33 Artists in 3 Acts (46 page)
Today, Julien and Kellgren are working from a script but no storyboard, developing ideas as they shoot. If they were making a film for
the cinema, they would likely have had to lock down their goals for financial reasons. But they are producing a seven-screen work for the art world—a limited edition of six (and one artist’s proof) for viewing in galleries, museums, and private foundations. Julien entered the art world in the mid-nineties when he was invited to make a work for the Johannesburg Biennial and Victoria Miro Gallery started to represent him. After losing some editorial control over
Young Soul Rebels
(1991), a film that won the Critics’ Prize at Cannes, Julien was keen to obtain greater artistic autonomy. Moreover, funding for independent film projects was drying up, so the shift to arts patronage was not just liberating, but lucrative. With the help of his galleries, Julien has raised a budget of £1 million ($1.6 million) for this film.
PLAYTIME
is an exploration of the power of money, and more specifically, the huge sums that go by the name of financial capital. Following the eminent geographer David Harvey, who likens capital to gravity, Julien is fascinated by the ways that this abstract, invisible force affects people’s lives. The hedge fund managers segment, which is one of five scenes, tackles the concept of capital most directly. The other scenes, which include segments shot in Dubai and Reykjavik, concentrate on its effects. Julien did not travel during the first twenty years of his life (with the exception of a single day trip to Calais), so exotic locations have become staples in his films. He has been working on
PLAYTIME
for the past three years; this is the final day of shooting.
A good part of the script for this hedge funders segment derives from interviews with Diane Henry Lepart, a handsome woman of Jamaican descent, who is having her makeup done next to a wall of windows overlooking North London. She is wearing a black Prada coat with huge fox-fur cuffs and some diamond-like bling around her neck. “I’m somebody we call a portfolio player,” she tells me. “I like to do lots of different things: hedge funds, private equity, asset management. But acting is a different thing. I’m out of my comfort zone. I’m on the board of a theater—the Donmar—so I’ve seen lots of plays, but this . . .”
“Now, Diane,” interrupts Julien, taking her hands in his. “We want you in this scene so it’s got a documentary element. It’s like life and fiction mixed—a real hedge fund manager with the thespians.” He walks
her over to the part of the vast room in which they are shooting, while I venture into the video village.
Ensconced behind the curtain are a researcher, a script supervisor, a sound engineer hunched over a keyboard attached to a black box, and Adam Finch, the project’s editor. Finch met Julien at Saint Martin’s School of Art in the 1980s and has edited all his multiscreen works, from
Trussed
(1996), a two-screen work, to
Ten Thousand Waves
(2010), which involves nine large-scale screens arranged in a spiral shape. “We worked for a long time on three-screen installations. It’s a nice format with a history in the religious triptych. We developed a lexicon and a syntax for that kind of parallel montage,” says Finch. “When we moved to four screens with
Fantôme Afrique
[2005] for Centre Pompidou, things got complicated. The viewer could no longer see all the screens at the same time. We wanted people to move around in space. My job was to choreograph that.” Finch tells me that
PLAYTIME
will be viewed on seven screens arranged in a figure-eight formation.
“Right, we need to go! We’re losing light! First positions everyone!” roars the first AD. Julien and Kellgren zip in front of the monitors and put on headphones. The gaffer, stylist, and makeup artist pile in behind them. The cramped quarters of the village give me an opportunity to snoop in Finch’s notebook, which lists the framing, timing, and director’s opinion on each take. Finch is concerned that this footage is a little wordy. “You know what editors say,” he whispers. “You have to murder your babies. If they don’t work, cut ’em out.”
“Cameras running? Quiet on the set. Action!” says the first AD. Behind the curtain without earphones, I can only hear snippets of dialogue.
“Wow, nice view,” says Lepart.
“Yeah, we were talking about transparency . . .” says Adams.
“Twenty years ago, the heart of the market was a trading floor where we did deals with each other face to face,” says Salmon. “Now the heart of markets is an air-conditioned warehouse full of computers . . . It feels like we’re hardly responsible anymore . . .”
Adams says something about the Occupy protests, but I can’t make it out. I flip through the script trying to find the lines, but am diverted
by others. “The more PhDs you have working for you, the higher the intellectual capital of the brand,” says Salmon’s character. “These new guys . . . have an almost occult ability to make money. They’re my golden eggs.”
“Cut. Okay. Lovely,” says Julien unpersuasively. Coughing erupts and chatter resumes. Julien strides over to Lepart and the actors. Upon his return he tells me, “There’s a big difference between actors and non-actors. The actors drive you mad, but they have a magic. Non-actors also have a power, but it’s much harder to get it out of them.” I comment that the variety of skilled labor on set, from actors to gaffers, is dazzling. “I am reliant on a lot of people’s aesthetic knowledge and technical expertise,” he replies. “Everybody does their thing. They are all artists in their own right.” He estimates that about 150 people will have been involved in the making of
PLAYTIME
by the time they’ve done all the special effects and postproduction work. “The arrival of high-definition computer technologies means that filmmaking is more labor-intensive than ever,” he adds.
Julien enjoys working with the latest technologies in his pursuit of ever more rarefied visual pleasure. He grew up on a rough council estate in East London surrounded by “ugly poverty.” He thinks the art world’s conflicted relationship to beauty results from upper-class guilt. In his opinion, ugly realities can be depicted in beautiful ways; he cites Billie Holiday’s exquisite “Strange Fruit,” whose lyrics are about the lynching of African Americans in the Deep South. He also refers to French Creole, the language his Saint Lucian parents spoke at home. Creole arose from slavery but displays a creativity that transcends its abject roots. Julien sees Creole as a model for his art’s hybrid forms, which combine Hollywood-style narrative grandeur with experimental ruptures.
The first AD has called for another take. On his way back to the video monitors, Julien stops to fix the tie of Mark Nash, his husband, who is an extra in the next scene. The artist abhors what he calls “laissez-faire attitudes” to appearances. Nash is a curator and academic who collaborated with Julien on the fictional biopic
Frantz Fanon: Black Skin White Mask
(1995) and has had cameos in two other films. As a key confidant and co-owner of JN films, Julien’s production company, he
has an associate producer credit. At the command of “Action,” we stand in silence. When Julien yells “Cut,” Nash and I start a conversation in which he tells me, “Artists are able to open themselves up into different media, whereas some of us like to hide. They are also able to tolerate a lot of anxiety about whether their work is good and whether people will like it or not. With the right supporters, they can make it through.”
Glenn Scott Wright of Victoria Miro Gallery, Julien’s dealer, whom I haven’t seen since he took me to Yayoi Kusama’s studio in Tokyo, arrives to play his part as an extra. He tells me the names of the patrons of
PLAYTIME
(the Kramlichs, the Loves, the Linda Pace Foundation) and mentions that Bernard Arnault acquired
Ten Thousand Waves
for his Fondation Louis Vuitton.
After a few more takes, I find myself next to Kellgren, the DOP, while other members of the crew set up the shot of the extras around a corporate boardroom table. When I mention the craft of filmmaking, she exclaims, “Cinematographers are not just craftspeople! From script to screen, the process is intensely creative and interpretative. Yes, we are working on someone else’s idea, but there are many shades of gray.” Kellgren fingers an old-school monocle called a director’s viewfinder that hangs on a black cord around her neck. “A film crew is complex and interdependent and very hierarchical,” she adds. Finch, the editor, is still in his spot against the wall in the video village. “There is a clear divide between the people who are creatively involved and those who are technically involved,” he explains matter-of-factly. “The creatives are the director, DOP, editor, composer, costume designer, and set designer. The technicians are the camera operators, sound recording guys, gaffers, and sparks. It’s on a sliding scale. The first AD looks like he could be important, but he’s really just a gofer.”
Once the boardroom shot is wrapped, Salmon has time to spare while everyone works on a moving closeup of Lepart’s high-heeled feet walking. The actor has worked with Julien before and appreciates his precision. “Isaac often asks you to do things that don’t feel natural but when you see the installation, you go, ah!” he explains. Salmon worked with Woody Allen on
Match Point
(2005), so I ask him how Julien and Allen differ. “Wow!” he replies. “Hmm . . . Woody’s got a spirit around
him. He’s very enigmatic but very clear that he’s allowing it to happen. He gives you the head—the lines, the melody—and he lets you improvise. ‘Now just tawk,
just tawk
,’” says Salmon, imitating Allen’s accent. “Whereas this,” says Salmon as he looks around the office floor, “is a bit more deconstructed. The head is more complex, more Cecil Taylor.” Salmon reaches down to a black case that I hadn’t noticed, unclips it, and, to my amazement, pulls out a gleaming trumpet. “Woody plays more traditional jazz. Isaac is more avant-garde,” he concludes. “I have to play some music in the next scene.”
“Nice and quiet, please,” says the first AD. “No talking! Okay, settle! Quiet guys, please. And . . . action!” Lepart walks slowly, the clatter of her high heels echoing through the unoccupied space. “Cut. That was great, darling!” says Julien.
“Excuse me while I warm up my trumpet,” says Salmon, who starts playing a relaxed jazz number. Julien sees rhythm as central to his structures and often likens his art to songs, so I can see why he and Salmon enjoy working together.
The first AD approaches Julien and says, “Tell me what we’re doing.”
“I’m imagining the Steadicam just following Colin while he plays the trumpet through the whole space,” says Julien about the final shot of the day.
“So I clear everything back into the corner? We’re worried about the reflections of the Steadicam,” says the first AD. The sun has dropped below the horizon. The city lights are stunning but veiled by the reflections of the inside of the room.
“I don’t really know what it’s going to look like, cause I haven’t been here at night,” says Julien. “I quite like the idea of deconstructionist motifs. It’s going to be almost impossible not to have reflections of the camera anyway.”
“I was thinking it would be nice—kind of haunting—to have the space lit with the available ceiling lights,” chimes in Kellgren. “Let’s clear all my lights out. I think it will be fine.”
How are you feeling about today? I ask Julien.
“It’s exciting when the actors and everybody else bring an idea to life,” he replies. We could have done with two days here, though.” He
adjusts his thin black tie. He’s wearing a white collared shirt, the only person behind the scenes to contravene the dark dress code. “This is a very technical shoot with a lot of dialogue,” he adds. “I don’t want it to look visually pedestrian.”
I press Julien about his comment earlier that the members of his crew are all “artists in their own right.” He replies with a look of concern, then says, “I want to credit everybody. And some people, like Adam [Finch, the editor], I couldn’t begin to tell you. I need his mastery of the apparatus.”
Julien is adamant that he is not expressing his “solitary self” but “listening to things” around him. “Mark and I went to the opera recently,” he says. “And all evening, I watched the conductor and kept thinking, that’s what I do. An artist is the person that holds things together. He may have original ideas, but he also needs the wherewithal to realize them.”
Damien Hirst
For the Love of God
(2007),
For Heaven’s Sake
(2008), and
Leviathan
(2006–13)
installed in Doha, 2013
D
oha is so hot and dusty that my throat hurts. In front of a building completely covered in Damien Hirst’s multicolored spots, guest workers are preparing sand dunes to be turfed. Only a few date palms and Hirst’s
Hymn
(1999–2005), a 20-foot-high bronze sculpture painted to look like a plastic anatomical model, cast a hint of shade. The statue’s cyborg face, whose bug-eyed right side reminds me of
Star Wars
’s C-3PO, suits this inhuman environment.
Hirst’s largest retrospective, titled “Relics,” opens today. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be welcome here. A public relations officer, acting on behalf of Hirst, called my editor at the
Economist
a few weeks ago to say that the artist would not talk to me, implying that the magazine would be wise to send someone else. I assume Hirst is still offended by an article I wrote three years ago (the year after I visited him at his home in Devon) titled “Hands Up for Hirst: How the bad boy of Brit-Art grew rich at the expense of his investors.” Remarkably for an arts piece, it set a record for the highest number of hits on the
Economist
website upon its publication in September 2010. The article didn’t pass judgment on his art but gave a detailed factual account of the steep downturn in its market.