.353 --> 00:13:45.691 century is available on video cassette or with additional features on DVD. 00:13:47.760 --> 00:13:50.830 In the companion book to the program is also available. 00:13:51.063 --> 00:13:51.730 To order. 00:13:51.730 --> 00:13:56.135 Call PBS Home Video at one 800 play PBS.