Oliver Herring in “Play” - Season 3 | “Art in the Twenty-First Century"

OLIVER HERRING: I like things simple.

I like to boil things down to an essence.

Might have something to do with the fact
that

English is a foreign language to me and
that I have to...

And as I learned English I only was able
to express myself in,

in crude ways, but that forced me to make
my point clear.

The reason I started to knit was,

it was in reaction to the suicide of
someone I very much admired

as an artist.

Well my work up to that point was very
colorful and expressionistic,

I from...really one, one day to the next

took all color out of my work

and all of that expressiveness

and really subjected myself to this
rigorous, monotonous discipline.

It wasn't a conceptual decision,

it was an emotional decision.

Knitting can be very meditative and uh,
monotonous.

But exactly that quality gives you time
and that time was actually of,

that was the crux of the matter.

I never made more than one kind of stitch.

I never got into patterning and any of
this

because it was never about knitting, it
was about performance.

Going through a certain motion
repetitively, in this case, for ten years.

People only witnessed the,

the outcome of the, of the performance,

the legacy of that time spent.

And its sculpture was um,

something that kept me so isolated for
so long in the studio.

Once I committed myself to a piece I had
to follow it through

which could easily take two, three months.

So once I started I was locked into an
idea.

And the only thing that could really move
was my mind.

And I felt that these early video pieces
were a way

for me to express what was going on in my
mind.

One of my first videos, EXIT,

starts out with me sitting in the chair
that I usually knit in

and then it just turns into this flight of
fancy.

Certain fantasies that I dreamt about
while I was knitting.

The videos were a way for me to,

to be flamboyant.

In my first few videos I am in it because
I try,

I had to try stuff out.

But eventually I replaced myself with
other people.

My thing is sort of to bring mostly
strangers into the studio,

not always, very often it's friends too.

But even with my friends,

there is this sort of need there to do
something out of the ordinary.

I don't think of the people I work with as
models or as actors.

They're not.

They are people who are willing to
sacrifice their time.

Well in the end these things are
collaborations.

The two people that are here today
are my two old reliables.

I really got to know them very well
through making videos.

HERRING: Now.

Actually that didn't work.

Well I like this.

Now.

Oh that was just swell.

HERRING: I don't care too much about the
medium.

I don't even care so much about the
object.

I really care about the pro... the
process.

HERRING: Try and get as much in your face
as possible.

Oh this is red.

It's amazing, keep going,

That's a beauty.

Close your eyes for a second.

Okay.

HERRING: You know these guys don't
react in the way they would

ordinarily react to a situation where
they meet a stranger.

It's because of, of, of the circumstances

and the eccentricity of it that it
becomes,

you, you, you sort of short-cut a lot of
formality

and it becomes very, very soon, informal.

I don't just mean the fact that these
guys spit food dye for hours.

It is a very intimate experience

because it's unusual and because you have
to

really give a part of yourself to do it.

It's, it's um, it's exhausting.

While these two image formally or in terms
of the process are similar,

the emphasis is very different.

And I usually wait for a moment that is,

that brings out some kind of
vulnerability and it usually ha...

I, I never know when it happens,

it just happens at some point

and there's this very personal connection
there that happens

and that's what I'm after.

It's this personal connection with
somebody,

some stranger in a way.

The focus when I work with a person
for one of these sculptures

is a very quiet focus,

which is much harder to, to endure,

especially when you do this on an ongoing
basis for two or three months.

I think maybe the intimacy of the process

is somewhat disturbing to me

because um, it's not the kind of intimacy
that I generate when we,

when, when we make a video,

where the focus is on fun and action.

The focus when, when I work with a person

for one of these

sculptures is a very quiet focus.

Hmm, I'm trying to match the image

with the actual place on her body.

Here is um, I place this part

and I matched it against her body.

With this figure over there I didn't have
that luxury.

He came in um, usually at night because
he had to work during the day.

Throughout the process when I attached
the photographs

he wasn't here at all

and I just sort of had to imagine what
it would look like.

I carved the structure and then I just
took it from there

based on some photographs that I had.

THE SUM AND ITS PARTS came about

after an accident where I slipped
a disk in my neck

and I could literally not move one of my
arms.

I felt the only thing I could do was work
with one person

because that seemed manageable

since I really couldn't maneuver around.

(MUSIC)

HERRING: Was actually quite happy that

the conditions under which I had to work

were radically altered because it made me
think differently about what I could do.

One guy who I had worked with in a,

in a video before, every week,

two or three times we met over the course
of three months.

It was really an extended project.

And we just improvised.

I, I decided that it might be interesting
to cut his hair,

for him to shave his hair.

And um, of course he didn't want to do
that.

So a lot of that time it was about me
trying to convince him

that he would look much better without
hair.

And then in the end he uh, he, he agreed.

HERRING: Most people are much more
unusual

and complicated and eccentric

and playful and creative,

then they have the time to express.

Play.

It's a thing that we put on hold

because we get distracted by so many other
things.

We have to make money.

We have to pay the bills.

We grow up.

And these roles that we play, they're not
real.

But after a while they become real, they
become us.

Play is, is sort of a reminder of what
that was like to be a kid.

And um, we in the end never lose that,

I think it's always there.

I mean you carry your past inside of you,

that's clear, so why should it ever
disappear?

I think whether it's video or performance
or uh,

these sculptures,

it is really the learning experience of
making these things

that give me in my life, meaning.