The gallery wants a "process video" and I have nothing to show
The gallery in Düsseldorf wants a short process video for the newsletter. Fifteen seconds, vertical, something "authentic."
I said yes before I thought about what fifteen seconds of my actual working day looks like. It is standing in front of a canvas the size of a door, doing nothing, for about an hour. Then a small adjustment with a palette knife. Then more nothing. The interesting part of my work is the part where I decide not to touch it, and you cannot film a decision not to act.
So now I am supposed to stage a version of my own studio for a phone camera. Squeeze out paint I am not going to use yet. Look thoughtfully at something. It feels like being asked to perform a caricature of myself, and the fee for the show is good enough that I will probably do it. That is the part that sits badly with me. Not them asking. Me agreeing.
My wife says just film your hands and let them loop it. She is usually right about these things, which is annoying.
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The fifteen seconds they want is not documentation, it is advertising, and advertising has never filmed the real part. Nobody wants the hour of standing. They want the squeeze of the tube and the confident stroke. So give them the tube and the stroke, and keep the standing for yourself.
I stopped feeling bad about this around the third time a photographer asked me to "look like I'm thinking." I did look like I was thinking. I was thinking about lunch. The photo was fine.
Do it cheap and slightly wrong on purpose. Prop the phone somewhere, let it run while you actually work, and send them whatever boring thing comes out. If they complain it is not authentic enough, that is their problem with reality, not yours.
"Thinking about lunch" is the truest thing anyone has said about artist photography. I have a gallery portrait from 2004 where I am clearly composing a thought and in fact I was wondering whether the radiator was on.
The phone propped up and running while I work is the right advice, I think. It removes the performance, or at least moves it somewhere I can ignore. The only problem is that the best material would be an hour and a half of my back, and then I would have to sit and cut it down to fifteen seconds, which is somehow more work than staging the tube squeeze.
Naja. I'll do it cheap and slightly wrong. If it comes out badly enough, it's honest.