Andrea Zittel: Art & Design | ART21 "Exclusive"

[Andrea Zittel: Art & Design]

Joshua Tree is sort of unique;

it's two and a half hours from
Los Angeles,

but on the edge of open desert.

So if you continue driving to the East,

it just completely opens up.

And everyone here kind of comes
from somewhere else.

I've been at Joshua Tree for
fourteen years.

I wanted to live in a community
that was outside of the art world.

I really think that design should
talk about life and living.

It's really sort of interesting talking
about design, but through art.

Every space that I've lived in, I've
turned into an art project.

And, I think that everything in the house
has really evolved with my life.

The original part of the house
is the kitchen.

And then on the back side of the kitchen,
there's a bedroom.

And then when I bought it, I ended up
adding the room that we're standing in--

this used to be the driveway--

and a bedroom for my son.

There's this like other question, that I
ask myself that comes up a lot too

and it's like that question of why to
be an artist and not a designer.

I remember thinking that if an art
historian, like a hundred years from now,

had to talk about my generation,

that it would be almost impossible to talk
about it

in, sort of, a significant cultural sense

without touching on what was going
on in design at the same time.

There's this, kind of, privileged position
of being an artist

where you can do things on a
more experimental nature

simply to see what happens.

You know, we have to order so
many materials out here--

we can't just go out and buy them.

And all these cardboard boxes would come in.

And for a while, I just started
stacking the cardboard boxes on the wall

and putting things in them,

and thinking about how I could actually turn
them into,

like, some sort of more permanent structure.

I think that the ambiguity of how things are
meant to be used is deliberate,

and I think it becomes one of the more interesting
parts of the work.

I think it's really interesting if somebody
has one of these in their house,

they're going to decide if they want to keep
it pristine,

sort of like a Donald Judd sculpture;

or, if they want to start piling it up with
books

and stones that they find on trips
and stuff like that.

These are some of my favorite works and, I
mean,

it comes back to the grid.

And, I think that the grid is representative
of human aspirations.

I mean, everything is based on the grid--

the calendar, our schedules.

You know, it's about human perfection.

I love the tension where, like, this is trying
to be perfect--

and when we make them, we try
and make them really perfect

but they just don't want to be.

I did two really big exhibitions of weaving.

Weaving, I had always thought about conceptually

because it's the grid.

They really seem like they have a lot of imperfections,

which is part of the reason that they're so
interesting.

We decided to do a really really big weaving.

We did a bunch of smaller ones and got really
confident.

[LAUGHS]

Maybe artificially confident.

But, like, in the process, we're having a
lot of problems with the warp.

[ZITTEL, OFF SCREEN] I hope somebody will
be watching this, who will, like...

"Yeah, oh those idiots, they shouldn't have
done..."

[WOMAN] "I can't believe they're doing that!"

[ZITTEL] Yeah.

[WOMAN] Maybe they'll write in.

[ZITTEL] They'll tell us what to do.

[WOMAN] Exactly!

[ZITTEL] It'll be awesome.

[WOMAN] Email us!

[ZITTEL] The warp is getting really uneven
and stretched out,

and so that's why we have all these blocks
of wood

and pieces of rocks hanging from it.

For the last few years, I've been working
with the idea of a panel,

and trying to find the intersection between

a very subtle, minimal object that's both
fine art and design.

You could say that design has power,

because it actually touches people in a much
more concrete way;

but, I think that art has more wiggle room

and more flexibility.

And maybe I am as interested in failure as
I am in success.