1 00:00:07,440 --> 00:00:12,380 [Andrea Zittel: Art & Design] 2 00:00:22,840 --> 00:00:24,490 Joshua Tree is sort of unique; 3 00:00:24,490 --> 00:00:27,250 it's two and a half hours from Los Angeles, 4 00:00:27,250 --> 00:00:29,760 but on the edge of open desert. 5 00:00:29,760 --> 00:00:31,680 So if you continue driving to the East, 6 00:00:31,680 --> 00:00:34,090 it just completely opens up. 7 00:00:34,090 --> 00:00:38,530 And everyone here kind of comes from somewhere else. 8 00:00:39,519 --> 00:00:42,679 I've been at Joshua Tree for fourteen years. 9 00:00:44,480 --> 00:00:48,820 I wanted to live in a community that was outside of the art world. 10 00:00:54,569 --> 00:00:58,989 I really think that design should talk about life and living. 11 00:00:59,960 --> 00:01:04,099 It's really sort of interesting talking about design, but through art. 12 00:01:05,440 --> 00:01:08,740 Every space that I've lived in, I've turned into an art project. 13 00:01:08,750 --> 00:01:15,330 And, I think that everything in the house has really evolved with my life. 14 00:01:16,110 --> 00:01:18,280 The original part of the house is the kitchen. 15 00:01:18,280 --> 00:01:21,500 And then on the back side of the kitchen, there's a bedroom. 16 00:01:21,500 --> 00:01:26,160 And then when I bought it, I ended up adding the room that we're standing in-- 17 00:01:26,160 --> 00:01:27,710 this used to be the driveway-- 18 00:01:27,710 --> 00:01:31,750 and a bedroom for my son. 19 00:01:34,780 --> 00:01:38,080 There's like this other question that I ask myself that comes up a lot too, 20 00:01:38,080 --> 00:01:43,140 and it's like that question of why to be an artist and not a designer. 21 00:01:43,600 --> 00:01:47,560 I remember thinking that if an art historian, like, a hundred years from now 22 00:01:47,560 --> 00:01:49,560 had to talk about my generation, 23 00:01:49,560 --> 00:01:52,760 that it would be almost impossible to talk about it 24 00:01:52,770 --> 00:01:55,130 in, sort of, a significant cultural sense 25 00:01:55,130 --> 00:01:59,650 without touching on what was going on in design at the same time. 26 00:02:00,540 --> 00:02:03,460 There's this, kind of, privileged position of being an artist 27 00:02:03,460 --> 00:02:07,230 where you can do things on a more experimental nature 28 00:02:07,230 --> 00:02:10,310 simply to see what happens. 29 00:02:23,040 --> 00:02:25,500 You know, we have to order so many materials out here-- 30 00:02:25,510 --> 00:02:27,360 we can't just go out and buy them. 31 00:02:27,360 --> 00:02:29,110 And all these cardboard boxes would come in. 32 00:02:29,110 --> 00:02:32,860 And for a while, I just stacking the cardboard boxes on the wall 33 00:02:32,860 --> 00:02:34,730 and putting things in them, 34 00:02:34,730 --> 00:02:37,250 and thinking about how I could actually turn them into, 35 00:02:37,250 --> 00:02:41,310 like, some sort of more permanent structure. 36 00:02:45,340 --> 00:02:50,760 I think that the ambiguity of how things are meant to be used is deliberate, 37 00:02:50,760 --> 00:02:56,100 and I think it becomes one of the more interesting parts of the work. 38 00:02:59,560 --> 00:03:03,840 I think it's really interesting if somebody has one of these in their house, 39 00:03:03,840 --> 00:03:06,459 they're going to decide if they want to keep it pristine, 40 00:03:06,459 --> 00:03:08,450 sort of like a Donald Judd sculpture; 41 00:03:08,450 --> 00:03:11,550 or, if they want to start piling it up with books 42 00:03:11,550 --> 00:03:15,330 and stones that they find on trips and stuff like that. 43 00:03:16,380 --> 00:03:19,300 These are some of my favorite works and, I mean, 44 00:03:19,310 --> 00:03:20,910 it comes back to the grid. 45 00:03:20,910 --> 00:03:25,500 And, I think that the grid is representative of human aspirations. 46 00:03:28,360 --> 00:03:29,800 I mean, everything is based on the grid-- 47 00:03:29,810 --> 00:03:32,130 the calendar, our schedules. 48 00:03:32,680 --> 00:03:35,940 You know, it's about human perfection. 49 00:03:35,940 --> 00:03:39,060 I love the tension where, like, this is trying to be perfect-- 50 00:03:39,060 --> 00:03:41,599 and when we make them, we try and make them really perfect, 51 00:03:41,599 --> 00:03:44,279 but they just don't want to be. 52 00:04:00,240 --> 00:04:04,160 I did two really big exhibitions of weaving. 53 00:04:04,170 --> 00:04:06,770 Weaving, I had always thought about conceptually 54 00:04:06,770 --> 00:04:08,770 because it's the grid. 55 00:04:11,629 --> 00:04:13,760 They really seem like they have a lot of imperfections, 56 00:04:13,760 --> 00:04:17,519 which is part of the reason that they're so interesting. 57 00:04:19,209 --> 00:04:22,280 We decided to do a really really big weaving. 58 00:04:22,280 --> 00:04:25,770 We did a bunch of smaller ones and got really confident. 59 00:04:25,770 --> 00:04:27,250 [LAUGHS] 60 00:04:27,250 --> 00:04:28,510 Maybe artificially confident. 61 00:04:28,510 --> 00:04:32,670 But, like, in the process, we're having a lot of problems with the warp. 62 00:04:32,670 --> 00:04:34,690 [ZITTEL, OFF SCREEN] I hope somebody will be watching this, who will, like... 63 00:04:34,690 --> 00:04:35,810 "Yeah, oh those idiots, they shouldn't have done..." 64 00:04:35,810 --> 00:04:37,060 [WOMAN] "I can't believe they're doing that!" 65 00:04:37,060 --> 00:04:37,560 [ZITTEL] Yeah. 66 00:04:37,560 --> 00:04:38,800 [WOMAN] Maybe they'll write in. 67 00:04:38,800 --> 00:04:39,960 [ZITTEL] They'll tell us what to do. 68 00:04:39,960 --> 00:04:40,640 [WOMAN] Exactly! 69 00:04:40,640 --> 00:04:41,420 [ZITTEL] It'll be awesome. 70 00:04:41,420 --> 00:04:42,420 [WOMAN] Email us! 71 00:04:42,430 --> 00:04:45,270 [ZITTEL] The warp is getting really uneven and stretched out, 72 00:04:45,270 --> 00:04:47,270 and so that's why we have all these blocks of wood 73 00:04:47,270 --> 00:04:50,150 and pieces of rocks hanging from it. 74 00:04:51,960 --> 00:04:55,260 For the last few years, I've been working with the idea of a panel, 75 00:04:55,260 --> 00:04:57,540 and trying to find the intersection between 76 00:04:57,540 --> 00:05:03,460 a very subtle, minimal object that's both fine art and design. 77 00:05:16,360 --> 00:05:18,040 You could say that design has power, 78 00:05:18,050 --> 00:05:21,590 because it actually touches people in a much more concrete way; 79 00:05:21,590 --> 00:05:25,280 but, I think that art has more wiggle room 80 00:05:25,280 --> 00:05:27,630 and more flexibility. 81 00:05:29,060 --> 00:05:33,980 And maybe I am as interested in failure as I am in success.