SITW Interview
It’s one of these hot and humid Mondays of July in New York, and I’m running around Chinatown in search of Ernesto Caivano’s Eldridge Street studio. Damn it, I’m late again. I’m running up the five floors of the tenement building to his studio only to find myself in the middle of a photo shoot. Ernesto, already a celebrity? After his shows at PS1 and the Whiney Biennial, I know I shouldn’t be surprised. “Hey Ernesto, I’m Sebastien. Eddie told me we should meet. You know, for the interview”. He welcomes me for a minute, offers me a glass of water and suggests I make myself at home while he finishes the photo session.
The studio is very peaceful and oddly sunny. Wasn’t it raining outside? I comfortably sit back in a club chair and start looking around. I heard that I could learn more about someone from their library than from their words. So I scrutinize the room. Gustav Klimt, Aubrey Beardsley, Hokusai... Hmmm, interesting but not that unusual. But then, things start to get more and more specific: miniature wooden sculptures of armors, images of stealth fighter jets, reproductions from microscopic observations, dried leaves, long-lost medieval heraldic, quartz stones, etc. I turn around and see two of his intricate large landscape format ink drawings. Without really understanding, I realize that all these strange seem to make sense. But Ernesto has just finished the shoot...
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Sebastien – Hey Ernesto, sorry I was looking around... Can you tell me what the images of B2 stealth bombers and the these delicate wooden sculptures are doing next to each other?
No problem at all. I actually prefer when people look around, it's closer to what I do in here - looking around, plus that way you can find things and visual relationships on your own as opposed to being shown or walked through a studio visit.
Now, these wooden sculptures are actually made of aged cardboard, and the images of stealth bombers are inspiration for a series of small paper sculptures called nanoships/nanoelements. You see, I'm fascinated with stealth technology, and miniature technology, two opposite abstract yet functional forms. But at its core, they are part of the idea of unmanned warfare, the removal of the body, the physical. And the delicate sculptures are based on model making, also based on the absence of an actual experience, but an attempt to possess something by changing its scale. Like a small model airplane, or a doll, as opposed to being a pilot or a baby, it's the oldest form of relating and rehearsing an event, in which you can create metaphors . . . and of course, they represent nature and technology, two different forms of each corresponding battling elements.
Sebastien – I understand that the relationship between nature and technology is a fundamental element to your work. In the mythological world you created through your drawings, both elements seem to compete and miss each other. Actually, some of your drawings are very organic, while others appear to be more high tech. Could you explain the genesis of your world?
I suppose it's about opposites and complementary forces. For the past five years now, I've been working on developing a story called "After the Woods", which is really an alternate reality or universe, based on science, mythology, folklore, technology, fantasy, and influenced by personal, and world events. It's a stage for metaphors. In this alternate future world, all humans are gone somehow, but the archives and knowledge that they have gathered remain. Trees have gained access to these sets of information, but don't have a way to contextualize them, to use them meaningfully, so they reenacting the history of humankind somewhat, except the way a tree or nature would. Stumbling, if you will, through the same discoveries and marvels that we have. Since it's the future nanotechnology and A.I. robots are also present and are in battle with nature, in order to prevent the summoning of a couple of humans. Nature wants to bring back a man and woman to populate the world again. This is the start, but the real genesis took place when I traveled throughout Europe and saw in the hills, forests, and remote cities the real sense of historical time scale that we don't get here in the America, unless perhaps standing by a Sequoia. The trip grounded much of the references and interests that I'd been attracted to since I was a kid. You could see something placed here by people that had withstood a thousand years. I was also reading Ulysses . . . but that's another story.
I was looking earlier at some of your library, and saw a lot of references from 1880 to 1910. That’s interesting, because it coincides with Art Nouveau, a period in which designers and artists were trying hard to integrate organic design into machinery. Look at the Singer sewing machine for instance, or at the early electrical devices. Today, the aesthetic and the concept of this integration are different, with the rise of green architecture and sustainable design for instance, but the concern is still definitely there. Do you think that we going towards an increased harmony between technology and nature?
Yes, that was the period of the industrial revolution, everything permeated a form of gestalt, the glory or nightmare of the mechanical, and well, the precursor to modernism. People wanted to have hard things embody the idealized flowing attributes of nature. I'm glad you brought up Art nouveau, we could use more of that these days. What I mean, is we could use more of specialized craft and design . . . as opposed to more shoe box like structures or sneaker looking cars. So do I think today we are going towards a harmony between nature and technology? . . . all those words mean different things to us now, and their definitions are mostly blurred. For example, what is "nature?" - the biosphere? ecology, living entities? and technology? or harmony? This get more into political and economic realms. I believe technology has made astounding advancements, but our relationship to the world is completely off balance. Our biodiversity is disappearing, pollution is higher than ever, our energy resources aren't sustainable, it's really depressing. I think we could use technology better and truly achieve a harmony with our environment if we paid more attention to it . . . it is after all as much part of us as we are part of it. When I see artwork from Klimt for example, I always see the body in a field of abstraction and organic static. The body is concealed somewhat, and this reveals it all the more. As in some of the pictures from the Ukiyo-e period, the body is placed in a field of pattern . . . and this integrates the body into the environment, because the patterns created (like in art nouveau) are derived from, while symbolic and emblematic of the very nature we are trying to possess and put ourselves into. It's an attempt to decode and a way of understanding. However, aesthetics and technology today have different rules. Not only is the body removed by technology, but the mechanism of technology is also concealed. What is left are representations of representations of representations, ad infinitum, and in the end, unfortunately, it can't really achieve the same effect. Their is no point of reference, unless you invent or chose one. But that is really a luxury not afforded by all. I'm not sure, what the answer is; technology invented the solar panel, but it also invented a better McDonald's burger, and a better laser guided missile. Perhaps, technology is the result of the things we believe we need in order to interact with nature and other people.
What personally strikes me is that most technological innovations tend to isolate us from nature. When I arrived in the United States, I realized that I was spending entire days removed from the outside, from natural air. As a matter of fact, many Americans spend most of their time confined in Air Conditioned environments, between their houses, cars, offices and malls. Technology tends to remove us from our natural conditions and we end up thinking that it is better to distance ourselves from nature, for our own comfort and even security. We are amazed by the ipod Shuffle, by the by the latest cell phone, but we forget to look through our windows. What about natural engineering and evolution? Don’t you think that this is equally if not more amazing?
Technology has this prosaic quality of easing a certain kind of urban neurosis. Having lived in Buenos Aires, I also understand what your referring to in regards to this outside/inside dichotomy. I think it has to do with urban planning and air control, why aren't there more trees on our streets or on our rooftops? Most European cities for example, have less A/C's and are more "walkable" cities, lower cities skylines. The thing that amazes me is when we address "nature", are we including things at a cellular/molecular level, or is it "the great outdoors" notion of untouched wilderness? I believe the more untouched, most likely the better in terms of natural engineering and evolution. But our presence on Earth now is so marked that we have become in essence part of what we call nature or natural events. The gray between the borders is expanding, and this is where we are presently, but what is our relationship to it? I don't have specific solutions or answers, but this vague area is definitely becoming more surreal everyday. I think this is a good area from which question can be distilled.
In After the Woods, you tell the story of two lovers separated for 1000 years. While the man becomes one with nature, the woman transforms into a spaceship symbolizing technology. Do you already know the end, or it is a story in progress, depending on current events and the different things happening to you in your life?
That's true, the two protagonist represent nature and technology, their conscious separation, and their inevitable reunion. After the man becomes a knight, and ultimately a tree, and the woman transforms into a princess and then a spaceship. What the man doesn't know is that what has allowed them to enter this alternate land, is the fact that they had conceived a child simultaneously to their arrival. It will take their period of reunion for the child to be born not in any conventional sense. Man and woman must first go through an entire transformation as well as changing the land and being equally affected by the land. They will disintegrate one another in order to see the new life take form. So, in a long winded kind of way, yes, I do know the end, but don't quite know how exactly they will take place. The linear structure of the story is in place, beginning to end, give and take a few things, but the substance of the story, is affected by personal events, but I hope the result will stand on it's own, without footnotes, so to speak.
Interesting how you chose to link to woman to technology and the man to nature, when it is the opposite in mythology; Mars is depicted with iron lances while Venus wears with flower crowns. Why such a decision?
Usually it is, but sometimes it's reversed. Apollo for example was associated with the arts, and nature. And St. George, a martyr for Christianity, is regarded as the saint of agriculture. What's interesting is that as technology advances, it's more personified by man's character. Then there's Fritz Lang's Metropolis, where the mad scientist creates the perfect female robot; industry is ironically represented by this hot-Frankenstein-like, the virgin Mary creature. It's totally Freudian. I reversed the roles to question the normal views; because, as I'm finding out, I feel more and more that we find the idea of a nurturing entity, not in Mother Nature, but in technology and in the safety of the Industrial Military Complex, which is tied to space exploration. Another reason for the reversal of roles, is to address the current complexities of romantic relations where traditions and expectations are no longer defined by a patriarchal past. And also to feminize the man and masculinize the female. Although they are clearly heterosexual beings in this story, and they do stem from creation myth somewhat, I hoped to make them more androgynous in spirit. The thing to keep in mind about how I've defined these characters, is that they have to come to know themselves again, where unexpected intuition has taken over them completely and helps in claiming their new, adapted, and morphing identities.
Intuition... How much I like this word. It completely guides me in my curating practice, and in my life in general. It is a bit embarrassing to confess in this time when every decision needs to be explained and rationalized, but personally, I very often can articulate my creative decisions only after I took them. I would be very interested about to know about your relationship with intuition, both in your life and in your work?
There are many ways which intuition plays into this field of decisions and curiosities. On the one hand, I am confronted with elements that I can't rationally explain in my practice, yet make complete sense to me. I think it's this that keeps me going back to an extent, to try and figure it out, but not pin it down - as an observer. When we think of intuition, we may think of ourselves in the present, and how we relate to it. In my work, I'm trying to understand the codes of intuition for characters and inanimate objects that are supposed to exist in a some fictional era when reason meant something all together different from what it means to us. However, as a process, sometimes and idea will come, while working, or at completely random moments that stand out from what I like to think of as an internal station of static. Sometimes, the ideas are interesting and exciting, and other times they are absurd, or corny. Sometimes they seem like nothing at all and they in turn prove to be the beginnings of much larger ventures. In my life, intuition has played a very funny role . . . too many coincidences, and too many things that evade explanation, but it keeps it all interesting. I like to think of them as alignments. And out of these things I try to find some meaning, but perhaps, this too is totally irrational, ultimately. Intuition has been both a beast and a whisper; unsettling when it's contradictory to a belief, and perfectly comforting when it gives up the graceful solution. My relationship with intuition will continue to be one of speculation, and trust. It's a lot like "why in the hell am I doing this thing?" and then you figure it out, and then you realize your even further away from making any sense, and then again: "what is this!?" . . . you can drive yourself crazy after a while, entertaining an intuition, or in need of many extra drinks. So you speculate all along, and trust you'll end up somewhere other than where you started with more understanding. It's a great question you asked, don't think I would answer it the same way, if you asked me again in a week.
I think that your drawings are really amazing, they reflect both fragility and power. And a profound intelligence too. But I believe that “After the Woods” also transcends its medium. Would you see yourself taking your artistic tale to sculpture, installation, film or other media?
Thank you . . . when I first embarked in this project, I was actually taking a jewelry class as part of a summer fellowship. It was then that I built the first sculpture in relationship to the story, it was a cardboard dress with a baroque-influence, and poised a silver pendant as an homage to early aviation technology . . . then came the drawings. Currently, however, I'm at the very early stages of an animation, and have plans to do sculptures and installations. When I think of how the drawings served a need to mediate between an idea and a concrete complete artwork, it was in part due to constraints, like the size of the studio, or production resources. Five years ago, my studio was the size of a sketch book, or whatever table I could get at a cafe or a friend's house. As it's all grown, so has the scope of each project. It's a relative slow process, but I'm in no rush. Ultimately, it is about conveying the story, or at least that's how I see my role in this endeavor. Drawing has been the most immediate and direct way to convey the ideas, but I've always had in mind to see the project explore many mediums, but I have to say, that regardless of the shape it takes, it will always be closest related to the performance of telling a tale, with the voice of a line, whether in two or three dimensions, or in time.
