Barbara Kasten in "Chicago" - Season 8 | Art21

[energetic electronic music]

Barbara Kasten: I think being an artist was
a determination I made just because I like

making things.

♪ ♪

It was really this need to express myself,
to make a mark that was my own.

But I never consciously did that.

It just seemed to be part of my DNA.

And I just kept going and going and going.

And if you want to be who you are, you just
have to believe in what's inside of you.

My father was a policeman in Chicago.

My mother was a sales clerk.

I had a really great childhood.

I was in a Catholic parochial grammar school.

And one of the nuns, who was a painter herself,
saw some talent in what I was doing.

I think her ultimate goal was to make me another
nun, but... [chuckles] that was probably part

of the plan.

But she encouraged me to paint and gave me
some lessons herself and also took me to the

Art Institute in Chicago.

And so from that time on, I
thought of myself as being an artist.

I didn't get interested in photography until
I was enrolled at the California College of

Arts and Crafts in grad school, and experimented
there with some photographic techniques but

on textiles.

They were like photo silk-screening.

So I played around with photography but never
resulting in a photograph, always resulting

in an object.

I never think of photography as recording
life in general.

For me, photography was an experimental medium.

So this was done in 1975.

And this is my first attempt at photography.

Um, and it's a basic
photographic process.

It's called cyanotype.

And I've used this process over and over again.

There's no camera involved.

When it's exposed and when it's washed, it
turns blue.

This is material placed directly onto paper
and then exposed to light.

The material which looks like very filmy netting
is actually industrial window screening.

So there was a lot of material experimentation
and a lot of mix of media between painting

and drawing and photographic techniques.

Not until several years later did I pick up
a camera.

The camera records something.

It has to have an object.

Um, and yet my direction is to question the reality
of that object, to make that object appear

elusive.

And that happens with the use of light.

A lot of my work is based on the idea of translating
3-D into 2-D.

I haven't used digital manipulation.

There's no changing of the image.

There's no moving of forms.

There's no reverse coloring.

What you see in the back of the camera is
what's recorded on the film.

And that is the image that I
produce.

The physicality of the transparent sheet of
Plexiglas has no representational value.

It's just something you look through.

It's transparent.

Um, but when you hit it with
light, the physicality of it is manifest.

And so you see the shadows.

I select a position for the camera.

And then I usually leave the camera in that
position.

I put together the pieces and find a point
at which they stand on their own so that there's

a little bit of tension there but enough that
they will stand.

And if it's one fraction of an
inch one way or another, the whole thing will collapse,

which it has done on me many times, actually.

And I start all over again.

So it's a constant process of being in the
set, moving the lights, going behind the camera,

looking at the image that's resulting.

I mean, that could take hours, actually.

And when I get to a point where I think it's
looking pretty interesting, then I'll make

an exposure on a piece of film.

[light electronic music]

I always think of myself as actually photographing
the shadows, not the light.

♪ ♪

[indistinct chatter]

I think the fact that I was experimenting
in photography--and I'd been doing it for

so many years--against the mainstream of what
photography has been about, has really appealed

to a lot of young women and men who are working
in the same manner.

[Alex Klein] We are having a Barbara moment now.

I think Barbara is something of an artist's
artist.

For a younger generation of artists working
today, I think that they've found a model

in Barbara, someone who's really working at
the intersection of sculpture, photography,

performance.

And, um, they've also found a
new peer.

[energetic music]

[Sheree Hovsepian] Really, she was the
first one that had me

thinking about what a photograph could actually
be, how it could push the boundaries between

sculpture and space, and that it doesn't have
to necessarily

talk about a scene out of the world.

It could be something constructed.

And that was really influential to my own
practice.

[Barbara Kasten] I like the idea of questioning.

I think it relates to everything we do in
life, actually.

We should be able to look at what's happening
around us and find other ways of looking at

it and find other means of interpretation.

I think the broadening part of the work is,
like, for instance, now getting into video

and doing video installations.

It's still the same vision, but it's translated
in a different way.

[synth music]

Video actually was probably-uh,
resulted from the dance collaboration

that I did with Margaret Jenkins Dance Company.

I designed the set.

I designed the costumes.

And the--the elements of the set were all
very moveable, so the figure, the form was

moving these props around within space.

And that's what I can do now with the video.

At the moment, I'm working with corners, um, and
activating a very basic architectural element.

[Kate Bowen] So now I can rotate through
each of these colors.

Um, and then I can bring that
back down.

[Barbara Kasten] OK. Yeah, do each color, um, and rotate them.

— OK.

In my work, I try to find that
uniqueness of

what's in the world and highlight it with
light.

When you turn on the projector, the light
penetrates the atmosphere, and, suddenly,

there's dust, there's particles.

There are things that live there that we don't
see until the light hits it.

That's the kind of discovery I like making.

— This is as well as lined up with the
corner as you can get it, right?

— I think so. I think if we get
it any closer, we're...

[Barbara Kasten] As I continue to make
the videos now, I'm adding

3-dimensional forms within the video.

So they're very much sculpture as well as
video.

[pulsing music]

I grew up in Bridgeport, which is like 10
minutes away from downtown Chicago.

I've always loved living in the city.

Chicago is a city of architecture, so it had
an influence on me.

I think there's an identity with the urban
landscape of skyscrapers to the kind of work

that I do because, first of all, most of my
images are vertical.

And the geometry adds up to looking very architectural.

♪ ♪

[indistinct chatter]

— It is such a pleasure to
welcome you all here

for the opening of
"Barbara Kasten: Stages."

[indistinct chatter]

[Barbara Kasten] It's amazing to see this kind of response
at this point in time.

And I'm happy that there's inspiration in
what I do.

But I think it's really the fact that I have
lasted this long, that I'm determined to be

an artist and just kept working at it and
working at it.

And that's what my life has been about.

The most important part I keep going back
to is that it is the process.

It is the actual living and doing and making
that is the rewarding part.

For me, it's a, uh, pleasure.

It's, um, frustrating. It's
fabulous.

It's horrible.

It's all of those emotions all wrapped into
one.

But I couldn't do anything else.

[camera clicks]

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