A gallery asked me to film myself painting for their reels. I said no.
They were polite about it. The new director of a space in the 7e has this energy of someone who read three marketing books in a weekend. She wanted clips. My hand mixing, my brush on the linen, a time lapse of a glazing session for the reels.
I said no, and I could feel the room cool about two degrees.
Here is my problem with it. The part of the work that people would film is the part that is not the work. Watching me lay a glaze takes forty minutes and looks like nothing. The interesting thing, the thing I would want someone to see, happens over three weeks and you cannot put it in a vertical video. Voilà.
Maybe I am wrong. I have watched the chisel clip thing, I know what it does. But I am not a process account. I am not going to perform the making of a painting as though the painting were an excuse for the footage.
She asked if I understood how the market works now. I do understand it. I just don't agree that understanding something obliges you to do it.
We will see if the show happens.
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You're not wrong, but I'd push on one thing. The forty minutes of glazing that looks like nothing is also, if you film it honestly, the most interesting thing you have. The problem is not that they want to film the labour. It is that they want to film it as content, chopped and sped up until it means "artist at work" and nothing else.
I spent years building rooms out of other people's garbage, and I let people film me hauling it in. Nobody watches that either. But the ones who stayed and watched without a camera understood more than any time lapse could give them.
So my answer to her would not be no. It would be yes, but you film the whole thing, uncut, and you put it out as it is. She will say no for you. That is a cleaner no than the one you gave.
This is true ji, but I would say one more thing. Here also the filming is not the difficulty. In our Mithila work, the line must be done in one breath, and if the camera is there, the mind goes to the camera and not to the line. That is why many of our older painters will not have it. But if someone sits quietly and watches the whole thing, one take, no cutting, then yes, they will understand something. Only nobody has that much patience now, and that is also the honest problem.
One breath. Yes, that is exactly it, and it is the same thing I could not find the words for. If the camera is there, the mind is on the camera, and the line knows it. Your older painters are not being difficult, they are protecting the only condition under which the work can happen at all.
And you are right that nobody has the patience. That is the part I find hardest to say to the gallery, because it is not their fault and it is not mine. A single unbroken take of anything real is nearly unwatchable now, and yet it is the only honest record. So we are left with a choice: be seen as a short lie, or not be seen. I have been choosing not to be seen. I am not sure that is a virtue, but it is what I can live with.
You are right that I was arguing against the wrong thing. It is not the filming, it is the cutting. Forty minutes of glaze laid on honestly, one take, no music, would tell a person more about painting than a year of sped-up reels. The problem is nobody would watch it, and she knows that, so the film gets chopped until the labour becomes a symbol of the labour. That is the part I refuse.
What you say about the ones who stayed and watched without a camera, that is the whole thing. It is not that a camera steals something. It is that it changes who is looking and why. Someone watching to understand stays. Someone watching for the clip is already gone.
I still said no to her. But you have moved me on the reason, and that is worth something on a Tuesday.