What was the starting point for this film?
In the series 'Hoe vertel ik het mijn ouders' ('How do I tell my parents'), we make use of the tension between artists and their parents. In their chosen surroundings - with friends, fellow artists, curators, gallery owners and journalists - artists are well prepared and comfortable in explaining their art. They have enjoyed the kind of artistic education that has made them into essayists of their own work; the language they have learned to speak is one of the art world and will not always help them connect with their father or mother.
As a visual artist why have you, for example, spent three years systematically removing the birds from the Hitchcock film 'The Birds"? And is beer brewing really an artwork that should be in a gallery?
Last year I walked through hallways of the Rietveld Academy as a visitor. The building, with its hundreds of work places, was transformed from a school into a gallery for an open-day weekend. My attention was drawn towards the work of a student in the Autonomous Art department. In the centre of her work space, the undergraduate artist had placed an object of human height, hidden by a white sheet. From the corner of the room a CD played a whispering text in a strange language. As I entered I chanced upon a conversation between the Bjork-like artist and an older man and woman, clearly her parents, who were of course very curious to see what their daughter had been working on for these two years. The father had his hands behind his back, fiddling with his car keys, while the girl talked about " in one way, art is becoming only distant images...., so therefore the idea of wrapping it up......., ehm..., can still satisfy the hunger of the consumer..., you understand".
It cost her considerable effort to get her words out. Her mother nodded eagerly and added a "beautiful" and "interesting" now and again. She was a little red faced from her efforts at empathy. The girl was called away by a fellow student, and the parents were left alone in the room. The father sighed. The mother sighed in response. "She's been really busy with this piece for two years so why can't we see it?”, whispered the father. "I find it quite exciting, this idea, you know?". The mother tilted her head to look at it from another angle. "There could just as well be anything under this sheet. Not something that you worked on for two years. Nobody would know." "Please let her be", hissed the mother. "We don't have to understand it."
We've been active as film makers, writers, graphic designers and visual artists for 10 years now and still we find ourselves on the same level as this girl on Open Day: we still don't find it easy to explain our work to our parents and why we do things like we do. Furthermore, when we all visit our parents our work is not discussed. Just like we don't talk about politics, as a discussion will end in an argument. Our mothers don't like that: "Let's keep things civilised, please."
What was the plan when you began the series?
In our series we invited nine artists into the studio to explain their work to their parents in front of the camera. The starting point for the casting was simple; the work of the artist must be hermetic and abstract in character. During the research there must be a tangible imbalance in the relationship between the artist and the parent.
Instead of transporting a camera, lights and an artwork to a parental home somewhere in Brabant we decided to invite the artist and parents to the anonymity of a studio. In the studio we built a grey anonymous set that gave the subtle references to a kitchen table setting - which conformed to our idea of the ideal location for talking to your parents.
As film makers, with such a restricted format ('explaining art to parents'), it seemed to us that it would be easy to make the wrong choices in a documentary setting such as the parental home. It would be all too easy to zoom in on the ugly porcelain clown on the window sill or the knitted lace Vermeer milk-maid. Or look at the depressing attempts at painting from the house-proud parent themselves! And we haven't even talked about the tasteless furniture and the wood panelling on the wall! These images would make it all too easy to convey that these parents will never understand what their son or daughter is doing. You won't believe the differences between them. Ha Ha! How we laughed at the parents and their bad taste. That was exactly why we had no desire to film things this way.
We wanted the studio to be a kind of 0-0 setting, an anonymous area where the chief concern would be language. For this reason we also chose to give the artwork that the artist would talk about as little context as possible. A normal portrait of an artist could have been made quickly in the workshop, followed by a short camera movement to paint spatters on the floor as the artist makes a great effort to share his most lofty and soul-stirring aspirations. Put some arty music underneath and the portrayal of the artist is complete.
We wanted the artist to bring their work to the studio (photo, installation, video, beer bottle, etc), but that only the back of the artwork would be shown to the camera. In this way the viewer will concentrate more on the language of the artist and will create their own image of the artist's work.
Do you have any anecdotes about the making of the film?
There is something about the set where the artist and parents sit that is not visible to the naked eye: the chair where the artist sits is a few centimetres shorter than that of the parent. We did this on purpose in order that visually the artist seems lower than the parent and to subconsciously bring out the relationship between parent and child.