Genevieve Piko Video Artist, Genevieve Piko, discusses the ‘painterly beauty within the glitch’ in her process of editing found footage with emerging curator, Aimee Board. Her video installation, Painting a Waterfall, is currently on display at Rubicon ARI in North Melbourne from 23 March - 9 April. Your video installation, Painting a Waterfall, appropriates footage from a 1950’s interior and juxtaposed with a roaring waterfall. Can you explain the impetus for this work and the messages/concepts you wish to convey to the viewer. Most of my work starts with a lot of experimentation and there’s a lot of chance and playing through the editing process that things come about. So with this, I was really wanting to explore putting appropriated footage with footage I had filmed and combining them in different way, a very material way, is how it starts and then finding it So process driven, would you say?.. Yeah, absolutely and just reacting to what is in the frame, going back and forth, and then through that, general things spill out. Interior still from Painting a Waterfall 2015
With this work, it feels very psychological to me, there’s lots in there with nostalgia and time and gender. I feel like it’s quite open and there’s quite a lot of different things in there and I like that. So it’s an open narrative and not at all imposing? Yes Your broader comment regarding gender roles is certainly at play in this work and quite a strong reference… yes, especially using a 1950s housewife - such an archetype, but that’s what I like, playing with those archetypes and using the found footage and twisting it a bit or just re-contextualising and it can make you question things a bit so yeah, it’s such a domestic setting and she’s painting the room but in this new context she’s fortifying and building and protecting herself.
I read it as though she’s retracting the wallpaper and trying to break free of her role in the household.. and then there is the fact that she does disappear. Was she successful or was she overcome by the waterfall?.. and that question is open to interpretation. Whether you think she’s succeeded and she’s fine or if she was swallowed up – we’re not quite sure and then it loops and she’s back and doing it again. In a way do we do that each day?.. Exactly, are you just redoing the same thing every time or are you learning? I like that we’re not quite sure where it’s sitting. You describe your approach as a ‘painterly attitude to the digital’ and an ‘embracing of the glitch’. Can you elaborate on these key ideas in your
always has to do this, it’s kind of like Sisyphus where she keeps doing it again and again. Can you elaborate on Sisyphus more? The Greek story of a man forever pushing a boulder up a hill and it rolls back down, and he has to go push it back up and it rolls back down and he’s doomed to repeat that for his entire life. So with trauma, I find it interesting – is she acknowledging the threat or is she hiding from it, there’s lots of questions in there. It’s not really a set thing.
Video Still from Beneath the Archway 2015
work? Where does the idea of a ‘painterly attitude’ to the digital come from? I had come across this the past year. I’d done collage in the past and I came from sculpting as well and then started video in my second year of Uni. I’d never thought of doing it before but with the materiality side, digital often has to be crisp and high res or that’s what we expect digital art is and that’s fine, but I think there is beauty in that glitch. I think it’s funny that with analogue, you call it ‘grain’ and it’s considered very authentic and it’s textural but for digital it’s called ‘noise’ and that’s a bad thing and I think that’s interesting. I like to challenge that, why does the fact that it’s pixelated mean it’s a bad? For me the pixilation sort of abstracts the image a bit and it becomes painterly with these jagged cut-outs that I’ve used. Like for this work, the Chroma Key tool I’ve used to cut-out the colour of the paint that she’s painting, makes a sort of jagged edge and I feel like that’s very painterly and gestural and I don’t see that it negatively impacts the work. I think that the glitch is a good thing and isn’t explored very much. Let’s embrace it and go with it. Analogue vs digital is interesting.. Yeah and the idea that they have to be opposed when they are just different. I come across a lot of people who are like ‘is that going to be higher resolution?’ I’m like ‘No, I think you’re
missing the point here’. But it kind of made me think a lot about when photography started people were like, what’s the point of painting if they can do a hyper-realistic photograph? That idea that things have to be opposing is limiting, when they can just be different and still have similarities. A theme throughout your work is the appropriation of footage to explore ideas of memory, time and trauma. How does your work, Paint a Waterfall, reflect these ideas? Memory and time are fairly clear in terms of your work process, however trauma is this linked in with something a bit deeper and more personal? In this work, there is that threat of the waterfall. It’s so large and so tightly cropped and big and even though it’s pixelated, you can still sense what it is and that roaring sound, so that’s quite intimidating, but she doesn’t seem phased and I like that I’m not sure if she is…because I’ve reversed the footage you don’t know if she’s letting it in or she’s trying to protect herself from it. And the wall?..yeah, that painting of the wall…is that referencing the idea that we have a wall or hard shell around us? ..and the fact that the waterfall is spilling over the sides, so is that wall doing anything or is just for ourselves to feel better, like we’re doing something… is she successful if she’s looping and
In what way does your practice explore the idea of decay and fragmentation? There’s a few ways. Digital decay is like a decomposition, and through it I am making new things. I think it’s an interesting cycle, things can deteriorate but that doesn’t really mean an end. It allows new things to come out that couldn’t before. And fragmentation, there’s a few different ways – often in my work it’s physically fragmented where you’ll just see sections of fragmented bodies and moments. I love taking these small moments and just expanding them and looping them so the broader context goes away and these small moments become big. Painting a Waterfall could have just been a slick of paint and it’s done. I suppose there’s fragmentation as well in the new and the found sitting next to each other and that friction that can occur between the two.
Genevieve working on Through the Smoke and Water 2015 in Adobe Premier. Genevieve working on... in the experience ...program?? Is creating an immersive
for the viewer an important element in your video installations? I do think that’s very important. With all installations, you wanna make space, not just a physical space, you wanna create a space in your mind where you can sit and read. I think having a short looping video, putting it in a black box, which eferences cinema, challenges the viewer. We’re taught that things are linear whereas video art isn’t always,… and with this video, you don’t watch it to the finish, it doesn’t end, so it plays on the ‘is something else gonna happen or is that it, I’m not sure?’
The archival source, I imagine, is an important part of your process in “Digital decay is like a appropriation. Does the video imagery that you appropriate have decomposition, and through any particular significance? it, I am making new things... I mainly use 40s to 60s Hollywood cinema. I initially just used to use film things can deteriorate noirs particularly B grade film noirs, so but that doesn’t really they weren’t too recognisable but they mean an end.” were familiar. We all understand the archetypes of those kind of films because they’re just in our language now. If you use something too familiar or you use an actress or actor that’s too familiar, people can get very distracted I’ve found and the first question will always be “what film was that from?” if you recognise the film, it should add an element but it shouldn’t be necessary for you to read the work. I also use films that I grew up watching, so there’s that link to my own childhood. I watched a lot of Hitchcock, so those archetypes are what I like playing with because it is Video Still from Beneath the Archway 2015 archival material in a sense more something I’m very familiar with. With Painting a Waterfall, the imagery tangible than working with archival film? is not even from a film, it’s from a I don’t think so, I think they’re quite similar. ‘colour-harmonising-your-home’ infomercial and it’s got the symbol of When I started using Rotoscope, which is the woman from the 50s but it’s not cutting things out frame by frame like ‘oh, that’s that actress from that (often used for green screen) it takes a film’ – so you can evoke the sense of long time and it feels very hands on and it doesn’t feel less handmade. I think it’s those themes- it’s a thin line. quite intimate, I’ve got headphones on Your works on paper also link in with and I’m very close to my screen and I’m the archival and with assemblage. using my hands. I think people often think Can you explain your approach when it doesn’t feel as tactile or something, but working with the primary archival for me, especially cutting out something frame by frame feels sooo tactile and source. Is the process of handling I know that picture so well because I’ve Waterfall still from Painting a Waterfall 2015
just been staring at it for an hour. So my approach to these different mediums are similar...like I’ll watch a film, and I’ll think, ‘oh I could clip that, I’ll do that later’ Or I’ll flick through a magazine ‘oh I could collage that’. It’s chance. Especially for clipping films, I don’t say ‘I’m gonna look for this’. Normally I’ll pick a film and I will see if I can find something in there. I think especially those early stages are a lot about the spontaneous and chance and noticing a pattern and then going ‘okay that’s something, I’m going to go with that now’. How do you resolve that – at what point to you make decision around that process? It’s really important, especially early, not to be like ‘that’s my end goal’. I think you need to listen to whatever you’re doing and let it go where it wants to go. I think I’m getting better at that. I thinking planning is a good starting point, but you need to know when to let go. What other mediums do you work across? I went to TAFE before Uni and I majored in sculpture and I minored in photography. In sculpture I used to work a lot with fabric. Last year it was exclusively video but I’ve always done fabric and stitching. I would make fabric screens, and in my third year of Uni, I tried to integrate the videos in with those physical screens, so watching a video through a fabric screen and seeing how that effects it.
Last year it was just video but I’m keen now, I think, to go back, as I think they all talk to each other. They all feed into each other in a nice way, photographing a sculpture can make you see something completely different and be like ‘oh actually, I’ll make a video like that’. I think it’s really good to be using all mediums. I actually physically want to collage again, I haven’t done that in a long time so that’s been my post-Uni ‘What should I do?’ Have all bodies of work explore similar concepts to those of memory, time and trauma in ‘Painting a Waterfall?’ Yes, I’ve been quite pre-occupied. I think it has been a very subconscious thing, then I realised it. I went through looking at the particular moment before or after a traumatic event that can carry a lot of weight like slamming the door after a fight and that’s what you’re fixated on rather than the event – bookend moments that I’d isolate. They have so much more importance than people can realise. I think we can all relate to it in so many different ways.
When did you first begin exploring the digital frame as a medium? Second year of Uni I did a video class and then I did a summer intensive and I learnt how to edit. Then third year was mixing it in with my more sculptural works. In Honours I decided I wanted to focus on video and I learnt a lot technically, self teaching myself different programs like After Effects and learnt how to Rotoscope. It’s been very recent and I’m surprised it didn’t come to it sooner because before I started Uni I had a dilemma as to whether to go into film or art. I went and did art and I don’t know why it took me 3-4 years to be like, ‘oh you can do video in art’. Are there any other artists that influence your practice i.e. Tracy Moffatt? Oh, I love Tracy Moffatt, she’s so great, and I love Pipilotti Rist. Douglas Gordon’s use of appropriated footage was an influence for me because I realised you can just do a simple action, slow down footage, and see how dramatically that can alter the meaning of the footage. It
Video Still from Beneath the Archway, Once More 2015
made me feel a bit more confident in taking a simple moment and expanding on it. It doesn’t have to be a narrative. Video doesn’t have to be a linear, long story it can be a short, simple one gesture. I’ve always loved Louise Bourgeois as well. She’s always been a big influence. My influences are from mainly artists and watching cinema – I watch so many films. Do you see yourself venturing into the digital more down the track and setting up scenes? Possibly. Last year I started to film my own things, and I definitely think it’s what I want to keep working on, seeing how that can play together with found footage or if they play just by themselves. That’s definitely where I want to keep moving. View and read more about Genevieve’s practice at her website:
http://genevievepiko.com/