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PAUL PFEIFFER:
I’ve always had an interest

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in domestic interiors that also

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are scenes of horror or of the uncanny.

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One of the most compelling 
images when I was a teenager

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was the movie The Amityville Horror.

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In that movie, the stairway 
plays a very important role.

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It’s the central corridor along 
which a meeting of gazes occurs

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between the human inhabitants, the family, 
and this nonhuman inhabitant, the Devil.

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That’s what led me to the idea of recreating 
the central stairway in the house.

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So in the final piece, you really have two images—

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the large projection looking 
from the top of the stairs

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down into the entrance coming through 
a live feed from inside the diorama.

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And as you move close to the wall,

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you find a little hole with 
light coming out of it.

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And looking through the hole, 
you see the diorama itself.

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You find yourself looking 
in the opposite direction

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from the bottom of the stairs 
upward towards the second floor.

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Making images and objects,

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you can’t help but think about what it is

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you’re actually doing beyond merely fabrication.

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In a way, you’re really setting up relationships 
between objects and images and people.

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I think of “Dutch Interior” as an 
exploration of this kind of most basic

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and fundamental of relationships, 
between oneself and another.

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There’s something really seductive 
about pre-digested images.

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You’re served literally 500 
channels on TV, like why go out?

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There’s a huge infrastructure that undergirds 
every individual image we see on TV,

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and for me it’s very hard to 
dissociate the single, you know,

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image from that entire network.

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So the question always comes up, who’s using who?

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Is the image making us or do we make images?

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I'm really attracted to 
images of amazing spectacle.

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That's one of the things that 
brings me to the sports scene.

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Especially big events involving mass audiences

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but also things like newscasts, beauty 
pageants, professional wrestling–

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all kinds of stuff.

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It seems that there’s something 
inherently compelling about

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repetition and about the loop.

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You know, it’s like a fireplace, or 
sort of like a moth to the flame,

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it’s just you know, something 
that kind of draws you in.

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Makes you just want to kind 
of stare at it for a while.

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I borrow so much of what I use.

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I think of myself much less as an author

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and more like a poacher or 
a translator or a mediator.

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Last night was really quite unique,

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I’m actually advocating this as opposed 
to dry footage from the television.

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Still in a way I feel like I'm 
watching something like a TV image.

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And I'm watching material that 
I've been working with already.

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The title “Fragment of a 
Crucifixion” is a direct quote

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from a Francis Bacon painting from the fifties

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and like many of Francis 
Bacon’s figures he’s screaming.

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And the question is screaming 
why or because of what.

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I saw in that image of the basketball 
player “Fragment” video figure again,

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surrounded sensorily by extreme situation,

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at the center of the attention of thousands 
of people and under bright lights.

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And what that implies is a kind 
of sense of the figure again

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dissolving into the accumulation of 
capital until it becomes an image.

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Literally part of it is that 
he just made a million dollars,

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but it also seems like a very 
precarious position to be in.

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There is a kind of humiliation 
in that process of simply

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becoming objects of admiration or 
people simply becoming consumers.

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What led me to start working 
on the “Long Count” pieces,

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where the boxer is erased from the ring,

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was a failure that I encountered when I 
was working on “Fragment of a Crucifixion.”

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In that original scene there were 
quite a few other players on the court

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so I removed the other 
players, the basketball hoops

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and quite a few other details.

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And so I was going very slowly, frame by frame,

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trying to make sure that there 
was kind of seamlessness to it.

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What I found was that there was 
one particular figure in the image

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I could not get erasure of that figure.

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A few months later just looking back at it again

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I thought in a way there was 
something really interesting

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and integral to the material ah,

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about that kind of evidence of the erasure.

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And, so I decided to try to do 
another piece, “The Long Count,”

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that capitalized a bit more on this quality.

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And so that's what I think of in a way as craft.

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Building a relationship to the material,

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discovering the things that it 
will do despite your will that

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may end up being more interesting then what 
you were trying to will the material to do.

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I would happily sit in my 
room and do this work all day—

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it’s a bit like meditation.

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I also feel like it’s a bit 
like painting or drawing,

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in the sense that you leave your everyday kind of

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consciousness of the world and 
achieve a certain kind of focus.


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“Morning After the Deluge” is a direct 
quote from a painting by Turner.

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It refers to, this investigation of 
a perceptual phenomenon in nature

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and also has a biblical reference,

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since the “Morning After the 
Deluge” is the story of Noah’s ark.

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So if you really think about it,

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it’s the morning after the 
complete annihilation of the world.

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These days it’s quite idealistic 
to think of the viewer

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as being anything but distracted given 
the kind of image-saturated world

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that people function in.

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In the “Morning After the Deluge,”

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you have to be there for at 
least the first few minutes

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if not for the full 20 
minutes to see the full loop

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and to get the full sense of 
the sun rising and setting.

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In a way, it’s not very viewer-friendly.

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The shot is in real time—

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it almost looks like nothing’s happening.

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You really have to kind of stand for a while

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to get the sense that the sun 
is slowly setting and rising.

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In the meantime though, there’s a 
lot of other action that’s happening

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on a much smaller scale.

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You have birds flying very 
quickly through the screen.

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It’s almost at like a pixeled level, 
barely there at all but projected big.

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This is something you get to see—

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this is maybe what you enter 
in on as a moving image,

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but as you sit with it a while longer,

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the bigger movements become 
more accessible to you.

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I like to think that there might be 
someway to create something that,

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you could take something away from it even 
if you’re only there for, like a fraction.

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If you’re asking yourself, ‘is 
there anything beyond television?’

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you could turn off the television and go outside,

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but I think what’s more interesting 
for an artist is to attempt

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to answer that question through an 
exploration of the media itself.

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And I’m attempting to answer it through 
a kind of creation of the illusion.