An interview with Scott Redford by Astrid Mania
Astrid Mania: A lot of your work deals with issues involving homosexual lifestyle and identity and you have always been very blunt as to your own sexuality and desires. Having said that, on a visual level your work has never been that direct, it has left room for the imagination and fantasy. So it looks a big step from there to your latest work "I Need More", which without any background information appears like just a hardcore gay porn. What made you go there?
Scott Redford: Yes, you are right in that a lot of (but I would not say all) of my previous work worked hard (too hard?) to complicate and widen ideas and understandings of gay/Queer identity. The last few years have seen my work change with an attempt to engage a more general audience (including a more general gay and lesbian audience) with the return to painting (and a form of landscape painting at that) and drawing, as well as photography etc. I have always liked the way pornography is able to be understood and be relevant to many people. So, in a way making this piece was perfectly natural for me. However I'm not naïve and realize the piece will be read by some as an attempt to gain notoriety through shock. This is why I resisted getting into sex imagery for so long. But then I felt like a hypocrite as I am genuinely excited and moved by porn imagery. As are a lot of others judging by the sites on the net: both straight and gay, bi, transgender, and all the rest. In fact porn is still one of the few things that turn a profit on the Internet.
A.M.: But for someone with a background as a conceptual artist there would have been many different ways of dealing with porn, rather than shooting your own film you could have used found footage for instance, which would have provided a greater distance for both you and the viewer. Your piece, however, is very personal in the sense that you not only shot a piece of porn but decided to involve friends in it rather than actors and shoot in a bar that you frequently go to yourself.
S.R.: Well I had to be implicated in the whole project meaning without my identity being on the line, as well as the guys performing, without this I think the piece have for me failed. I don't like artwork that acts as a form of "tourism". When artists move into any area that they like without having much of any real personal investment in the locale or the situation they are involving themselves with but are still convinced they are doing something good for the world. But in some of my most neo-conceptual works I am implicated. The equation pieces for example don't work without a photo of me in them. Also often in my works the position of who is speaking, the "I" as it were, is important. Hence the title of the piece "I Need More". I did a scene for the video but was edited out rather fast as it was no good. Another Hollywood dream bubble burst! (Joke!) And it is for these reasons that the video contains no comment or critique or analysis of pornography but becomes almost a document of an evening at a backroom bar in Berlin (a very good one by the way). It was important for me that the piece be just hardcore gay porn (but I stress not the most hardcore possible or offered to me. In fact I would call the sex in the video low to medium level extreme).
A.M.: But the film does come across as more than just gay porn since it is shot in a real location with "real people" acting out their fantasies. So that concept ruled out right from the beginning the possibility of a narrative, of some however "thin" story that would lead to whatever sexual acts?
S.R.: For me to have entered into narrative, a kitsch storyline for example, would be to touch on Camp which in film circles is a form of critique. (Although we did look at De Sade and the list of sexual acts which ends "120 Days of Sodom" as a model). Also to critique porn would have implied that the space of art was somehow morally superior to the social space of pornography which I don't think is the case at all. In fact maybe the opposite is true considering that the Art World is now at its most conservative for some time. But really I'm not interested in a critique of the art world either. That would be really dull. Two important reasons for not adding any "thin" porn storyline are, that sexual acts already have a narrative of their own (the mechanics of sex) And that the interaction of the men performing in the video would have been more obscured by a camp porn scenario.
A.M.: But in what you say you draw a borderline between "art" and "porn", although given the fact that you will show "I Need More" in an artspace, and not, for instance, in a club, you seem to deny that very fact. How do you solve that dilemma? Do you follow the concept that art is what you see in a context defined as an art context? Or would you rather draw on the argument that porn can be or is art anyway following a discussion that dates back to Susan Sontag's attempt to defend some (!) pornographic literature as "real literature" in view of formal criteria as well as artistic quality whatever that may be. Or does the discussion of how your film will be perceived interest you at all?
S.R.: It interests me to a point. But it doesn't help me make the piece. It may help me defend the piece. And I am personally critical of certain implications inherent in showing such material in an art context. Basically I am showing the piece in the space I have available. But I think that the whole idea of art having a separate and defined space has left us. It's just that the art world hasn't or doesn't want to recognize this fact. And I as a fairly traditional artist in some respects can only go so far with this concept. Meaning I can only approach this subject intuitively.
A.M.: You know I won't let you get away with that! But to change my question slightly, let's talk about the context of an institution rather than an art space. If you had decided to show it in a club or movie theatre it might have been looked upon as either just a porn or some porn/doco hybrid. But in the context of an "exhibition" your film will be read in a different way. Do you think that could or would add an extra layer to the film and are you happy about that?
S.R.: You are right of course, showing the piece as art does change its reception or at least add something else, maybe not something more. But I am being honest when I say Iım not totally sure of the outcome of this "experiment". And if I showed it only as porn it would be perceived through being made by a visual artist. Think of Bruce La Bruce here. The porn world is not one-dimensional either. The work being made there is quite various. Not that I think my piece is transgressive. It is hard to imagine what would be transgressive now. But Iım not sure I am with you all the way with these categories. I still think you personally carry some torch for art and the special "space" the word art may imply. I now wish I'd spent more time in film, advertising or fashion rather than art but maybe these areas aren't as easy as I like to imagine.
A.M.: Hold on I am not carrying the Olympic torch for art! What I am saying is that spaces and contexts change the way you look at things, your expectations and your mindset. Plus you do enter a different discourse like it or not. I am not talking about some sort of hierarchy, but simply about differences in perception. But maybe none of this discussion of porn in the art context is going to happen, since a lot of artists have recently made works related to porn and also the general acceptance of porn has risen enormously.
S.R.: Definitely. Pornography's stakes have risen in the last 15 years. To view those sites of U.S. gay teens who make cash from images and web cams of themselves is surely to view a form of empowerment. And I'd like to say that the guys in my video saw what they were doing as being in a similar light. Both fun and empowering. One told me that "a number of his fantasies came true that night".
A.M.: So there is a strong element of gay pride involved in your piece, some "I am what I am" message? When I watched "I need More" together with another friend he remarked that he found your film almost denouncing in the sense that you reveal so much about a specific gay lifestyle that not everyone in the scene itself would be happy to see revealed. If you had gone for the option of shooting a "real" porn as opposed to the documentary character of your film you would have avoided giving too much of an insight.
S.R.: Yes and that would have been an easier way to go. Because when I started telling people about making a porn video that is what I think they envisaged: a classical, Hollywood style piece. There is also Leather Pride as well, which is distinct from Gay Pride and has its own flag and identity etc. But I can imagine people in the scene not being pleased. But now we are making stereotypes out of perfectly normal individuals. I think it is best to think of the men in the video as people doing what they want to do for the camera. The piece was mainly self directed by the performers although edited later by others. Although not all of them realized the piece was primarily for an art exhibition. They are more comfortable with porn than with art I suspect. As you know I was considering canceling this exhibition because I was concerned with how or if a wider audience would receive such information. I seriously thought that some subcultures should stay subcultures. But since then I have learned more of other work in this area. And work more extreme than my piece. The real worry would be that the actual scene thinks the piece is lame. Not good enough compared with other porn videos: real commercial ones. Some of which are quite underground and low tech actually. Also I want to stress that one thing that tends to characterize Berlin gay porn is the use of so-called non-actors. One guy in the video has been in at least one of these videos. And also tell your friend he needs to get out more!
A.M.: So lets talk about some of the hard facts then. What inspired the film apart from actual gay porn you have mentioned Kenneth Anger for instance, are there any other movements in film that you looked at?
S.R.: Yes Anger and Warhol are two favorites of mine. And as I hadn't seen many early Warhol's the screenings at the Arsenal during the Warhol retrospective were in my mind. Especially works like "Vinyl", "Couch" and "Chelsea Girls". But really my main references were porn films proper. From Americans like William Higgins to the Frenchman Jean Paul Cadinot through to various videos I own or have seen that one remembers for the authenticity of what is shown rather than the auteur status some directors now have. I would also like to mention such mainstream films as "Cruising" with Al Pacino, which was directed by William Freidkin in 1980 and which was heavily protested by mainstream gay men at the time (for reasons similar to those we have touched on above) but which I very much like.
A.M.: The name of your film apart from its obvious erotic meaning is also inspired by pop culture being the title of Iggy Pop's autobiographical writings which again has strong references to sex and lust. But is the title also some cheeky title about the art world? As you said earlier you are done with categorizations as to art and non-art. So would you see yourself in that respect also in a broader context of contemporary art practice that tries to go beyond the confinements of 'art'and its institutions? Would you position yourself in that context?
S.R.: Yes, I think I need more from being involved in art. I'm not blaming art or the art world for this. From my first interview in 1986 I was saying much the same...
A.M.: But in another respect you also fit into the discussion of giving up the idea of the individual artists by doing a film which is a team work by its own nature.
S.R.: Yes, and the video is both teamwork with those behind the scenes and those in front of the cameras. I just had a conversation with someone who performs in the video about a scene and he had the best attitude to the piece I have heard yet.
A.M.: If I need more tell me where your work will go from here!
S.R.: Well, considering "I Need More" is only 32 minutes I may need to film that much again to make the piece able to be marketed as a proper porn film. Ironically, this may mean adding narrative. I would also like to make more porn works, especially a remake of Jean Genet's only film "Un Chant d'Amour" at Surfers Paradise in Australia, the large tourist town I come from. Also I think Anger's "Scorpio Rising" could get a workout.
A.M.: So in doing "commercial porn" youıre stepping out of all the discussions around art and art discourse altogether?
S.R.: No, I don't think that is really possible. And the general public are I think happy that art as a distinct category exists, it's just that they don't see it at as particularly relevant to their lives.