"In the end, these things are collaborations. I don’t
think of the people I work with as models or actors. They
are people who are willing to sacrifice their time for
me."
"I still think of myself very much as a sculptor or a painter.
The idea of a director seems too hierarchical. I can’t
relax into that at all."
"I try to make things with my hands and to impose
that kind of feeling and tactility onto my videos. Stop motion
gives me that luxury..."
Talk about what
it’s like bringing strangers into your work.
HERRING:
The hardest thing is to work
on a level of trust, especially with strangers. There is
a level of expectation that can be very hard to meet. The
premise is to make a video but that can mean a lot of different
things. Perhaps it sounds much more glamorous to some people
than it is—especially the videos that I make, which are
stop-motion. I repeat a lot of movement, and whatever we
end up doing, because I don’t know where it is going.
I try to take my cues from the personalities of these people.
So if I have two people whom I know in the studio, I can
circumvent that whole issue and go straight to having fun.
Ultimately, that’s where you want to go—to that place
where you enjoy it, where you’re not self-conscious,
where personalities come through. At some point you reach
a point of saturation where you’re so tired and exhausted
that the last little bit of guardedness falls away and something
really pure comes out. That’s what gives these videos
humanity. And that’s what I’m shooting for. All
the action—all the motion—is really just a decoy to get
to that.
In the end, these things are collaborations. I don’t
think of the people I work with as models or actors. They
are people who are willing to sacrifice their time for me.
Of course there is something in it for them, too: the experience
is intimate and unusual. But it’s the same for me.
Although I know more what to expect since I usually work
with strangers, there is still a whole new world that enters
my studio with whoever comes in. It’s very adventurous.
ART:21:
Are there times when its difficult
to work with other people?
HERRING:
It’s like walking a tightrope.
On one hand, I feel I have to be really selfish. If I sense
some potential somewhere I feel I have to go with it. I owe
it to everybody’s time spent together. Ultimately what
I want is a good video, a good piece of art. But at the same
time, I’m trying very hard to keep everybody entertained
and that’s hard sometimes.
I had a shot where I had almost forty people in the studio
and it just didn’t work. So I ended up working with
six or seven people, which made it really hard. There was
a lot of footage that I shot that never made it into the final
piece that I just did because I felt I had the obligation
to do something. It’s a balancing act and since I’m
not very scientific about anything I just have to go with
my feelings. If I see somebody really fidgety I try to engage
that person somehow.
ART:21:
How should people think of your
videos in relationship to your other work?
HERRING:
I look at my videos as a continuation
of my work in general. My work has always been very stripped
down. It’s always about generating something with a
very simple and accessible material, or with what’s
around me. And perhaps the more ‘operatic’ video
pieces were a reaction to my knit sculpture, which kept me
isolated for so long in the studio that the videos were a
way for me to be social and flamboyant and to change my mind
all the time. Because when I did the knit pieces, once I
committed myself to a piece I was locked into an idea and
the only thing that could really move was my mind. The early
video pieces were a way for me to express what was going
on in my mind. One of my first videos, "Exit," literally
starts out with me sitting in the chair that I usually knit
in and then it turns into this flight of fancy—certain fantasies
that I dreamt about while I was knitting.
ART:21:
What is your process for making
a work?
HERRING:
I tend to start out with a
lot of artifact because I find comfort in that. Then I slowly
move away from it. Once I reach a certain comfort level,
I end up with nothing because it’s the hardest thing
to gain something from. If you have nothing around you and
you can make something out of it, that’s hard but also
very satisfying—because it’s ultimately very
uplifting. But you have to work for that. So I usually start
with something
and then strip it away to nothing, just trying to generate
something out of the air. I try to rid myself of excess.
It’s the same with everything that I do. I just like
when things are really boiled down to an essence—because
to me there is so much more truth in it.
ART:21:
Are there ever conflicts in
these collaborations?
HERRING:
I think sometimes people might
be frustrated when they’re not used in the way they
imagine themselves. When I allow people to do in front of
the camera whatever they want to do, it becomes so complex,
eccentric, and playful. I feel when I impose my ideas it actually
becomes much less so.
People seem to have a pretty clear idea of themselves, of
how they want to be portrayed in front of a camera, which
is a very interesting relationship between people and cameras.
It might also be a generational thing. Younger people who
grew up with TV, video cameras, and reality television, have
a very clear idea of how they want to be shown in front of
a camera whereas slightly older people might not. So that’s
where the frustration level might come in. If somebody is
not portrayed in the light that they expect, then it might
be frustrating.
On the other hand, the videos that I end up editing and showing
tend to be good enough. I think everybody seems to be very
happy, because they always come back—that’s
the other thing. The video that they’re shooting here
today is actually an example of two people who have been
in quite
a few of my videos now.
ART:21:
Describe some of the materials
you use.
HERRING:
At this point nothing—nothing
at all. I used to use ten, fifteen pieces of cardboard that
I would recycle. It almost became a challenge to find new
usages in those ten sheets of cardboard, to see how much
I could get out of them. But at this point I’m really
just trying to rely on people’s personalities and also
my, hopefully, sharpened instinct to deal with people. I
think that’s the other thing that I’m trying
to cultivate, how to deal with people successfully.
ART:21:
How do you see your role in
creating the videos?
HERRING:
I still think of myself very
much as a sculptor or a painter. The idea of a director seems
too hierarchical. I can’t relax into that at all. And
maybe that’s also why these things become very collaborative.
While I call the shots, I do it under disguise. I don’t
really know what my role is and perhaps that’s a good
thing because it keeps me fluid and changing—behind the
camera or in front. It leaves doors open. I don’t like
roles, actually.
ART:21:
Talk about how you arrived at
stop motion as a way to structure your videos.
HERRING:
In formal terms, it was logical
because my knit work was incremental, and built from little
moments that in a linear way added up to a larger picture.
Film is very similar. Stop motion communicates that even
more clearly because you have one moment that is still and
then another moment. So it’s almost like one still
life that’s bunched together with another still life
and so on. In between I can rearrange and manipulate. Since
I work on a shoestring budget I deliberately try to keep
things as simple and manageable as possible. I’m not
interested in technology and all that, I mean I am, but not
for my work. I try to make things with my hands and to impose
that kind of feeling and tactility onto my videos. Stop motion
gives me that luxury because I can build a still life of
sorts and then change it. I made a little document by photographing
it and by filming it and then in the film it sort of adds
up to a larger picture.
