Bruce Nauman: "Poke in the Eye/Nose/Ear" | "Exclusive" | Art21

Episode #195: Filmed in August 2000, Bruce Nauman discusses his video work "Poke in the Eye/Nose/Ear" (1994). The artist filmed himself poking his face and then slowed the footage down, forcing viewers to pay attention to the formal qualities of each frame. Nauman reflects on how fellow artists such as John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and Andy Warhol also reconsidered time and duration.

Bruce Nauman finds inspiration in the activities, speech, and materials of everyday life. Working in the diverse mediums of sculpture, video, film, printmaking, performance, and installation, Nauman concentrates less on the development of a characteristic style and more on the way in which a process or activity can transform or become a work of art.

Learn more about the artist at:
http://www.art21.org/artists/bruce-nauman

CREDITS: Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producers: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Bob Elfstrom. Sound: David Brownlow. Editor: Morgan Riles. Artwork Courtesy: Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York & Walker Art Center. Theme Music: Peter Foley.

"Exclusive" is supported, in part, by 21c Museum Hotel and by individual contributors.

[Bruce Nauman: "Poke in the Eye/Nose/Ear"]

What is it, "Poke in the Eye?"

"Ear?"

What is it?

"Poke in the Eye, Ear, and Nose?"

"Eye, Nose, and Ear?"

"Eye, Ear, and Nose?"

Whatever. [LAUGHS]

My videos always involve

some idea of a human being in a unusual situation--

and what happens.

It's shot in a very slow motion

with a high-speed camera.

In this case it was projected as a large image.

And so, you're watching this uncomfortable activity take place

at the same time as you're watching

the way the colors change;

the way the creases in the skin changes;

the way the shadows change

and move across the screen very slowly,

so that they do become very abstract.

As things go in and out of focus,

your attention moves around quite a bit.

It's slowed down enough--

things happen slowly enough--

that it becomes almost like a moon landscape,

and you start just watching the slow frame-by-frame changes.

That's what I liked about it.

Again, another way of taking an activity

and changing it's meaning--

abstracting it by stretching out the time,

and allowing you to see things

that you couldn't see otherwise,

making you watch the formal parts of it.

A lot of people were thinking about

how to structure time.

John Cage was making different kinds of ways of making music,

and Merce was structuring dance in different kinds of ways,

and then Warhol was making films that

went on for a long period of time.

One of the things I liked about some of those people

was that they thought of their works as just on-going,

and so you can come and go,

and the work was there.

And so there wasn't a specific duration.

So where this thing can just repeat and repeat and repeat,

and you don't have to sit and watch the whole thing.

You can watch for a while, leave, and go have lunch.

Or, come back in a week,

and it's just going on.

And I really like that idea of

the thing just being there.

It became almost like an object that was there,

that you can go back and visit whenever you wanted to.

It's probably more painful for the viewer than it was for me.

[LAUGHS]

I didn't hurt myself.

[LAUGHS]