{"id":4454,"date":"2012-04-16T16:47:23","date_gmt":"2012-04-16T16:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.saic.edu\/cate\/?p=4454"},"modified":"2025-01-10T10:05:41","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T16:05:41","slug":"an-interview-with-laure-prouvost-by-robyn-farrell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/2012\/04\/16\/an-interview-with-laure-prouvost-by-robyn-farrell\/","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with Laure Prouvost by Robyn Farrell"},"content":{"rendered":"

March 1, 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

Robyn Farrell in conversation with Laure Prouvost on the occasion of the screening \u201cDon\u2019t Look Up,\u201d a <\/em>program of <\/em>brilliantly anarchic videos by Laure Prouvost.<\/em><\/p>\n

Robyn Farrell:<\/strong> Your work is highly sensorial: color, sight, and sound all feature prominently, as well as the desire to touch and taste. How does the medium of film inform this aspect of your work?<\/p>\n

Laure Prouvost:<\/strong> These words you are reading are smelly. They stink, they make the room smell.<\/p>\n

The power of suggestion and imagination is something I love to play with and with film, I love this medium, as it triggers so many senses, and can provoke many senses as it requires a lot from the viewer. I love the idea that a film stinks or is soft like a cloud.<\/p>\n

Ideally a film would smell of honey and metal and green motorbike.<\/p>\n

Robyn Farrell:<\/strong> Discordant images, text and sound punctuate many of your films. Can you talk about the role of translation or mis-translation as a means to propel the direction of your work?<\/p>\n

Laure Prouvost:<\/strong> Ideally these words would be translated into an image, then into a sound, then into movement, and back to words.<\/p>\n

Translation is something that I have always worked with: translation of a video to a colour to a painting to a performance to another language. A mis-translation from language to language; this constantly evolving, changing, mis-understanding, mis-communication, mis-making a point and mis-leading you, not reaching an answer, but trying to propose a different interpretation and different views.<\/p>\n

Losing control, it\u2019s something I am constantly aware of: different interpretations of the work, the work changing constantly, for each person has a different reaction to it, its change with time, with places, with cultures. It\u2019s all about in-between states.<\/p>\n

Robyn Farrell:<\/strong> In\u00a0Monolog<\/em> (2009), you play with the director\/audience relationship using your hand or text as an apparatus to control the viewer’s attention.\u00a0Do you see yourself as a director? Or is this a mode to create self-consciousness in your art?<\/p>\n

Laure Prouvost:<\/strong> Ideally these words would talk directly to you, and you would read the word “you” as “I”.<\/p>\n

Yes I tend to be quite obviously directing my audience, pointing at things, asking the audience to listen, but here I play more with the ridiculousness of it, as it is purely images projected on a wall or a screen.<\/p>\n

Robyn Farrell:<\/strong> Many of your videos do not follow a conventional narrative, but in works like\u00a0Stong Sory 6<\/em> (2008) you act as storyteller.\u00a0 How do you negotiate these differing structures?<\/p>\n

Laure Prouvost:<\/strong> Ideally these words would carry you somewhere else on a big adventure around the country side through cities and late at night watching the stars in a warm evening, then a car would pick you up to drive fast and things would endlessly happen, something else would always happen.<\/p>\n

Robyn Farrell:<\/strong> You included\u00a0Speak<\/em> (1962) by John Latham in CATE’s program and exhibited\u00a0all these things think link <\/em>at Flat Time House, the late artist’s home and studio.\u00a0How has Latham influenced your body of work?<\/p>\n

Laure Prouvost:<\/strong> Ideally John Latham would be my conceptual grandfather.<\/p>\n

Robyn Farrell:<\/strong> Aside from live action, how does your performance work differ from your video practice?<\/p>\n

Laure Prouvost:<\/strong> Ideally these words would not be words but they would sing to you, and not be a video, but sung to you by an opera singer here now as you read this text on the computer.<\/p>\n

Robyn Farrell:<\/strong> Tank.tv is a significant organization for artists working with the moving image. Could speak about your role as former director and the impetus for the museum?<\/p>\n

Laure Prouvost:<\/strong> Ideally I would say a few words that could let you know how many great works are shown there and how it is a great place to introduce someone to work not ideally as installation or in a screening but for discovering work and being introduced to artist works.<\/p>\n

The Internet is an interesting platform to discover things, to get a sense of someone\u2019s work. It has a different purpose than seeing a projection or installation, and sometimes when a work is made just for that purpose it’s interesting.<\/p>\n

Moving images, because it\u2019s moving images one after the next, its not real stuff. It\u2019s interpretation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

March 1, 2012 Robyn Farrell in conversation with Laure Prouvost on the occasion of the screening \u201cDon\u2019t Look Up,\u201d a program of brilliantly anarchic videos by Laure Prouvost. Robyn Farrell: Your work is highly sensorial: color, sight, and sound all feature prominently, as well as the desire to touch and taste. How does the medium […]<\/p>\n

Read More… from An Interview with Laure Prouvost by Robyn Farrell<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[287,871],"class_list":["post-4454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-interviews","tag-laure-prouvost"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4454"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9967,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4454\/revisions\/9967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}