"My mother likes to say that she always encouraged
us to travel. She had this Trinidadian expression that we
come from behind God’s back—that our island is
so small that not even God recognizes it."
"I call the piece "Touch" because it is about
that moment or that desire to walk on the horizon, which
is obviously an impossibility and only an illusion that
can be accomplished through the video camera."
"...I thought I could make a rope from materials of
my life and walk it like a lifeline. So it’s kind of
funny that I ended up walking the horizon that I could see
from my bedroom."
"There is a tradition, of course, of depicting the
landscape or the seascape, but there is also a tradition
of the figure in the landscape."
"I sort of backed into performance. It wasn't something
that I intended to do. I was doing work that was about process,
about the meaning of the making, trying to have a love-hate
relationship with the object."
"The video is like the wire. It creates one singular
view which allows me to rest on the horizon with the wire."
"I certainly don’t choose the story first, but
my interests take me to the story I think. And then I research,
I read, and then that sort of influences the creative process
at a later date."
Can you tell me about your piece
"Touch"? Where did the idea come from for this work?
ANTONI:
While making "Moor"—I had the idea that it would be interesting for me to walk
on a rope. What I did is I called Big Apple Circus and I said
to them, "Can you lead me to someone who could teach
me to tightrope?" And I got a few numbers and I called
up a fellow named Kevin O’Keefe. And when I got him on
the phone I said "Do you think I can learn to tightrope?"
And he said to me, "Oh yeah, walking on the wire is just
like walking meditation." And at that point I knew I’d
hit the right person because I was learning to meditate at
the time. And so I bought a portable tightrope and we set
it up in my studio and he came once a week to teach me to
walk. And I would practice for about an hour a day and it
was an incredible process to learn to walk on a wire. It was
almost like learning to walk again.
So I practiced tightroping for about an hour a day and after
about a week I started to feel like I’m now getting my
balance. And as I was walking I started to notice that it
wasn’t that I was getting more balanced, but that I was
getting more comfortable with being out of balance. I would
let the pendulum swing a little bit further and rather than
getting nervous and overcompensating by leaning too much to
one side I could compensate just enough. And I thought, I
wish I could do that in my life when things are getting out
of balance. You know when you have a hard day and one bad
thing happens after another? I sort of learned that I could
just breathe in and sort of set myself back up onto the rope.
The other thing that was really fascinating is I started to
learn the bottom of my feet in a way that I had never learned
before. If the wire is just a millimeter to one side or the
other I can feel it in my arms. I started to learn all kinds
of things about the skeletal structure. About my sternum and
my sacrum and how to keep them in balance. It was quite a
beautiful process, learning to walk on the rope.
I had several ideas of where I was going to take that in terms
of my artwork. After going down many different avenues I decided
to make this work "Touch." And what I did is I went
home to the Bahamas, to the beach that was directly in front
of the house that I grew up in. And I had a neighbor who is
the head of sanitation services of Freeport, Grand Bahama.
And he brought two tractors and we hooked up the wire to the
backhoes, so that we can use the shovel to go up and down,
to create that wire to settle right on the horizon. We dug
a hole for the cameraperson, my assistant Meg, so she would
be low enough to line the camera up. So that when I walked
I would just sort of touch the horizon. And I guess the idea
came from thinking about what the horizon means to us.
My mother likes to say that she always encouraged us to travel.
She had this Trinidadian expression that we come from behind
God’s back—that our island is so small that not
even God recognizes it. So there was always this idea that
you had to go out and see the world. And for me the horizon
was out there. It’s a very hopeful image; it’s about
the future, about the imagination. And so for me to walk in
this place seemed very appropriate... It made sense for me
to go back to this horizon, this ocean that I had looked at
my whole life.
I realized that although I probably could have manipulated
the video as I was walking all the time on the horizon, I
thought it would have much more tension if I could walk along
the rope and as it dipped that—just for a moment—I would touch the horizon, which would really talk about the
incredible struggle to get to that place of the imagination.
I encountered a lot of struggles along the way with wind and
the moving ocean and so forth, so it was very hard for me
to balance on the wire. Which I think creates a kind of tension
in the video which served me well. And then every so often
in the video the rope fades away. I wanted to leave the viewer
alone with the horizon, to sort of be in their thoughts, to
spend some time with the sound of the sea and think about
what the horizon represented to them.
I call the piece "Touch" because it is about that
moment or that desire to walk on the horizon, which is obviously
an impossibility and only an illusion that can be accomplished
through the video camera. And you can see I’m hardly
balancing there in that place of my desire. Thinking about
what the horizon means to us, it’s sort of a place of
contemplation... But for me, I’m interested in it as
a place that doesn’t really exist. That if we were to
try to go to that place, the horizon would just recede further.
When I was learning to make the rope for "Moor",
I was reading a book written by Ram Das. The book is called
"Be Here Now." And I was sort of looking through
the book and it has these great line drawings. And I turned
to a page that had a line drawing of somebody walking on a
tightrope and I thought, Wow, I could be walking on this rope
that I’m making. And that was where the idea originally
came from. And it went through many manifestations of me actually
trying to make the rope, which still may be a piece, but this
turned out to be one of the incarnations. And because "Moor"
is made out of materials from my friends, I thought I could
make a rope from materials of my life and walk it like a lifeline.
So it’s kind of funny that I ended up walking the horizon
that I could see from my bedroom. In a way I am walking my
lifeline. My mom said to me, "Well of course you want
to walk the horizon, this is the thing you probably looked
at the most in your life." This is the image that I know
so well.
ART:21:
I had no idea that the location
has such meaning for you.
ANTONI:
It made sense for me to go back
to this horizon, this ocean that I had looked at my whole
life. Balance is an interesting thing because I think it’s
a state we’re always striving for but it’s an impossible
state. And I think this piece speaks to that very much. And
maybe the piece is more about you feeling comfortable with
being out of balance. And that’s why just I named the
piece "Touch" because there’s only just one
moment when everything comes together in the video. So it’s
kind of a crazy thing to think you can walk on a wire, it’s
unreasonable. It’s about the least amount of thing that
you can walk on, so it’s really about walking on air.
Balance is brought up in so many issues. I think for all of
us, to think about our lives and our need to be in control
and be in balance.
ART:21:
Were you also interested in a
kind of romanticism with the image?
ANTONI:
Yes, I was interested in the
romanticism of the landscape, of the seascape. It’s a
funny thing because I kind of come from an idyllic place.
This place is every day to me in a certain way. But I know
when other people see it, they look at this incredible ocean.
And I think it sort of plays with our romanticism of the seascape,
but also that I’m like a giant walking on the horizon.
You know that when I appear....
There is a tradition, of course, of depicting the landscape
or the seascape, but there is also a tradition of the figure
in the landscape. There’s a tradition in art history
of the figure in the landscape. And I haven’t done much
painting but I know that it’s very difficult to depict
the figure in the landscape because the landscape is so vast
and the figure seems dwarfed in this vast landscape. And especially
when you think of the horizon, which is like one of the most
extensive images one can think of and open. So I guess this
is putting the figure in a place that is sort of unexpected.
I feel like a giant walking on the horizon.
ART:21:
How did you decide what to wear
in the performance
for the video?
ANTONI:
Oh, well, I couldn’t figure
out what I should wear. I didn’t want it to be too much
about the circus. And I thought about wearing a dress or something
that one wouldn’t expect someone to be wearing when they’re
walking on a tightrope. And it’s always complicated because
so much meaning is put into that. And it was my mother who
said, "Oh, you should be wearing the same color of the
sky." So I thought that that made a lot of sense to me
and I think that it worked quite well. That I sort of fade
into the sky at points.
The whole idea to walk on a tightwire is to be in the sky.
We know that from Philippe Petit, who walked between the World
Trade Center, just the idea of being up there in the clouds
is so extraordinary and such an image of freedom. Some of
the things that the tightwire conjures up for us is this ability
to float or to go beyond our physical reality. To fight gravity,
really, which in a way we’re doing with every step. I
mean, if you look at a little baby learning to walk you see
how they’re losing their balance. But as we walk, we’re
losing our balance and gaining it with every step. And the
tightrope just makes that show more.
ART:21:
How did you get into doing public
performances?
ANTONI:
I sort of backed into performance.
It wasn't something that I intended to do. I was doing work
that was about process, about the meaning of the making, trying
to have a love-hate relationship with the object. I always
feel safer if I can bring the viewer back to the making of
it. I try to do that in a lot of different ways, by residue,
by touch, by processes that are basic to all of our lives…that
people might relate to in terms of…everyday activities
– bathing, eating, etc. But there are times when the
best way to keep people in that place, which for me is so
alive and pertinent, is to show the process or the making.
It’s always difficult to put myself there. It’s
a vulnerable place. It’s very powerful. I think that
the thing that is most dangerous about it is that I move the
energy off the object and I try to put it on the process.
But somehow it gets stuck onto me. This…is a tricky place
for me, too. That’s why I so often only work with the
residue, and I’m sort of in the viewers’ imagination
when they look at the object. When I show myself doing these
things, I know it will be riveting for the viewer but I want
it to be riveting for the right reasons, or for the reasons
I’m interested in.
The thing about performance is it's very direct. There's no
mediation of the object in between me and the viewer. And
in a way that's incredibly satisfying because all I want to
do is get close to the viewer. But it's important in the process
of looking at art that we reflect. That there's a kind of
self-consciousness that goes on... In my work there's something
very immediate about my processes, something almost dramatic
about the kind of things that I do. And a lot of times the
removal, in the object, gives space for the viewer to not
be carried away in these sort of extreme acts that I do. And
so that's why I have to be very careful in the performative
work, because sometimes I can lose the viewer.
ART:21:
How do you lose the viewer?
ANTONI:
I want to speak to so much for
the viewer. It really goes back to this is idea that it's
about the viewer having a relationship with the object, or
the process, but not with me. In fact, what I really want
is for the viewer to bring the information of their life to
the object and to take that information back to their life.
And I have to be careful not to get in the way of that.
ART:21:
So if you do a performance, you
fear that they identify with you the performer?
ANTONI:
Well, I think you see it in
all of my work in the sense that I go to the personal but
it's not about me. It's about the mother. Even though I'm
using my mother, you know? I really want it to be about the
viewer's mother, all of our mothers. In a sense, I feel like
I can be the most true if I go to my life and my experience.
But in the translation into the work I need to create space.
I don't know how else to put it.
ART:21:
So, for example, in "Touch"
the tightrope walking takes place on video as opposed to a
performance with an audience?
ANTONI:
What I'm doing with "Touch"
in the video piece is that I started with this idea of why
would we ever want to walk on a wire that's half an inch wide?
It's crazy. A crazy idea. What is that desire? And I think
that when we look at the tightwire walker we think, "They're
walking on air." And that idea just sort of triggers
the imagination. It's like it's the impossible. So then I
thought, okay, if I could walk on air, if I could walk anywhere,
where would I walk? And that brought me to the horizon line.
It's another impossible place to walk. It's not a place. It
doesn't exist.
The video allows me to create the illusion. The video is like
the wire. It creates one singular view which allows me to
rest on the horizon with the wire. Of course in the video
I only rest there for a moment. And I couldhave had a blue
screen and manipulated the whole thing and seamlessly walked
the horizon, but that didn't seem so interesting to me. For
me it was really about—what is that desire? And to
just be able to balance there for a second was a way of bringing
you to the point of that desire. And then taking it away.
It allows all of us to think about where that comes from.
I'm not sure what this new sculpture I'm making with the hemp
and the tightrope will be exactly, but it will be about the
fall. It will be about the impossibility of that illusion.
And so in a way they're going to be opposite pieces. The way
it will function is that it's sort of like making a fairy
tale or a myth or something. There will be some people, maybe.
I'm not even sure if it will be a performance. But if it is
a performance, there will be some people who experience the
reality of my fall. And then I hope my fall will transform
the object. So whoever walks into the exhibition will be able
to unravel the entire story.
Then the people who experience the performance will become
the storytellers. I thought about this because some of the
artists that I love the most, or some of the artworks that
I love the most, are artworks that I never experienced. They
were performances that were stories told to me by my professors
at school or by other artists. I suspect that they're a little
bit like a fairy tale or a myth because I think that they're
retold according to our lives and what we're interested in
at the time. And so that story evolves and changes according
to our needs. That whole oral tradition is so interesting
to me. I don't know, but that's how I suspect it will function.
ART:21:
It's interesting that you mention
oral traditions, because the more I think about your work,
the more frequently it seems to go back to something that
comes out of myth?
ANTONI:
Yes, I think you're right. We
could say that this piece is going to tell the Icaris story.
But you know there are also many myths that have to do with
spinning. So it's sort of a combination of different stories.
There's this one story that I like very much, of the three
fates. And one spins and that's birth; one weaves and that's
life; and one cuts and that's death. After I did "Slumber"
the first time I wove for about month. And then I had a dream
that night that I came back to the show and someone had cut
the blanket away from the loom. And I thought, oh, this is
the story of the three fates. And it sort of seems so telling
about my struggle with letting go of the peaks. That was like
the first night I slept away from the work. So it was kind
of a separation dream I think.
I certainly don’t choose the story first, but my interests
take me to the story I think. And then I research, I read,
and then that sort of influences the creative process at a
later date. But it's never that I want to illustrate a story
through a sculpture. But more that somehow these stories are
in all of us. So they just come out. There's something about
my process that makes them come out. These stories are there
to explain our lives to us, I think. And that's all I'm trying
to do—is understand my life by making these objects.
So it's not surprising.
