Catherine Opie: Cleveland Clinic | "Exclusive" | Art21
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0:19 - 0:20Sometimes people are coming to the hospital
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0:20 - 0:26and they're camped out here in their loved one's room for four or five days and
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0:26 - 0:30for them to be able to get up and walk around for a moment while they're having
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0:30 - 0:38some kind of test or medical procedure done and engage with original work is really magical.
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0:38 - 0:41And also some people don't actually want to
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0:41 - 0:43go to a chapel in a hospital.
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0:44 - 0:48You know, you do need places that you're allowed to go
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0:48 - 0:52and have moments and thoughts and feelings that
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0:52 - 0:57aren't necessarily just within this one place of worship.
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0:58 - 1:01[JOANNE COHEN] We're looking for art that going to be engaging
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1:01 - 1:04where people really...I mean, you see them interacting with the art
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1:04 - 1:06and the engagement, it's palpable.
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1:06 - 1:09It's doing something--it's activating in some way.
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1:09 - 1:11Our mantra here is:
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1:11 - 1:14"Medicine cures you and art heals the spirit."
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1:14 - 1:16And we firmly believe that, that it's going to help you
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1:16 - 1:20get through whatever moment you might be encountering.
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1:20 - 1:22[OPIE] So this is the corridor
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1:22 - 1:29and the piece will be the full length of the corridor.
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1:29 - 1:34And then, one of the things that I actually loved upon my first visit here
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1:34 - 1:39was that you end with a fractured landscape with that roof.
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1:39 - 1:41And I thought that was really interesting,
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1:41 - 1:43and there was a moment of poetry for that--
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1:43 - 1:45it fractures the landscape.
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1:45 - 1:47It creates this other kind of horizon line.
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1:47 - 1:52And that will end up being referenced of what's happening in here.
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2:03 - 2:06I'm hoping that if somebody is having a hard time
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2:06 - 2:09that they could come here and possibly sit and have this
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2:09 - 2:15kind of ethereal moment with the photographs.
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2:34 - 2:38My primary intention is--with this body of work, in making it--
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2:38 - 2:43is that you could come here over a 20-year span of time
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2:43 - 2:47and the photographs will trigger the same thing that it would to you
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2:47 - 2:50driving through your old hometown.
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2:52 - 2:54[MAN] Is this Edgewater?
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2:54 - 2:55[OPIE] Yeah, that's Mar.
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2:55 - 2:56[LAUGHING]
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2:56 - 2:57You're right.
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2:57 - 2:58[MAN] And you're on the pier?
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2:58 - 2:59[OPIE] Yeah, I'm on the pier.
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3:08 - 3:09[MAN] This one is my favorite one.
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3:09 - 3:10[OPIE] I'm glad.
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3:10 - 3:13You guys are working here now, you get to live with them.
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3:13 - 3:15It'll be a permanent installation.
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3:15 - 3:16[MAN] Oh yeah, this is my hallway.
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3:16 - 3:19I was going clean it, but y'alls were here, so...
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3:19 - 3:20[LAUGHING]
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3:20 - 3:21[OPIE] That's good!
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3:30 - 3:34Often, my work, I feel, only serves one aspect of
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3:34 - 3:37society, so to speak.
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3:37 - 3:39It's like, "my work is expensive";
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3:39 - 3:43"people who want to live with it, they have to pay a lot of money for it."
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3:43 - 3:47There's all of those realities that actually
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3:47 - 3:49bother me to a certain extent
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3:49 - 3:51But there is also a place that, fundamentally,
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3:51 - 3:53in the core of my being,
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3:53 - 3:58that I believe art needs to be public.
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4:03 - 4:05I don't want this to be installed anywhere else.
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4:05 - 4:08I'm not going to be doing an exhibition beyond here,
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4:08 - 4:12so if people want to see this, then they have to come here to see it.
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4:12 - 4:16And so that's important to me, because it's conceived for this place,
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4:16 - 4:20it's being designed for this space specifically,
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4:20 - 4:29and if you want to experience it, you've got to come to Cleveland.
- Title:
- Catherine Opie: Cleveland Clinic | "Exclusive" | Art21
- Description:
-
Episode #163: Photographer Catherine Opie describes her intentions behind the permanent installation "Somewhere in the Middle" (2011) at Hillcrest Hospital, a branch of Cleveland Clinic, in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. Created specifically for the hospital setting, the installation consists of 22 photographs taken from the shores of Lake Erie near Opie's hometown of Sandusky, Ohio. It is Opie's hope that the photographs provide a space for patients, doctors, vistors and hospital employees to experience an ethereal moment during what may be a difficult time in their lives. Catherine Opie investigates the ways in which photographs both document and give voice to social phenomena in America today, registering people’s attitudes and relationships to themselves and others, and the ways in which they occupy the landscape. Working between conceptual and documentary approaches to image making, Opie examines familiar genres—portraiture, landscape, and studio photography—in surprising uses of serial images, unexpected compositions, and the pursuit of radically different subject matters in parallel. Learn more about Catherine Opie at: http://www.art21.org/artists/catherine-opie CREDITS: Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Wesley Miller & Susan Sollins. Camera: Mark Falstad & Laura Paglin. Sound: Darryl Dickenson & Heidi Hesse. Editor: Lizzie Donahue & Morgan Riles. Artwork Courtesy: Catherine Opie. Special Thanks: Cleveland Clinic. Theme Music: Peter Foley.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- Art21
- Project:
- "Extended Play" series
- Duration:
- 04:46
Jonathan Munar edited English subtitles for Catherine Opie: Cleveland Clinic | "Exclusive" | Art21 | ||
Jonathan Munar edited English subtitles for Catherine Opie: Cleveland Clinic | "Exclusive" | Art21 | ||
Jonathan Munar added a translation |