0:00:08.134,0:00:11.800
CATHERINE SULLIVAN: I walk to the center [br]of the room and then change places.

0:00:11.800,0:00:13.891
It’s a singular figure and then the group.

0:00:14.472,0:00:17.700
(SINGING)

0:00:27.102,0:00:30.838
SULLIVAN: I was always interested in [br]the body’s capacity for signification.

0:00:33.320,0:00:36.907
What was this kind of potential [br]for infinite transformation?

0:00:38.360,0:00:44.160
SULLIVAN: Pivot. Pivot, okay, very nice, good.

0:00:44.160,0:00:45.560
Okay, get some air.

0:00:45.560,0:00:50.291
That looks really like experimental [br]theater from the 70’s...

0:00:50.291,0:00:53.988
ACTOR: The ‘70s.[br]SULLIVAN: Totally.

0:00:53.988,0:00:55.280
SULLIVAN: Even though by the [br]time I was eight years-old

0:00:55.280,0:00:57.520
I had never seen a piece of live theater,

0:00:57.520,0:01:02.242
somehow I had some idea that acting [br]would be an interesting thing to do.

0:01:02.756,0:01:06.240
So I originally went to school [br]to study acting and you know,

0:01:06.240,0:01:09.134
I was very dedicated to learning stagecraft.

0:01:11.960,0:01:17.160
When I begin working with actors, it [br]becomes all about creating behavior.

0:01:17.160,0:01:20.000
The bulk of the process is tasks and

0:01:20.000,0:01:23.160
particular kinds of choreography [br]that they have to master

0:01:23.160,0:01:25.840
or a way of speaking that they have to master.

0:01:25.840,0:01:27.103
It’s pure task.

0:01:36.760,0:01:39.560
My family had no interest in theater.

0:01:39.560,0:01:42.632
When I was younger we never went to see theater.

0:01:43.325,0:01:47.459
My mother worked at the famous [br]lithography studio, Gemini G.E.L.,

0:01:48.152,0:01:52.030
so I was exposed to visual art [br]before I was exposed to theater.

0:01:54.400,0:01:58.883
And I had contact with [br]Richard Serra, Jasper Johns,

0:02:00.440,0:02:05.280
so on the one hand there was this [br]interest in the medium of theater,

0:02:05.280,0:02:09.520
uhm, but in ideas that were more [br]situated within the fine arts.

0:02:09.520,0:02:13.385
My head was in both arenas all the time.

0:02:20.920,0:02:23.000
Because I came from theater,

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I really enjoyed the pleasure of the [br]eyes to look where they wanted to look.

0:02:35.880,0:02:40.160
In an installation context, [br]there’s actually opportunity for

0:02:40.160,0:02:44.723
different kinds of content to [br]be present in different ways.

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At some point it’s a direct [br]engagement with one single image.

0:02:52.600,0:02:55.800
Other times it’s an engagement [br]with a lot of different images

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all competing for your attention.

0:03:20.520,0:03:25.825
The installation in Avignon was a private [br]house turned into an exhibition space.

0:03:32.360,0:03:36.920
There were a lot of mirrors so as you [br]walked through that particular space,

0:03:36.920,0:03:39.200
you saw screens in front of you but you saw

0:03:39.200,0:03:43.371
also reflections of screens [br]in these various mirrors.

0:03:48.320,0:03:50.760
The space had a lot of opportunity for

0:03:50.760,0:03:55.400
different kinds of vignettes of an oval screen

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tucked into a closet or another room

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would seem more presentational

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and have a lot more decorative detail.

0:04:05.560,0:04:10.360
I’ve always loved that you can have so [br]much information that exists for you

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but really sort of invokes your [br]judgment about what you like to look at.

0:04:42.480,0:04:45.800
The project FIVE ECONOMIES began [br]with work with several sources,

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some coming from popular film,

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another coming from real life

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and another coming from research [br]that I was doing on popular ritual.

0:04:55.040,0:04:58.280
The filmworks included [br]WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE,

0:04:58.280,0:05:02.120
an Australian film called TIM, the MIRACLE WORKER,

0:05:02.120,0:05:03.430
the story of Helen Keller,

0:05:04.280,0:05:07.760
the real life story of a [br]woman named Birdie Joe Hoaks,

0:05:07.760,0:05:12.640
a twenty-five year-old woman who tried [br]to pass as a thirteen year-old boy

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so that she could obtain social services in Utah,

0:05:16.720,0:05:24.160
and also these games played at wakes in [br]Ireland in the 17th and 18th Century,

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“wake amusements,” very cruel and [br]kind of brutal, violent games.

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These were all sources or models [br]which in some way or another

0:05:34.040,0:05:37.200
had to do with this paradox having to do with

0:05:37.200,0:05:40.000
pleasure at the misfortune of others.

0:05:43.840,0:05:49.080
There’s one actress in [br]particular who is engaged with

0:05:49.080,0:05:52.964
a number of different kinds of roles [br]and a number of different styles.

0:05:55.200,0:06:00.600
What becomes fascinating to me [br]in that case is this one person

0:06:00.600,0:06:04.080
can ascend, transcend, transform,

0:06:04.080,0:06:06.120
not only through the roles that she plays,

0:06:06.120,0:06:11.734
but also through the styles through [br]which those roles are filtered.

0:06:20.360,0:06:23.680
It was much more interesting [br]to me to work with actors

0:06:23.680,0:06:30.000
that didn’t need things to [br]be motivated by narrative.

0:06:47.120,0:06:52.040
I was so disgusted with the political [br]situation that I started reading

0:06:52.040,0:06:54.501
Thorstein Veblen’s The [br]Theory of the Leisure Class.

0:06:56.563,0:07:01.257
At the same time, I was working on the [br]movement sequences for THE CHITTENDENS.

0:07:05.080,0:07:08.709
These choreographies that were [br]all automated by numerals,

0:07:09.849,0:07:12.281
by these numerical sequences.

0:07:20.200,0:07:26.320
It’s what happens to the movement [br]once it’s in this office environment.

0:07:26.320,0:07:29.680
With this ensemble of middle management types

0:07:29.680,0:07:33.462
and 19th Century leisure class archetypes.

0:07:53.400,0:07:56.800
There’s a place in the work [br]where the kind of automation,

0:07:56.800,0:07:58.490
mechanization, et cetera,

0:07:59.071,0:08:03.240
there’s like a kernel of mindlessness which is

0:08:03.240,0:08:07.953
meant to be scary because it’s arbitrary.

0:08:16.720,0:08:21.240
I hope that that point is [br]continued to be made with the work.

0:08:21.240,0:08:24.400
It’s not so much a framing of the figure,

0:08:24.400,0:08:29.440
it’s the figure sort of in [br]the face of something greater.

0:08:32.840,0:08:36.101
It’s another kind of humanism, I would say.

0:08:39.800,0:08:43.720
Often there’s a kind of [br]experimentation that happens

0:08:43.720,0:08:47.000
in terms of what I want the photography to be

0:08:47.000,0:08:49.133
or what I’m kind of looking for.

0:08:49.960,0:08:53.949
What I’ll do is go out and just [br]practice in different conditions.

0:08:55.760,0:08:58.840
For me, camera is really a sort of preparation

0:08:58.840,0:09:03.760
and research tool so that I [br]have something to demonstrate

0:09:03.760,0:09:07.542
to the cinematographer what I [br]would like the shot to look like.

0:09:11.360,0:09:13.440
I thought about this a lot.

0:09:13.440,0:09:15.549
Whether or not it’s a good idea.

0:09:15.549,0:09:17.160
(LAUGHS)

0:09:17.160,0:09:21.200
To...to make a work that [br]has to do with places that

0:09:21.200,0:09:25.520
I’ve never been and things that [br]I have no direct contact with.

0:09:29.400,0:09:34.765
As a kind of foundation for a [br]project, that’s enormously unstable.

0:09:39.840,0:09:41.760
ICE FLOES OF FRANZ JOSEPH LAND

0:09:41.760,0:09:46.663
began with my interest in the [br]hostage crisis in Moscow in 2002.

0:09:47.200,0:09:51.057
A faction of Chechen separatists [br]stormed a Moscow theater.

0:09:59.400,0:10:02.880
The directness of that conflict is not something

0:10:02.880,0:10:06.880
that I would feel capable of touching on,

0:10:06.880,0:10:11.271
you know however, you know where [br]things kind of start to fan out

0:10:13.440,0:10:18.942
and if I can set up a situation [br]that engages those ideas, certainly.

0:10:19.590,0:10:22.960
That’s for me more interesting and[br]

0:10:22.960,0:10:29.320
I think allows a kind of maybe more [br]complicated political discussion.

0:10:32.201,0:10:35.080
SPEAKER: I am the princess of the Arctic Sea.

0:10:35.080,0:10:38.747
CHORUS: You are the whore of the Arctic Sea!

0:10:42.190,0:10:45.920
SULLIVAN: The musical playing onstage [br]at the time was called Nord-Ost.

0:10:45.920,0:10:48.280
It was based on a novel from the ‘40s about

0:10:48.280,0:10:50.621
polar aviation and the Russian arctic.

0:10:56.560,0:11:02.394
In this case we extracted a series of [br]pantomimes which came from the novel.

0:11:03.400,0:11:10.149
These pantomimes were brutal or mechanized.

0:11:11.960,0:11:17.107
It requires very quick transitions [br]between one gesture or another.

0:11:18.560,0:11:21.120
You know as the performer, you must go.

0:11:21.120,0:11:24.880
You simply must go from A to B and if C is there,

0:11:24.880,0:11:27.656
then you must get there even faster. (LAUGHS)

0:11:30.160,0:11:33.455
You know it’s really not that I’m trying [br]to create this sense of suffering.

0:11:33.880,0:11:40.600
The content itself suggests other [br]kinds of oppressive cultural regimes

0:11:40.600,0:11:43.691
that I would like the movement to be analogous to.

0:11:45.480,0:11:51.000
It really is in this kind of [br]calculation of character, action,

0:11:51.000,0:11:56.662
setting, context that the work ultimately happens.

0:11:57.400,0:12:02.640
This troop of actors pantomiming [br]this novel throughout

0:12:02.640,0:12:06.840
the rooms of this Polish-American [br]social hall in Chicago

0:12:06.840,0:12:12.935
generated a content outside of anything [br]that I could have initially conceived.

0:12:14.240,0:12:17.520
And to me, that’s a very exciting relationship,

0:12:17.520,0:12:21.480
when you can have this [br]heightened theatrical activity

0:12:21.480,0:12:25.927
but it can encounter a space that [br]has a very particular rationale.

0:12:27.000,0:12:30.480
In a sense, kind of generating [br]then that third thing,

0:12:30.480,0:12:32.640
which uhm is…

0:12:32.640,0:12:33.880
is my art and…

0:12:33.880,0:12:36.110
and isn’t in some ways.