WEBVTT 00:00:28.721 --> 00:00:29.960 PAUL PFEIFFER: I’ve always had an interest 00:00:30.640 --> 00:00:33.680 in domestic interiors that also 00:00:33.680 --> 00:00:38.454 are scenes of horror or of the uncanny. 00:00:41.305 --> 00:00:44.440 One of the most compelling  images when I was a teenager 00:00:44.440 --> 00:00:46.343 was the movie The Amityville Horror. 00:00:50.360 --> 00:00:53.508 In that movie, the stairway  plays a very important role. 00:00:54.480 --> 00:01:00.520 It’s the central corridor along  which a meeting of gazes occurs 00:01:00.520 --> 00:01:07.334 between the human inhabitants, the family,  and this nonhuman inhabitant, the Devil. 00:01:10.120 --> 00:01:14.550 That’s what led me to the idea of recreating  the central stairway in the house. 00:01:18.200 --> 00:01:21.020 So in the final piece, you really have two images— 00:01:21.927 --> 00:01:25.040 the large projection looking  from the top of the stairs 00:01:25.040 --> 00:01:30.830 down into the entrance coming through  a live feed from inside the diorama. 00:01:33.551 --> 00:01:35.440 And as you move close to the wall, 00:01:35.440 --> 00:01:38.751 you find a little hole with  light coming out of it. 00:01:39.680 --> 00:01:43.019 And looking through the hole,  you see the diorama itself. 00:01:45.200 --> 00:01:47.920 You find yourself looking  in the opposite direction 00:01:47.920 --> 00:01:51.745 from the bottom of the stairs  upward towards the second floor. 00:01:58.200 --> 00:01:59.840 Making images and objects, 00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:03.920 you can’t help but think about what it is 00:02:03.920 --> 00:02:07.643 you’re actually doing beyond merely fabrication. 00:02:09.760 --> 00:02:14.383 In a way, you’re really setting up relationships  between objects and images and people. 00:02:18.400 --> 00:02:23.360 I think of “Dutch Interior” as an  exploration of this kind of most basic 00:02:23.360 --> 00:02:29.386 and fundamental of relationships,  between oneself and another. 00:02:39.760 --> 00:02:43.571 There’s something really seductive  about pre-digested images. 00:02:45.067 --> 00:02:50.265 You’re served literally 500  channels on TV, like why go out? 00:02:52.360 --> 00:02:59.040 There’s a huge infrastructure that undergirds  every individual image we see on TV, 00:02:59.040 --> 00:03:02.480 and for me it’s very hard to  dissociate the single, you know, 00:03:02.480 --> 00:03:04.368 image from that entire network. 00:03:06.960 --> 00:03:11.680 So the question always comes up, who’s using who? 00:03:11.680 --> 00:03:14.815 Is the image making us or do we make images? 00:03:22.320 --> 00:03:26.160 I'm really attracted to  images of amazing spectacle. 00:03:26.160 --> 00:03:28.880 That's one of the things that  brings me to the sports scene. 00:03:34.160 --> 00:03:37.820 Especially big events involving mass audiences 00:03:41.600 --> 00:03:46.880 but also things like newscasts, beauty  pageants, professional wrestling– 00:03:46.880 --> 00:03:48.303 all kinds of stuff. 00:04:01.880 --> 00:04:05.720 It seems that there’s something  inherently compelling about 00:04:05.720 --> 00:04:07.975 repetition and about the loop. 00:04:08.990 --> 00:04:13.600 You know, it’s like a fireplace, or  sort of like a moth to the flame, 00:04:14.480 --> 00:04:17.644 it’s just you know, something  that kind of draws you in. 00:04:18.400 --> 00:04:21.930 Makes you just want to kind  of stare at it for a while. 00:04:33.680 --> 00:04:36.000 I borrow so much of what I use. 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:39.400 I think of myself much less as an author 00:04:39.400 --> 00:04:47.497 and more like a poacher or  a translator or a mediator. 00:04:50.240 --> 00:04:51.794 Last night was really quite unique, 00:04:52.960 --> 00:04:57.519 I’m actually advocating this as opposed  to dry footage from the television. 00:04:59.960 --> 00:05:03.600 Still in a way I feel like I'm  watching something like a TV image. 00:05:03.600 --> 00:05:07.520 And I'm watching material that  I've been working with already. 00:05:20.280 --> 00:05:23.800 The title “Fragment of a  Crucifixion” is a direct quote 00:05:23.800 --> 00:05:26.840 from a Francis Bacon painting from the fifties 00:05:26.840 --> 00:05:32.480 and like many of Francis  Bacon’s figures he’s screaming. 00:05:32.480 --> 00:05:36.649 And the question is screaming  why or because of what. 00:05:38.960 --> 00:05:43.640 I saw in that image of the basketball  player “Fragment” video figure again, 00:05:43.640 --> 00:05:47.979 surrounded sensorily by extreme situation, 00:05:48.800 --> 00:05:54.028 at the center of the attention of thousands  of people and under bright lights. 00:05:56.080 --> 00:06:01.040 And what that implies is a kind  of sense of the figure again 00:06:01.040 --> 00:06:06.157 dissolving into the accumulation of  capital until it becomes an image. 00:06:08.440 --> 00:06:12.080 Literally part of it is that  he just made a million dollars, 00:06:13.320 --> 00:06:16.101 but it also seems like a very  precarious position to be in. 00:06:23.880 --> 00:06:28.560 There is a kind of humiliation  in that process of simply 00:06:28.560 --> 00:06:36.241 becoming objects of admiration or  people simply becoming consumers. 00:06:56.120 --> 00:06:59.800 What led me to start working  on the “Long Count” pieces, 00:06:59.800 --> 00:07:02.105 where the boxer is erased from the ring, 00:07:03.120 --> 00:07:10.000 was a failure that I encountered when I  was working on “Fragment of a Crucifixion.” 00:07:10.840 --> 00:07:14.800 In that original scene there were  quite a few other players on the court 00:07:14.800 --> 00:07:18.840 so I removed the other  players, the basketball hoops 00:07:18.840 --> 00:07:21.260 and quite a few other details. 00:07:21.260 --> 00:07:24.440 And so I was going very slowly, frame by frame, 00:07:24.440 --> 00:07:28.640 trying to make sure that there  was kind of seamlessness to it. 00:07:28.640 --> 00:07:31.840 What I found was that there was  one particular figure in the image 00:07:31.840 --> 00:07:34.800 I could not get erasure of that figure. 00:07:34.800 --> 00:07:36.840 A few months later just looking back at it again 00:07:36.840 --> 00:07:40.160 I thought in a way there was  something really interesting 00:07:40.960 --> 00:07:44.280 and integral to the material ah, 00:07:44.280 --> 00:07:46.354 about that kind of evidence of the erasure. 00:07:48.903 --> 00:07:51.960 And, so I decided to try to do  another piece, “The Long Count,” 00:07:52.560 --> 00:07:55.000 that capitalized a bit more on this quality. 00:07:58.153 --> 00:08:00.720 And so that's what I think of in a way as craft. 00:08:00.720 --> 00:08:03.440 Building a relationship to the material, 00:08:04.280 --> 00:08:08.880 discovering the things that it  will do despite your will that 00:08:08.880 --> 00:08:13.743 may end up being more interesting then what  you were trying to will the material to do. 00:08:16.400 --> 00:08:20.600 I would happily sit in my  room and do this work all day— 00:08:20.600 --> 00:08:22.355 it’s a bit like meditation. 00:08:25.400 --> 00:08:27.657 I also feel like it’s a bit  like painting or drawing, 00:08:28.240 --> 00:08:32.520 in the sense that you leave your everyday kind of 00:08:32.520 --> 00:08:37.277 consciousness of the world and  achieve a certain kind of focus. 00:09:12.280 --> 00:09:18.320 “Morning After the Deluge” is a direct  quote from a painting by Turner. 00:09:18.320 --> 00:09:23.400 It refers to, this investigation of  a perceptual phenomenon in nature 00:09:23.400 --> 00:09:25.560 and also has a biblical reference, 00:09:25.560 --> 00:09:29.360 since the “Morning After the  Deluge” is the story of Noah’s ark. 00:09:30.520 --> 00:09:31.640 So if you really think about it, 00:09:31.640 --> 00:09:35.123 it’s the morning after the  complete annihilation of the world. 00:09:37.520 --> 00:09:41.320 These days it’s quite idealistic  to think of the viewer 00:09:41.320 --> 00:09:46.120 as being anything but distracted given  the kind of image-saturated world 00:09:46.120 --> 00:09:47.947 that people function in. 00:09:51.360 --> 00:09:52.800 In the “Morning After the Deluge,” 00:09:52.800 --> 00:09:54.600 you have to be there for at  least the first few minutes 00:09:54.600 --> 00:09:59.080 if not for the full 20  minutes to see the full loop 00:09:59.080 --> 00:10:03.000 and to get the full sense of  the sun rising and setting. 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:05.764 In a way, it’s not very viewer-friendly. 00:10:07.600 --> 00:10:09.160 The shot is in real time— 00:10:09.160 --> 00:10:11.400 it almost looks like nothing’s happening. 00:10:11.659 --> 00:10:13.320 You really have to kind of stand for a while 00:10:13.320 --> 00:10:17.379 to get the sense that the sun  is slowly setting and rising. 00:10:18.200 --> 00:10:21.480 In the meantime though, there’s a  lot of other action that’s happening 00:10:21.480 --> 00:10:23.576 on a much smaller scale. 00:10:24.634 --> 00:10:28.560 You have birds flying very  quickly through the screen. 00:10:28.560 --> 00:10:33.840 It’s almost at like a pixeled level,  barely there at all but projected big. 00:10:33.840 --> 00:10:36.019 This is something you get to see— 00:10:37.920 --> 00:10:41.592 this is maybe what you enter  in on as a moving image, 00:10:42.240 --> 00:10:45.200 but as you sit with it a while longer, 00:10:45.720 --> 00:10:48.419 the bigger movements become  more accessible to you. 00:10:51.680 --> 00:10:56.031 I like to think that there might be  someway to create something that, 00:10:58.040 --> 00:11:04.610 you could take something away from it even  if you’re only there for, like a fraction. 00:11:12.400 --> 00:11:15.675 If you’re asking yourself, ‘is  there anything beyond television?’ 00:11:16.280 --> 00:11:19.450 you could turn off the television and go outside, 00:11:20.120 --> 00:11:23.600 but I think what’s more interesting  for an artist is to attempt 00:11:23.600 --> 00:11:27.555 to answer that question through an  exploration of the media itself. 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:35.334 And I’m attempting to answer it through  a kind of creation of the illusion.