Pierre Huyghe in "Romance" - Season 4 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

PIERRE HUYGHE: As I start a project,
I always need to create a world.

Then I want to
enter this world

and my walk through this world
is the work.

What take me a long time is to
create the world.

Celebration Park at the Tate
is a collection of exhibition.

The set of very singular experience.

What people can think if they enter the Tate
and they see, “I do not own Snow White.”

Everyone who saw Snow White owns Snow White.

Of course.

You need to play with this culture
in order to be part of it.

I think someone who see
I do not own Snow White,

he understand that maybe
he can start to play with it.

It’s about the circulation of stories.

It’s about how we can tell story to
each other and how this is really fluid

or how this is not so much fluid.

That’s why there is these doors
moving in this room, the threshold,

you say that you are
inside something

or you are outside something.

If the threshold is moving,
the doors are moving,

there is no more threshold.

There is no more inside and outside.

It is definitely about boundaries.

About culture and boundaries.

These neons and these doors
are in a certain way linked.

Somewhere should exist an island.

I heard, it’s a rumor, I read,

I met people and they say there
is this white creature on this island.

I’m actually now taking a boat across the

Drake Channel to find out
if this is true or it is not true.

To find this territory and this creature.

I’m filming the actual journey
and I’m filming an equivalence,

a kind of translation of this journey
in the form of an opera in Central Park.

(MUSIC)

I asked the composer to take the shape of
this island.

(MUSIC)

And transform the shape into a musical score
for a symphonic orchestra.

(MUSIC)

So he’s playing the mountain,
he’s playing the island.

The space is transformed into time.

We have walk on the moon,
we have walk in the snow of the Antarctic,

we have conquest the world,
so you have to have a certain distance,

let people know that you know and they know.

So then another play can start.

The other play is that now
we don’t know if I went there.

We don’t know if I uh saw this
island, if I uh saw this white creature,

maybe I did,
maybe it’s a special effect,

people don’t know.

What is important for me is to create
holes in the map.

Put white on the map.

By doing so you bring back some myth,
create zone of non-knowledge.

Blur certitude.

I’m trying to be less narrative,
more an emotional landscape

that I’m trying to reach here.

I want people to experience more an emotion
than to experience just a simple narration.

I was invited to do something
on the building of Le Corbusier,

the only building he built in North America.

This building is part of the Harvard Campus,

it’s an art center and it’s also an art department.

I start to have some
problem with the commission,

I don’t know what to do and finally
I find a book on how the…

Le Corbusier had
some problem to do himself his commission.

I decide I’m going to do a play,
kind of a satire,

an ironic parable of the two situation.

(MUSIC)

It’s nonverbal, music is from
Xénakis and Varèse

who collaborate with Le Corbusier at one point.

(MUSIC)

There is the curator who
invite me actually to do this project.

And then of course you have
Le Corbusier and the people who

commission Le Corbusier
so there’s a perfect symmetry.

You have this black figure who look
like a prey mantis, Darth Vader,

who is the Dean of the Dean, the institution.

(Bird Chirping)

(Wings Flapping)

There’s this little red bird which come
from an

anecdote that Le Corbusier wrote.

He was dreaming that birds will
bring some seeds on his building

and the seed will grow.

The theater has been built in
collaboration with this architect.

The idea was to build something
between the roots and a tumor,

something that you feel will grow
as a tumor from the building

and within this tumor you will have the play.

(SONG)

There is something irreverent that I’m trying
to embody in a certain way.

I always thought humor was
a way to broke the rule of power.

(SONG)

When it come to the transcendental
beauty of the work,

even the poetic of the work,
even the critical level of the work,

I think humor is really important to
break even the possibility of critical judgment.

To be above that.

And I think what’s a language
that is very imagist.

I really like the
speed of humor.

I’m not interest about filming
the reality as it is given.

And I’m not interest
about building fiction.

What I’m interest in is
to set up the reality,

to produce a reality,
and then only then document this reality.

I did for example the celebration
north of New York,

Streamside is a little town
under construction.

I’m looking for what all these
people have in common

and I find something
very basic which is they all meet the nature,

which is this place that I’ve found.

And on that very, very simple base,
I invent a script program and I film that.

What you have here is a reenactment of the
beginning of Bambi,

the idea of a pure, ideal nature
and what you have is this deer getting

from this nature to this new town.

This deer go from something which
has a certain complexity,

the nature to this kind of
white cube,

and then the film start again

and now you see a little girl
at her home and then

she’s just going to travel from
her old home to her new home.

So it’s exactly the same movement.

Once is by the animal,
once is by human.

That is the base of this tradition.

This celebration, this custom.

What you see in the second part of the film
is the actual celebration, the celebrate that..

I organize a whole celebration

from the parade to the concert
to the food to the mayor, uh…

and in a girl’s speech to
the kids playing to everything.

MAN: Testing…

HUYGHE: In a certain way, it’s a script.

It’s a recipe.

WOMAN: Good afternoon everyone.

My name is…

HUYGHE: It’s a score.

The score can be play again.

Next year at the same time on October 11,
just take this sheet of paper

and you say parade and you say
and park, and the day and fold.

For me, the most important thing,
this idea that you can set up this performance

because it’s in the loop of the year,
you will just come back and come back and

come back.

That’s what I’m interests me to produce a time,

the duration that will just come back in time.

(SONG)

I’m building a kind of mythology.

(SONG)

Then people play this mythology in the form
of a party which we call celebration,

one time a year, we have a score,
and then you have an interpretation.

My works since ’94 has always been about this

time-based protocol, time-based work.

It has always been about the exhibition itself,
the exhibition being a starting point.

Usually an artist think an exhibition as an endpoint,

a resolution of something.

He’s working in his studio and then
there’s a process,

at the end of this process he’s presenting
his work

in what we call an exhibition.

I’m not interest about that.

I’m interest that the exhibition
is not the end of a process,

but is the starting point
to go somewhere else.