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Barbara Kasten in "Chicago" - Season 8 | Art21

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    [energetic electronic music]
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    Barbara Kasten: I think being an artist was
    a determination I made just because I like
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    making things.
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    ♪ ♪
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    It was really this need to express myself,
    to make a mark that was my own.
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    But I never consciously did that.
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    It just seemed to be part of my DNA.
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    And I just kept going and going and going.
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    And if you want to be who you are, you just
    have to believe in what's inside of you.
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    My father was a policeman in Chicago.
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    My mother was a sales clerk.
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    I had a really great childhood.
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    I was in a Catholic parochial grammar school.
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    And one of the nuns, who was a painter herself,
    saw some talent in what I was doing.
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    I think her ultimate goal was to make me another
    nun, but... [chuckles] that was probably part
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    of the plan.
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    But she encouraged me to paint and gave me
    some lessons herself and also took me to the
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    Art Institute in Chicago.
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    And so from that time on, I
    thought of myself as being an artist.
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    I didn't get interested in photography until
    I was enrolled at the California College of
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    Arts and Crafts in grad school, and experimented
    there with some photographic techniques but
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    on textiles.
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    They were like photo silk-screening.
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    So I played around with photography but never
    resulting in a photograph, always resulting
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    in an object.
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    I never think of photography as recording
    life in general.
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    For me, photography was an experimental medium.
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    So this was done in 1975.
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    And this is my first attempt at photography.
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    Um, and it's a basic
    photographic process.
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    It's called cyanotype.
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    And I've used this process over and over again.
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    There's no camera involved.
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    When it's exposed and when it's washed, it
    turns blue.
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    This is material placed directly onto paper
    and then exposed to light.
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    The material which looks like very filmy netting
    is actually industrial window screening.
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    So there was a lot of material experimentation
    and a lot of mix of media between painting
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    and drawing and photographic techniques.
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    Not until several years later did I pick up
    a camera.
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    The camera records something.
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    It has to have an object.
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    Um, and yet my direction is to question the reality
    of that object, to make that object appear
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    elusive.
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    And that happens with the use of light.
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    A lot of my work is based on the idea of translating
    3-D into 2-D.
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    I haven't used digital manipulation.
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    There's no changing of the image.
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    There's no moving of forms.
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    There's no reverse coloring.
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    What you see in the back of the camera is
    what's recorded on the film.
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    And that is the image that I
    produce.
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    The physicality of the transparent sheet of
    Plexiglas has no representational value.
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    It's just something you look through.
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    It's transparent.
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    Um, but when you hit it with
    light, the physicality of it is manifest.
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    And so you see the shadows.
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    I select a position for the camera.
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    And then I usually leave the camera in that
    position.
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    I put together the pieces and find a point
    at which they stand on their own so that there's
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    a little bit of tension there but enough that
    they will stand.
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    And if it's one fraction of an
    inch one way or another, the whole thing will collapse,
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    which it has done on me many times, actually.
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    And I start all over again.
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    So it's a constant process of being in the
    set, moving the lights, going behind the camera,
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    looking at the image that's resulting.
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    I mean, that could take hours, actually.
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    And when I get to a point where I think it's
    looking pretty interesting, then I'll make
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    an exposure on a piece of film.
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    [light electronic music]
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    I always think of myself as actually photographing
    the shadows, not the light.
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    ♪ ♪
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    [indistinct chatter]
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    I think the fact that I was experimenting
    in photography--and I'd been doing it for
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    so many years--against the mainstream of what
    photography has been about, has really appealed
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    to a lot of young women and men who are working
    in the same manner.
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    [Alex Klein] We are having a Barbara moment now.
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    I think Barbara is something of an artist's
    artist.
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    For a younger generation of artists working
    today, I think that they've found a model
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    in Barbara, someone who's really working at
    the intersection of sculpture, photography,
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    performance.
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    And, um, they've also found a
    new peer.
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    [energetic music]
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    [Sheree Hovsepian] Really, she was the
    first one that had me
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    thinking about what a photograph could actually
    be, how it could push the boundaries between
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    sculpture and space, and that it doesn't have
    to necessarily
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    talk about a scene out of the world.
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    It could be something constructed.
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    And that was really influential to my own
    practice.
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    [Barbara Kasten] I like the idea of questioning.
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    I think it relates to everything we do in
    life, actually.
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    We should be able to look at what's happening
    around us and find other ways of looking at
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    it and find other means of interpretation.
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    I think the broadening part of the work is,
    like, for instance, now getting into video
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    and doing video installations.
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    It's still the same vision, but it's translated
    in a different way.
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    [synth music]
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    Video actually was probably-uh,
    resulted from the dance collaboration
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    that I did with Margaret Jenkins Dance Company.
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    I designed the set.
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    I designed the costumes.
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    And the--the elements of the set were all
    very moveable, so the figure, the form was
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    moving these props around within space.
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    And that's what I can do now with the video.
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    At the moment, I'm working with corners, um, and
    activating a very basic architectural element.
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    [Kate Bowen] So now I can rotate through
    each of these colors.
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    Um, and then I can bring that
    back down.
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    [Barbara Kasten] OK. Yeah, do each color, um, and rotate them.
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    — OK.
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    In my work, I try to find that
    uniqueness of
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    what's in the world and highlight it with
    light.
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    When you turn on the projector, the light
    penetrates the atmosphere, and, suddenly,
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    there's dust, there's particles.
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    There are things that live there that we don't
    see until the light hits it.
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    That's the kind of discovery I like making.
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    — This is as well as lined up with the
    corner as you can get it, right?
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    — I think so. I think if we get
    it any closer, we're...
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    [Barbara Kasten] As I continue to make
    the videos now, I'm adding
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    3-dimensional forms within the video.
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    So they're very much sculpture as well as
    video.
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    [pulsing music]
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    I grew up in Bridgeport, which is like 10
    minutes away from downtown Chicago.
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    I've always loved living in the city.
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    Chicago is a city of architecture, so it had
    an influence on me.
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    I think there's an identity with the urban
    landscape of skyscrapers to the kind of work
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    that I do because, first of all, most of my
    images are vertical.
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    And the geometry adds up to looking very architectural.
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    ♪ ♪
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    [indistinct chatter]
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    — It is such a pleasure to
    welcome you all here
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    for the opening of
    "Barbara Kasten: Stages."
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    [indistinct chatter]
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    [Barbara Kasten] It's amazing to see this kind of response
    at this point in time.
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    And I'm happy that there's inspiration in
    what I do.
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    But I think it's really the fact that I have
    lasted this long, that I'm determined to be
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    an artist and just kept working at it and
    working at it.
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    And that's what my life has been about.
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    The most important part I keep going back
    to is that it is the process.
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    It is the actual living and doing and making
    that is the rewarding part.
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    For me, it's a, uh, pleasure.
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    It's, um, frustrating. It's
    fabulous.
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    It's horrible.
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    It's all of those emotions all wrapped into
    one.
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    But I couldn't do anything else.
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    [camera clicks]
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    [soft electronic music]
Title:
Barbara Kasten in "Chicago" - Season 8 | Art21
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
Art21
Project:
"Art in the Twenty-First Century" broadcast series
Duration:
13:36

English subtitles

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