On a very simplistic level I understand two works which resonate against each other to be more activating for the viewer than works which are thematically similar or unchallenging in their relationships to each other.
Interview with Mark Aerial Waller
by George Clark
Interview conducted in April 2006 in London
GC:
I’m interested in the difference between an event and an exhibition. For instance what is the difference for you between Reversion of the Beast Folk at the Ciné Lumière and the exhibition in the gallery? What’s the importance of an event as opposed to an exhibition?
MAW:
Cinema is much more spectacular, so the intervention in Reversion of the Beast Folk is much more spectacular than in the gallery because the gallery somehow doesn’t demand much spectacle; it’s more to do with detail, subtlety. Not that it’s a particularly subtle piece of work! But the one-off social event in the Ciné Lumière demanded a lot of equipment so there were these incredibly powerful stadium lights. That caused a much more exaggerated feeling of surprise than you would have in the gallery space. If you’re doing something over a short time perhaps it requires a more heightened spectacle than if you’re doing something over a longer duration. In a gallery situation people might wander in and out.
GC:
Is that because one event is about getting people to go on the same night, it’s about collecting an audience together as opposed to the more dispersing audience galleries have?
MAW:
Yes. There would also be much fewer people at a cinema event than an exhibition. If the cinema is full, with 150 people or something, then to mobilise all those people takes as much energy as mobilising 2,000 over a course of a month for an exhibition. But it is a different experience.
GC:
That seems like a strong element of the Wayward Canon events, that it’s about bringing people together to then explore work. That collective experience seems important because it’s motivated by a wish to reanimate things that had disappeared or that have fallen off people’s radar.
MAW:
Fallen off the critical radar or cultural radar or work that had been some how misrepresented. But then I think even since I started doing that, things have changed a bit in terms of representation of old work. For instance the Italian Giallo season at the Tate was to do with re-representing something that was considered trash in an art situation.
GC:
With the Wayward Canon, it’s more about creating a space, whereas there’s no real experience to that work when it’s shown at the Tate for instance?
MAW:
What I’m trying to do with the Wayward Canon is to do with the social experience of film, which perhaps looks back in itself to another time. I mean it looks outside of art context for film, maybe in some cinemaplex on a Friday night somewhere you might get something approaching that if you haven’t got police on the door to stop the kids playing around. The things that I sort of see as being not the ultimate cinema experience, but the socialisation of cinema which was really amazing to me was when I used to go to the Scala cinema [in Kings Cross, London] on the weekend. They had all-nighter films and you could actually drink and a lot of people were taking drugs in the audience so they came out with really witty remarks on the films. Somehow some people had amazing timing and they could pre-empt a response to a line of dialogue and just completely cut somebody dead in the film. That was an amazing social interaction with film that you don’t really see so much just because society has changed a lot, rather than cinema. The only funny people in society these days are children on estates that live around here. And everyone’s scared of them because they will call you names.
GC:
It seems that that type of cinema space, which is not institutional or culturally sanctified, is really rare. Showing those Italian films at the Tate is very different. Tate is a massive organisation, similar to the NFT; they have very strict rules of etiquette as do many cinemas. There are similar rules multiplexes as it’s a consumer experience, you’ve paid your money, you want to see it in the way it should be seen, and people don’t want an ‘idiot’ spoiling it for them. That type of social interaction in a space where work can be commented on, where is not sanctified either as a cultural or commercial product is really rare.
MAW:
Watching it in ultimate comfort, it’s not a social experience, though. It has changed a bit, but it was only that one cinema in London because everyone was drunk. It wasn’t always funny, a lot of the time it was annoying as well.
GC:
So do you encourage that type of reaction at Wayward Canon or during your own films?
MAW:
It is quite funny when you have naughty people watching. It’s always funny to hear things that spring into people’s minds, if you hear it. At the premiere of a film I showed ages ago, Glow Boys(14 mins, video, UK, 1999), I had some trouble makers in the audience who were saying some really funny things. But I was glad about that actually. They enjoyed it. If they hadn’t enjoyed it they wouldn’t have even bothered and they were laughing with it as well – I sound like I’m making excuses – it was funny. It was funny having children in to see films. They have another response to it. They always laugh at the things you don’t expect.
GC:
As well it’s about spaces that are not institutional, so although I know you’ve shown things in galleries and the things like that, but a lot of the Wayward Canon events have deliberately happened outside of regular screening spaces?
MAW:
It grew out of showing work in my studio. I had screenings in my studio for quite a while, but it’s not that big so the most you could fit were about thirty or forty people and that was even quite tight. So other spaces came out of practicality, but not just that as I could have asked somebody at a venue to do it but I didn’t want to at that time.
There is reverence to the work as well – it’s not like I’m doing cabaret over the top of the films and making it all just about the space. It is predominantly about the film and it being shown. It’s not like some of the situations that people are trying to do. I’ve been to some of them, they’re kind of interesting, but I don’t understand why people need to become vaudevillian about film screenings. There are other ways to try and break reverence, and loosen up the audience to create a kind of reverie.
There is reverence to the work as well – it’s not like I’m doing cabaret over the top of the films and making it all just about the space. It is predominantly about the film and it being shown. It’s not like some of the situations that people are trying to do. I’ve been to some of them, they’re kind of interesting, but I don’t understand why people need to become vaudevillian about film screenings. There are other ways to try and break reverence, and loosen up the audience to create a kind of reverie.
GC:
Judex seems to be about creating a type of engagement that is like a reverie, an experience that would be difficult at the NFT with some guy at the piano, in that kind of formalised situation. Rather than turning it into a circus, it’s more about loosening up the formality with how people engage with work. How do people respond to the events?
MAW:
When I showed it at Redux on Commercial Street, where it was originally shown, the response wasn’t to do with people jumping around and having fun, it was more people saying ‘that was really amazing’ afterwards. I think it happens on a much lower level of surprise, or a higher level of surprise. But it’s not surprising once that initial shock of being surrounded by a cloud of smoke goes it becomes a more subconscious realignment of viewing material.
GC:
For me it was really immersive which is compounded by the duration. One of things that’s really enjoyable about cinema and difficult in a gallery is that sense of tension you get from being captive for a certain duration which is hard to generate in galleries outside of events.
MAW:
Yeah, if there is durational work you just look at the framing or how the position is on the screen, the lights or the people in the background office doing their emailing.
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