WEBVTT

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CATHERINE SULLIVAN: I walk to the center 
of the room and then change places.

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It’s a singular figure and then the group.

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(SINGING)

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SULLIVAN: I was always interested in 
the body’s capacity for signification.

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What was this kind of potential 
for infinite transformation?

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SULLIVAN: Pivot. Pivot, okay, very nice, good.

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Okay, get some air.

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That looks really like experimental 
theater from the 70’s...

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ACTOR: The ‘70s.
SULLIVAN: Totally.

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SULLIVAN: Even though by the 
time I was eight years-old

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I had never seen a piece of live theater,

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somehow I had some idea that acting 
would be an interesting thing to do.

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So I originally went to school 
to study acting and you know,

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I was very dedicated to learning stagecraft.

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When I begin working with actors, it 
becomes all about creating behavior.

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The bulk of the process is tasks and

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particular kinds of choreography 
that they have to master

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or a way of speaking that they have to master.

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It’s pure task.

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My family had no interest in theater.

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When I was younger we never went to see theater.

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My mother worked at the famous 
lithography studio, Gemini G.E.L.,

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so I was exposed to visual art 
before I was exposed to theater.

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And I had contact with 
Richard Serra, Jasper Johns,

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so on the one hand there was this 
interest in the medium of theater,

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uhm, but in ideas that were more 
situated within the fine arts.

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My head was in both arenas all the time.

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Because I came from theater,

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

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In an installation context, 
there’s actually opportunity for

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different kinds of content to 
be present in different ways.

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

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Other times it’s an engagement 
with a lot of different images

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all competing for your attention.

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The installation in Avignon was a private 
house turned into an exhibition space.

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There were a lot of mirrors so as you 
walked through that particular space,

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you saw screens in front of you but you saw

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also reflections of screens 
in these various mirrors.

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The space had a lot of opportunity for

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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.

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I’ve always loved that you can have so 
much information that exists for you

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

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The project FIVE ECONOMIES began 
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 
that I was doing on popular ritual.

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The filmworks included 
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE,

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an Australian film called TIM, the MIRACLE WORKER,

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the story of Helen Keller,

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the real life story of a 
woman named Birdie Joe Hoaks,

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a twenty-five year-old woman who tried 
to pass as a thirteen year-old boy

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so that she could obtain social services in Utah,

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and also these games played at wakes in 
Ireland in the 17th and 18th Century,

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

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These were all sources or models 
which in some way or another

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had to do with this paradox having to do with

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pleasure at the misfortune of others.

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There’s one actress in 
particular who is engaged with

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a number of different kinds of roles 
and a number of different styles.

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What becomes fascinating to me 
in that case is this one person

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can ascend, transcend, transform,

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not only through the roles that she plays,

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but also through the styles through 
which those roles are filtered.

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It was much more interesting 
to me to work with actors

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that didn’t need things to 
be motivated by narrative.

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I was so disgusted with the political 
situation that I started reading

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Thorstein Veblen’s The 
Theory of the Leisure Class.

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At the same time, I was working on the 
movement sequences for THE CHITTENDENS.

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These choreographies that were 
all automated by numerals,

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by these numerical sequences.

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It’s what happens to the movement 
once it’s in this office environment.

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With this ensemble of middle management types

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and 19th Century leisure class archetypes.

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There’s a place in the work 
where the kind of automation,

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mechanization, et cetera,

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there’s like a kernel of mindlessness which is

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meant to be scary because it’s arbitrary.

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I hope that that point is 
continued to be made with the work.

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It’s not so much a framing of the figure,

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it’s the figure sort of in 
the face of something greater.

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It’s another kind of humanism, I would say.

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Often there’s a kind of 
experimentation that happens

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in terms of what I want the photography to be

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or what I’m kind of looking for.

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What I’ll do is go out and just 
practice in different conditions.

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For me, camera is really a sort of preparation

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and research tool so that I 
have something to demonstrate

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to the cinematographer what I 
would like the shot to look like.

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I thought about this a lot.

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Whether or not it’s a good idea.

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(LAUGHS)

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To...to make a work that 
has to do with places that

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I’ve never been and things that 
I have no direct contact with.

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As a kind of foundation for a 
project, that’s enormously unstable.

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ICE FLOES OF FRANZ JOSEPH LAND

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began with my interest in the 
hostage crisis in Moscow in 2002.

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A faction of Chechen separatists 
stormed a Moscow theater.

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The directness of that conflict is not something

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that I would feel capable of touching on,

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you know however, you know where 
things kind of start to fan out

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and if I can set up a situation 
that engages those ideas, certainly.

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That’s for me more interesting and


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I think allows a kind of maybe more 
complicated political discussion.

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SPEAKER: I am the princess of the Arctic Sea.

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CHORUS: You are the whore of the Arctic Sea!

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SULLIVAN: The musical playing onstage 
at the time was called Nord-Ost.

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It was based on a novel from the ‘40s about

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polar aviation and the Russian arctic.

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In this case we extracted a series of 
pantomimes which came from the novel.

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These pantomimes were brutal or mechanized.

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It requires very quick transitions 
between one gesture or another.

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You know as the performer, you must go.

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You simply must go from A to B and if C is there,

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then you must get there even faster. (LAUGHS)

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You know it’s really not that I’m trying 
to create this sense of suffering.

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The content itself suggests other 
kinds of oppressive cultural regimes

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that I would like the movement to be analogous to.

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It really is in this kind of 
calculation of character, action,

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setting, context that the work ultimately happens.

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This troop of actors pantomiming 
this novel throughout

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the rooms of this Polish-American 
social hall in Chicago

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generated a content outside of anything 
that I could have initially conceived.

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And to me, that’s a very exciting relationship,

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when you can have this 
heightened theatrical activity

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but it can encounter a space that 
has a very particular rationale.

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In a sense, kind of generating 
then that third thing,

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which uhm is…

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is my art and…

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and isn’t in some ways.