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OLIVER HERRING: I like things simple.

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I like to boil things down to an essence.

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Might have something to do with the fact 
that

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English is a foreign language to me and 
that I have to...

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And as I learned English I only was able 
to express myself in,

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in crude ways, but that forced me to make
my point clear.

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The reason I started to knit was,

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it was in reaction to the suicide of 
someone I very much admired

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as an artist.

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Well my work up to that point was very 
colorful and expressionistic,

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I from...really one, one day to the next

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took all color out of my work

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and all of that expressiveness

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and really subjected myself to this
rigorous, monotonous discipline.

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It wasn't a conceptual decision,

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it was an emotional decision.

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Knitting can be very meditative and uh,
monotonous.

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But exactly that quality gives you time 
and that time was actually of,

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that was the crux of the matter.

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I never made more than one kind of stitch.

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I never got into patterning and any of 
this

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because it was never about knitting, it 
was about performance.

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Going through a certain motion 
repetitively, in this case, for ten years.

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People only witnessed the,

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the outcome of the, of the performance,

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the legacy of that time spent.

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And its sculpture was um,

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something that kept me so isolated for 
so long in the studio.

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Once I committed myself to a piece I had 
to follow it through

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which could easily take two, three months.

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So once I started I was locked into an 
idea.

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And the only thing that could really move
was my mind.

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And I felt that these early video pieces
were a way

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for me to express what was going on in my
mind.

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One of my first videos, EXIT,

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starts out with me sitting in the chair 
that I usually knit in

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and then it just turns into this flight of
fancy.

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Certain fantasies that I dreamt about 
while I was knitting.

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The videos were a way for me to,

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to be flamboyant.

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In my first few videos I am in it because 
I try,

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I had to try stuff out.

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But eventually I replaced myself with 
other people.

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My thing is sort of to bring mostly 
strangers into the studio,

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not always, very often it's friends too.

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But even with my friends,

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there is this sort of need there to do 
something out of the ordinary.

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I don't think of the people I work with as
models or as actors.

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They're not.

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They are people who are willing to 
sacrifice their time.

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Well in the end these things are 
collaborations.

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The two people that are here today 
are my two old reliables.

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I really got to know them very well 
through making videos.

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HERRING: Now.

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Actually that didn't work.

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Well I like this.

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Now.

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Oh that was just swell.

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HERRING: I don't care too much about the
medium.

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I don't even care so much about the 
object.

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I really care about the pro... the 
process.

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HERRING: Try and get as much in your face
as possible.

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Oh this is red.

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It's amazing, keep going,

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That's a beauty.

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Close your eyes for a second.

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Okay.

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HERRING: You know these guys don't 
react in the way they would

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ordinarily react to a situation where 
they meet a stranger.

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It's because of, of, of the circumstances

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and the eccentricity of it that it
becomes,

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you, you, you sort of short-cut a lot of
formality

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and it becomes very, very soon, informal.

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I don't just mean the fact that these 
guys spit food dye for hours.

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It is a very intimate experience

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because it's unusual and because you have
to

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really give a part of yourself to do it.

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It's, it's um, it's exhausting.

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While these two image formally or in terms
of the process are similar,

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the emphasis is very different.

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And I usually wait for a moment that is,

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that brings out some kind of 
vulnerability and it usually ha...

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I, I never know when it happens,

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it just happens at some point

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and there's this very personal connection 
there that happens

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and that's what I'm after.

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It's this personal connection with 
somebody,

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some stranger in a way.

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The focus when I work with a person 
for one of these sculptures

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is a very quiet focus,

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which is much harder to, to endure,

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especially when you do this on an ongoing 
basis for two or three months.

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I think maybe the intimacy of the process

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is somewhat disturbing to me

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because um, it's not the kind of intimacy
that I generate when we,

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when, when we make a video,

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where the focus is on fun and action.

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The focus when, when I work with a person

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for one of these

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sculptures is a very quiet focus.

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Hmm, I'm trying to match the image

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with the actual place on her body.

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Here is um, I place this part

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and I matched it against her body.

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With this figure over there I didn't have 
that luxury.

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He came in um, usually at night because 
he had to work during the day.

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Throughout the process when I attached 
the photographs

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he wasn't here at all

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and I just sort of had to imagine what 
it would look like.

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I carved the structure and then I just 
took it from there

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based on some photographs that I had.

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THE SUM AND ITS PARTS came about

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after an accident where I slipped 
a disk in my neck

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and I could literally not move one of my 
arms.

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I felt the only thing I could do was work 
with one person

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because that seemed manageable

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since I really couldn't maneuver around.

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(MUSIC)

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HERRING: Was actually quite happy that

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the conditions under which I had to work

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were radically altered because it made me 
think differently about what I could do.

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One guy who I had worked with in a,

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in a video before, every week,

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two or three times we met over the course 
of three months.

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It was really an extended project.

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And we just improvised.

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I, I decided that it might be interesting 
to cut his hair,

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for him to shave his hair.

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And um, of course he didn't want to do 
that.

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So a lot of that time it was about me 
trying to convince him

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that he would look much better without
hair.

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And then in the end he uh, he, he agreed.

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HERRING: Most people are much more 
unusual

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and complicated and eccentric

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and playful and creative,

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then they have the time to express.

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Play.

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It's a thing that we put on hold

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because we get distracted by so many other
things.

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We have to make money.

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We have to pay the bills.

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We grow up.

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And these roles that we play, they're not 
real.

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But after a while they become real, they 
become us.

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Play is, is sort of a reminder of what 
that was like to be a kid.

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And um, we in the end never lose that,

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I think it's always there.

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I mean you carry your past inside of you,

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that's clear, so why should it ever
disappear?

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I think whether it's video or performance
or uh,

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these sculptures,

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it is really the learning experience of
making these things

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that give me in my life, meaning.