"I think a lot of the very abstract quality of my work—and
the literal quality of it—is always dealing with a
state or a place or an edge, a border, a threshold, a place
that's in between."
"So to sometimes invert the location of one sense to
another part of the body, those kind of dislocations or
slippages is one way then we come to see something differently.
That's been a way that my work has actually grown and moved
at different times."
"I don't know if it's like soul to soul, or if that
would be a word I would use, but I would say it's about
revealing something that's not the surface stuff that we
usually allow out to the world."
We were talking earlier about
the possible connections between growing up and living here
in the Midwest, in Ohio, and an aspect of your work that deals
with being simultaneously at the perimeter of something and
at the middle of what's going on. Could you talk a little
more about this?
HAMILTON:
I think a lot of the very abstract
quality of my work - and the literal quality of it - is always
dealing with a state or a place or an edge, a border, a threshold,
a place that's in between. And I think that's the place that
I occupy within my work and that perhaps the work occupies.
And so it's interesting to me to think about needing to work
at that edge, but then actually living physically in the middle.
I had never really even thought about it that way. It's just
like if you think about the hair in the project at the Dia
Center or the way the pink powder sort of leeched and sought
the perimeter in Venice. Any number of pieces - it's always
the skin of the architecture,
or the material is always seeking the border, remarking upon
the border. And that's not just a physical one; it's also
the way that we think about things, how we establish the habits
of categories and you know all that, those classical categories
we inherit out of anthropology: the raw and the cooked, the
container and the contained, what is inside and what's outside.
You know, we as bodies inherit ourselves as both containers
and as being contained. And the paradoxical structure of my
work is often to engage that place of in-betweenness; to engage
it, not to make a picture of it, not to make it its subject,
but actually to try to work at that place in a way that demonstrates
it, that's demonstrative, that occupies it. You know it's
very abstract,
but concrete.
ART:21:
Could you talk about the notion
of the perimeter and the center in relation to the work you've
been doing with pinhole cameras?
HAMILTON:
Well, there are a couple of threads
of work that come together in the pinhole. One of them (is
that) I can look at where my work took the shift from being
a total surround, so that when you walked in you're physically
immersed in whatever the material piece is. And I think it's
actually this other stuff - the mouth as being the room. And
I first started doing it when I was actually taking self-portraits.
I was wanting to capture that moment of, I guess, unselfconsciousness,
when you're so absorbed or immersed in an activity, whether
it's reading making something that might have some rhythms,
so that it becomes an immersive experience. And what do we
look like when we're not concerned with actually how we look
or what we project? And so I started thinking about when you're
really immersed in what you're doing, often your mouth falls
open, and you know you're never supposed to have your mouth
open in public. Like you don't see people standing around,
you know...(LAUGHS). It's a vulnerable position; it's a place
where you've relaxed and you've let yourself be open and vulnerable
in a way. And so I started thinking, "Well, I want to take
my own picture in that situation."
So I devised, over a number of years (it was sort of something
that was in the background for a long time) a way of making
pinhole cameras, which is very simple, but to make my mouth
the aperture.
I don't go into the darkroom and load the film in my mouth
and then come out and do it, so it is actually still an object
that's inserted into my mouth - but to have the orifice of
the place where speech exits the body actually become the
eye, and to just play with that. Then it was in the process
of actually taking those pictures, seeing what they looked
like, seeing in fact how the shape of the mouth is very much
the same shape as the eye, and seeing myself become almost
like the pupil within. The image of my head becomes almost
like the pupil in the middle of the mouth, which is eye-shaped.
Then, through another set of "what if" questions, I started
thinking that it would be very interesting to turn and not
face oneself, but to face another person. And so, with Chris
here in the office, and Brenda, we started trying it, and
in the act of actually doing it, it became very interesting
to register this time of standing quite still, face to face
with another person, and to make oneself vulnerable, in fact,
to another person.
In some ways, I think of my earliest work, the very first
piece I did when I was in graduate school: I had taken a generic,
gray man's suit and covered it in toothpicks, so that the
whole hide, the whole skin of cloth, became like a hide. It
looked like a porcupine. And then I stood very still wearing
this, which was how it came to be presented. It wasn't until
I was actually standing there in a social situation where
I was on display as an object, that I realized how interested
I was in that live time of standing very quietly, and that,
in some ways, you put yourself on display. And maybe it's
a way of making yourself vulnerable, but there's another kind
of strength that comes forward in allowing yourself to occupy
that position. So that was the last piece that I did where
I actually stood and faced the audience. And now, what is
it, fifteen years later, after doing a lot of works in which
there's been a performative
element or I've been live as part of the projects, but always,
in a way, you came from the back to join the activity of the
person, or you entered from the side. I'm now turning in the
work and standing face to face, as I did in that first project,
which is an interesting thing to me, to then wonder where
that will go.
I think the other thing about it is that I'm in the middle
of, or the beginning of, working on this project with Meredith
Monk, and I have long loved her work. And I think there's
an aspect of my work which is wanting to give voice. So how
do I literally make the place where song, as well as all other
words, exit the body become my voice by becoming my eye? So
to sometimes invert the location of one sense to another part
of the body, those kind of dislocations or slippages is one
way then we come to see something differently. That's been
a way that my work has actually grown and moved at different
times.
ART:21:
How do you feel experiencing
the other person in this way - taking their portrait with
your mouth?
HAMILTON:
Well it's very interesting. I
think it's not so different than other experiences when I
work with a lot of people, or working with a crew. You know
when you're making anything, even if you don't sit and get
someone's sort of autobiographical story, very early, very
quickly, when you work side by side with someone, you have
a sense of their presence and their weight in the world. And
a sensibility that is not something that you can sort of name,
but is the quality of someone, how they occupy space. And...you
know, we have all sorts of words, we say, "Oh, they have a
such-and-such presence, or such-and-such presence."
And I think that I was very aware and really enjoyed that
part of my earlier work, when I worked with very large groups
of people, and often a lot of volunteers that would come and
work these long dedicated hours for an intense period of time.
And how quickly in those moments you come to know someone,
even if you know nothing of their story. I think taking the
has some of that same quality. Obviously, if I work with Chris
or someone in the studio
who I work with all the time, we already have a relationship.
But, even in situations where it's more or less a stranger,
that being willing to stand face to face or to turn and and
allow that kind of odd, formal, but very intimate act - that
it's about opening. I mean, I don't know if it's like soul
to soul, or if that would be a word I would use, but I would
say it's about revealing something that's not the surface
stuff that we usually allow out to the world.
I think some of the pictures, some of the images that come
out of this that I'm most interested in, have a sense of registering
something other than someone's physical features. And yet
when I stand, especially those very long exposures, and sometimes
have that exchange, you can have what feels like a very profound,
oddly profound, moment, and yet you know there's nothing of
that on the film. So you know it's kind of a bit of magic,
I suppose - what you actually end up holding in your hand
as a result of that.
