An Interview with the Rufus Corporation
by Jill Conner
The Whitney Biennial of 2004 successfully captured a utopian sense of nostalgia that had not been felt so profoundly since the 1960s. The most seductive representation of a reality that never took place appeared in a short film titled “89 Seconds at Alcazar” (2004). Originally billed to Eve Sussman, this work was in fact created by the Rufus Corporation, a performance group that she founded after seeing “Las Meninas” (1656) by Diego Velazquez when visiting the Prado in
Madrid.
Consisting of Eve Sussman, Claudia de Serpa Soares, Jeff Wood, Helen Pickett, Karen Young, Annette Previti, Grayson Millwood, Walter Sipser, Sofie Zamchick, Popi Alkouli-Troianou, Kostas Beveratos, Mariliza Chronea, Stergios Ioannou, Katarina Oikonomopoulou, Roza Prodromou, Antonis Spinoulas, Christos Sirmakezis and Sotiris Tsakomidis along with Jonathan Bepler, Savina Yannatou, Themis Bazaka and Ricoh Gerbl, these artists utilize the interdisciplinary nature of Rufus in order to skirt superficiality. Instead the members of this group creatively use the process of collective critique to incorporate the fictional identities of others seamlessly within themselves.
It could be argued that the Rufus group risks falling into the transparency of appropriation since they collectively recreated a work of art that has been copied by other artists of the Modern era, such as Pablo Picasso. However the disarming realism, which is rendered through the paradigm of the short motion picture, takes the work of Rufus to a different, more sublime level. Sussman’s added practice of “cinema verité” incorporates real life as performance that chips away further at the historical notion of artifice. As a viewer who was transfixed by the creation of a photographic sensibility within the scope of art history, I caught up with some members of Rufus namely Eve Sussman, Jeff Wood, Helen Pickett, Karen Young, Annette Previti, Walter Sipser, and Sofie Zamchick, for some questions to learn more about the methodology of “cinema verité” as well as the distinction between film and video.
Q. Your work is normally a-historic, from what I have seen. What drew you to use art historical subject matter as visual content?
ES: Well, I suppose initially seeing this painting in the Prado. I mean I wouldn’t say I’m drawn to art historic subject matter. I’m just drawn to things that are inspiring in terms of looking for ways of thinking about making work.
Q. Wouldn’t you consider this to be a form of appropriation?
ES: I actually don’t. I’m so tired of appropriation I can’t tell you. I think appropriation is very different. Appropriation actually incorporates artwork verbatim and that’s not what I’m doing. I find it pretty boring.
JW: From an actor’s standpoint, this was really interesting for all of us since we had no idea what we were doing. We were constantly working through process. Working with such a period piece, gesture and language was sometimes hysterical and dare I say embarrassing which was great because it forced us to find a way to make this mean something to us.
Q. What was the modus operandi in “89 Seconds…” and what is it now?
WS: We were dressed in 17th century clothing walking around the
inside of a Velasquez painting with Baroque music playing in the
background. Eve paid scrupulous attention to the lighting.
The combination of all the effects was entirely transformative. If attempting to explore some of the emotional and psychological conditions of people moving through an environment was one of the larger concerns of this piece then I can say that the foundation was pretty solid. The atmosphere was erotically charged and the feeling of improvising and working within the space was a nice combination of cerebral and sensual.
JW: In general there are two directions: outside-in, and inside-out. The history of acting has fluctuated between these two approaches exploring the relationship between emotional content, physicality and artifice (costume, props, set, etc). Grotowski articulated, in response to technology, that all you need is the actor and one audience member. All you need for the execution of character and story is the actor's body and soul as it is, in context. He realized almost ahead of his time that it's impossible to compete with the mesmerizing ability of the screen - so don't kid yourself as an artist of the theatre. The Wooster Group in some ways pioneered a path in pure artifice: our surroundings are the triggers for our emotional responses. The audience has the opportunity to respond emotionally, or not, rather than the actors simulating an emotional experience for them.
We want to challenge the conditions of a fiction and we want it to uphold those conditions whatever they are. We require that they withstand the scrutiny of our own experience. And every opportunity that the fiction gives us to drop out, it fails. To this extent we need the wall as a mediator in order to be carried through it. It's a paradox. And there's no way around that. These aren't things that we've necessarily decided as a group. Eve or Walter or Karen or Claudia (our choreographer) or Ricoh (our dramaturge) might have a totally different perspective. We're all coming from different backgrounds and hoping that the diverse perspectives will cast some light into the labyrinth of the subject matter.
HP: The amount of space that is afforded is key to Rufus. It allows ideas to percolate and morph and blend with other componants. (you must excuse my spelling!)Also what 'space' allows is the beautiful reality of responsibility. We are all responsible for what happens in this arena. In using the word responsible, I mean also the very important aspect of letting the ego go of preconceived ideas and that can only happen with an ongoing monologue to check attachment, and an ongoing dialogue between the members of Rufus. What we bring, individually, to the process can only work if it works for the piece as a whole.
Q. How would you say that your work differs from other video artists like Matthew Barney, Bill Viola and Pippolitti Rist?
HP: This is true collaboration and the most detailed beautiful work comes from this place. The more space an individual can create, the more room there is for ideas to come in. And space and responsibility is synonymous for me. Also with space one is more open to other ideas to affect a spontaneous performance. Listening, which is key, is the greatest componant is spontaneity. A performer can bounce easily with anything that comes her way. This is so important in an improv/'let see what kind of reaction comes'
atmosphere.
Eve’s attention to detail comes to the forefront in her directing and this attention to detail, which I adore, creates an uncomprising beauty. Staying true to the task, which is how I interpret this in my own teaching, is the only avenue, as far as I am concerned, to which people can be spontaneous and use improv and be open enough to let the unknown in.
JW: The group and the collaborative process is an animal. It's living and behaving according to it's own rules which are both patterned and chaotic. We're never quite sure what it's going to do or what kind of mood it's going to be in on any particular day, situation or location. We can only keep an eye on it, take care of it and follow it. For us it's like being caught up in the trajectory of a hurricane. Everything in the landscape (exterior and interior) is swept up, tossed around and thrown back down in some rearranged new order. We know what we're going for, but still it's a mystery. No one person has the answer. We're spinning around the empty center. It's there, breathing life into the animal, and yet it's invisible.
ES: I think Barney is really ambitious and visually really stunning, but he leaves me cold. I don’t think I’m into what is cold. I think that’s the main difference. Bill Viola is also kind of emotionally cold to me. Pippolitti Rist’s work is a lot different. I’ve seen her work a lot. Her work seems to be more about herself. My work is not about me. Mine has more to do with the interaction that occurs between people in a room and the emotional conditions of people, and so on. I’m really interested in emotional conditions. I don’t think Barney is at all. I know Bill Viola is but within Rist’s work it is much more about her own conditions within the world. I don’t put myself in my work.
Q. So you seek to leave meaning open to the viewer?
ES: Well, I want the viewer to feel something. I don’t think Barney’s work carries that as a priority. I’m really interested in something that provides the viewer with an emotional experience, connecting them to what they see. That’s what I don’t like about most video art. I consider myself closer to filmmakers than video artists. I think my concerns are more that of a filmmaker as opposed to that of a video artist.
Q. I saw the Viola show at the Whitney. It is split across 5 or 6 different projections within an expansive, uneven room. Viewers are left glancing back and forth to see what screen is going to animate next. One screen, for example, portrays the artist diving in water, while the other is a sheer reversal of the same action, in an effort to create something that is theatrically sublime.
ES: Yea, video art tends to be a lot more about tricks. You can have really great special effects or not so great special effects – but often the tricks take precedent. Filmmaking often has really great special effects, but it is actually less about the gimmickery of the trick. Filmmaking is also about acting. I’m into acting. I work with actors.
JW: All works deal in narrative, don't they? The general and obvious difference between video art and film is just one of extremes on the continuum of textual narrative. At one end of the spectrum we're confronted with raw subtext and perhaps absolute abstraction from any line of recognizable story. At the other end, we're all familiar with the assembly line of packaging that deals in audience-tested convention, device and cliché at the level of text accessible to the lowest common denominator. Effectively subverting convention or cliché is not a matter of aesthetic elitism. It's a matter of looking at what is both specific and articulate as well as accessible. The more general or universal a representation is, the more people it's going to reach. On the other hand, the great works endure and appeal to so many people I think because they are so masterfully specific - where the obscurity of detail intersects with the universal. We're obviously trying to find a common ground between the regions of film and video art for all of these reasons. A good story is a good story. We're trying to tell an old story in a way that it's never been told before. We're trying to tell a good story, to hell with the rules for how it should be told. And yet of course we want to share it. We want to share it with each other, first, and then with as many people as we can. This is our simple ideal I think. There are enough of us on board this mess, I hope, to give the process a diversity of perspective. If each of us involved can understand what we're doing somehow, at some level, then it spreads the weight around. The danger is that it gets muddy and too fragmented. We're just as interested in the strength of a unified vision as we are the madness of the collaborative process. In addition to her astounding drive and specific sense of craftsmanship, Eve's brilliance in some ways is her ability to facilitate and mediate this confluence of collaboration and integration as a director. We all feel very fortunate to be doing this kind of work, particularly to be working with such a totally international cast and crew. It's ambitious, hilarious and humane. From an actor's perspective it's sometimes pretty simple. We care about each other and we care about what we're doing. It means something to us. We hope it will mean something to an audience too.
Q. How does Rufus compare to the performance groups that flourished throughout the 1960s?
AP: It’s like we live, eat and sleep together.
HP: Well we did that when we were in Greece. The whole time we got incredibly close. This collective atmosphere is indicative of things that happened in the 60s and 70s. I think the lack of money in general has prevented the art world from having more performance groups at this time. It has caused artists to move away from collaboration. But in this kind of co-operative situation, everyone has different strengths which together create a full picture.
WS: Eve thrives on working with collectives whereas others don’t. She doesn’t mind showing the structure when it’s not well-put together yet. Eve actively seeks out input on the process whereas others are very secretive.
SZ: Every moment is being filmed, and every moment is the collaboration. It’s not based on a specific moment. Instead it is about everything that everyone experiences.
JW: We were filming ourselves going to the airport with no idea why. Eve looks for everyday gesture.
Q. How did you become acquainted with video?
ES: The same way that everybody else does, I guess. It’s all around you all the time in the generation we grew up in. I used to shoot with Super-8 cameras when I was about 18 or 20, and I watched TV from the time I was a little kid, even though my parents tried to prohibit it (which makes you want to watch even more). It’s ubiquitous. I don’t know how you could not be acquainted with it unless you grew up in the middle of Africa or something.
Q. What is “cinema verité”?
ES: A movement that began simultaneously in a number of countries—France, England, Canada, and the United States—and has been called a number of things—free cinema, direct cinema, and observational documentary. Chris Marker in “Sans Soliel” and Wim Wenders in “Tokyo Ga”, worked in the form founded by the likes of D.A. Pennebaker, Albert Maysles, and Jean Rouch . They were the first to define this style of taking the camera and shooting real life. The subjects are not acting. Its what I’m especially intrigued with. I’m interested in the space where cinema verité and fictional filmmaking meet as in some of Cassevettes work. It’s something that I think about a lot, especially with respect to the next piece.
Q. In the next piece, will the acting be grounded with verbalizations or a dialogue exchange as it was portrayed in “Making 89 Seconds…”?
ES: We’re not going to have much dialogue. There might be one interview scene that actually has language in it. But there will be very little spoken language. We’ve been working a lot with fake language, and we’re more interested in using sound and singing. But it won’t be close to any typical filmic dialogue.
Q. By reducing an art historical icon to the money shot, your work clearly is imposing a photographic sensibility back into history. Do you think that this makes your work more redundant or more visionary?
ES: Obviously the choice and hope is to be visionary. I’m really not interested in repeating existing things. I’m really about trying to discover a language that I think communicates some sort of emotional state or some psychological condition and forms a bond between the viewer and what they’re seeing on the screen; as well as between the characters on the screen. Whether you do that using cinema verite or on a sound stage, you’re still trying to create that emotional moment, and you’re still trying to get a psychologically poignant thing that people can connect to. You know, you still need a hook. And I’m interested in that, the way a filmmaker is. I believe video artists don’t often have that as a priority.
That’s why the difference between film and video art is so important. And why I have little patience for boring motion picture art. So I’m certainly not interested in being repetitive. I’m merely trying to give you an experience that’s meaningful.
It doesn’t matter if it’s an experience you’ve seen before or not. It just has to be meaningful. You can see the same narrative love story at different times but it doesn’t prohibit you from being moved every time you watch the movie. It’s not about trying to find something new so much as it is about finding something gripping. Gripping doesn’t have to be new it just has to be gripping. I don’t think what we did with“89 Seconds” was anything new, however it definitely had a certain emotional and psychological tenacity that kept people watching often more than once.
Q. It felt like a cliff-hanger.
ES: Exactly. There was all this build-up, and in the end nothing happens. I’m really into movies where nothing really happens. Like Chantal Akerman’s “Je tu il elle” in which a woman eats a bag of sugar, drags a mattress around the room, and then ends up fucking a truck driver. Almost, nothing happens.
Video art is not very emotive most of the time. It can keep you for a while if you have a certain, really esoteric, developed palette, but I think if you don’t have a developed taste for a certain kind of esoteric art work, it’s not going to hold you very long.
Q. “89 Seconds…” has been incredibly successful, but despite this have you encountered any criticism from art historians?
ES: Not really. Sometimes the occasional boring comment. You know, the fixation on a particular detail, like we forgot the key on Velazquez’s belt. Only things as tedious as that. But that’s not the point.
Nobody has come up to say that the piece really sucks or it’s horrible that it’s a duplication of a masterpiece. I think most people are pretty infatuated with it. So no, I haven’t had any constructive, negative criticism. The only criticism I have had has been kind of petty. If someone has constructive or negative criticism, I’d love to hear it.
Q. Other video artists attempt to propel their work beyond the notion of the “frame”. Would you say that your work does that even though it is dealing with content that has been physically framed?
ES: I guess I want to know what you mean by “other video artists beyond the frame”?
Q. Bill Viola, for example, creates an environment on screen that uses visual effects, giving the illusion that his work is physically within the space that it is exhibited.
ES: You’re constantly imagining another space in the film since the camera is constantly moving. On one hand I am super conscious of the “frame” such that if you stop the film at any moment, you will see a compelling photograph. And that’s something that a lot of filmmakers don’t think about. I think how you frame things in the camera is really important. I think Antonioni, Wong Kar-Wei, Steven Soderbergh, and Lars van Triers, are people who really think about “frame.”
In terms of “89 Seconds”, there’s either a sound or a gesture that serves as a cue, but I don’t think it’s as conceptual as you may be imagining. It’s not really an issue, but I keep thinking about the photographs. How do you view this sequential moment as a compelling photograph? I do think it’s great when you make a piece and you can just hit pause and have a great photograph. There will always be something beyond the frame that is not pictured and that’s exciting to me.
Q. I’m asking for the art theory/art historian readers who have turned the idea of the frame from a formalist reality into a socio-political issue.
ES: That’s something that’s never really intrigued me very much. Don’t understand why ideas like that matter. For me I certainly think about what makes a compelling image as well as an image that doesn’t give the whole game away. But I think part of making an image that doesn’t give the game away is one that doesn’t have all the information in it. That’s why the Steadicam is such a great tool – it allows you to really take advantage of the feeling that the next important moment is just beyond the frame and if you stick with the camera long enough it just might be revealed, or not.
Q. “Making 89 Seconds…” revealed that the actors were indeed engaging in dramatic dialogue to ground their actions. However in “89 Seconds at Alcazar” the speech was blurred to the point of incoherence. What advantage existed by obscuring this detail?
ES: Everything that they were saying they made up in improvisation. It was all about developing character as well as a psychological place, so as to achieve a certain tension. We needed a certain tension between the king and the queen, so the actors were in charge of having to figure something out through the use of language. But in the end, I didn’t want that since I thought it was unnecessary to have comprehensive words be available. Although there are a few words you might be able to pick out here and there, having people speak comprehendable English with a fake British accent would have been such a joke. We had no idea how they actually spoke in the Spanish court and there’s no good way to invent that. In this case, language was used as a support that I was able to strip away once the piece was built.
Q. How long did it take you to complete “89 Seconds…”?
ES: The idea came about when I saw the painting in the Prado in 2000. When I got back, I wrote a proposal and sent it out to a couple of foundations. They didn’t give me any money for it, so I dropped the idea due to the fact that it would have been impossible without any kind of funding. Three years later I got a NYSCA grant for a different piece at a time when I had a show deadline in England. I thought that “89 Seconds” would actually be do-able, so we started the pre-production in March of 2003. Then over the summer it went into post-production. From conception, it took four years, but from pre-production to opening at the Whitney it was exactly a year.
Q. When do you project “Raptus” to be complete?
ES: We’re shooting in May and in post over the summer. There’s a goal of fall 2005 for the premiere of “Raptus” in Berlin.
Q. You’re going to film that in front of the Pergamon frieze in Berlin?
ES: We have permission to shoot at the Pergamon Museum in both the alter room and in front of the Market Gates of Millet. We are also shooting at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. In Athens our locations are the Herodion Theatre and the modern Agora as well as a 1961 international style house by Valsamakis.
Q. How does your work attempt to reach out and generate catharsis within the viewer? Does it break down the Brechtian 4th Wall in doing so?
WS: We experimented with that. Sometimes the camera was visible which created tension. With respect to the “Las Meninas” piece, we were looking out at the audience who was watching us. As the painter, I looked out at the audience who we documented. The painter was actually imagining the tension that you see unfolding in the film. So there was tremendous pressure in which you’re not only acting with a capital ‘A’, but you’re also acting in front of a group of people.
AP: Eve had the camera on us all the time in which ultimately helped us forget about the 4th wall. But if someone ever says “you’re on camera” it is much more nerve wracking.
ES: I think we’re trying to break the wall in the way we play with the concept of cinema verité. Cinema verité is about presenting the narrative that you see in front of you as something that happened in life – something that is alive and unrepeatable. In video you never quite get the opportunity to break the Brechtian Wall like you can in theatre. As far as catharsis within the viewer is concerned, I wouldn’t know how one can ever be aware that they are definitely creating a connection with the viewer. You just don’t know. People will tell you once they’ve seen a piece, but you can’t prove you’re doing that. You can’t even really assume from your own reaction, because your reaction as the filmmaker is not to be trusted. But I am interested in breaking down the barrier between the imaginary narrative and the work that goes into creating that context.
It’s a discussion that we have a lot. If you break down the fiction too much, are you killing the magic? The curator in Houston didn’t want to show “Making 89 seconds…” at the same time that the piece was up, because she thought it undermined the magic. I’m also interested in changing the magic to some degree. For example, I might be in the new piece as a photographer, but I’m still directing the piece. Or, the choreographer may be in there as a runway ground signaler, but she is still giving directions. It’s a question of how much you want to put forth. I’m interested in what you’re saying about the Brechtian Wall. One could say it’s broken by “Making 89 seconds…” because you see all of the drywall and lights and gear. But I think there is a way to do that without having a narrative film separate from a “Making of” documentary. That’s what we’re trying to figure out now.
Q. Eve, your previous work has not been cathartic. What attracted you to communicate with viewers on an emotional level? Do you think that this is a bit romantic?
ES: “89 Seconds…” has more of the emotional experience of going to the movies. I think that “Ornithology” created an emotional response in viewers since some people got involved with it by going out on a ramp and then stayed out there on the platform. As a result they were in the piece that was being projected back into the gallery.
It was a different type of involvement, because you’re not really drawn into the pigeons as characters. Yet there’s something kind of awesome about seeing them a little bit like humans. But there’s a point when live-feed is never going to have the emotional content for the viewer to connect with that fictional film has. But I still think there’s something great about it and that it is possible to make live video a cathartic experience. I could watch people on surveillance forever. Making live video a cathartic experience is what I attempted to do in “How to tell the future form the past” at the Istanbul Biennale. I tried to create an emotional connection with the people in the video by juxtaposing them with fictional stories – so that the real people in the train station picked by the live-feed surveillance cameras actually became fictional characters because of the stories that appeared next to them. “How to tell the future…” is an example of the mix of cinema verité and fictional film that I keep trying to talk about. I don’t see this mix happening very often in video art. I’m seeing work that uses pure doc style shooting or the current strain of video art that employs visual art direction, or fantasy as in Barney’s work.
The problem for me is that Barney’s fantasy is so much his own, and I don’t have a fantasy of shitting my teeth out of my ass. That’s his fantasy since he can feel something for it but it’s not common enough for anyone to really attach to. Thus you can’t really sympathize with him. Attempting to attach to motion pictures like Barney’s is kind of futile. Its not the same experience as going to the movies. It is frustrating that we as humans are so attached to cathartic narrative – to the point that every other form pales in comparison.
But I have decided to accept the power of narrative instead of fight against it. It can be as simple as two people entering a room, they turn around and see someone else and leave again. That’s narrative. I’m interested in people having some kind of cinematic experience, and I think a lot of video artists don’t care about that. Take Patty Chang, for example, her work makes you a voyeur of her personal experience of putting eels in her shirt. It’s a hilarious and at the same time horrifying piece of work, but I wouldn’t call it cathartic. That work grows directly out of performance art that was done in the 60s and 70s – people didn’t give a damn about the audience experience – cathartic or otherwise.
Q. Are there any theorists or filmmakers who inspire your work?
ES: Theorists, not at all. Filmmakers, lots. I could give you a laundry list: Antonioni, Dennis Hopper’s early work, Robert Altman, Lars van Trier, Wim Wenders, Goddard, Mike Liegh. I also like Gary Hill’s early work. “Circular Breathing”, was one of the most amazing pieces I ever saw when it was first presented. I think Hill is great, but it seems like he’s run out of ideas. I think Bruce Nauman’s one of the most important visionaries of our time – tantamount to Beuys – he is in a way the American Joseph Beuys. But in general I look at more film than art and I’m much more interested in the history of film rather than the history of art.
