PENELOPE GEORGIOU

June 5, 2003 at the Secession will be the day of shooting for my next film: I will dance on an object that Angela Hareiter has designed for me and supervised the setup of, and camera people will record. There is nothing else I can say about this without rambling trivially…I personally suffer from the fact that very few people who belong to the art world are artistically inclined…although an art work reveals itself in the long term because of its substance, it is only successful because of non-essential features…because people who have no feeling for beauty subordinate themselves to the idea of the social, the political or a theory in their work. In the last ten years, I was so involved in private problems that I hardly paid attention to my profession. I would like to apologize for that, and I promise that this will change soon.

INTERVIEW WITH PENELOPE

Constanze Ruhm: Who are you apologizing to?

Penelope Georgiou: How can you ask a question like that? If you look at this text as a small work, regardless of whether it is successful or not, how it will be judged is written in the stars…but if I look at it like that, then I can’t say anything more about it than I have already said.

CR But aren’t texts a different means of communication than films or an art production?

PG But not a text like this.

CR So you look at this text more in the way that you also look at a film? It has no other task than to communicate itself. With the work that you are planning for the exhibition Fate of Alien Modes, there will be a kind of stage designed especially for you by the film architect Angela Hareiter. The work itself is a performance that will take place on a certain day within the exhibition at the Secession, to serve as material for a new film. What made you decide not to show a “finished”work—one of your films, for example—but rather to plan a performance?

PG I have to say that I have never felt that anything I did was a performance…but then, I also find it hard to say I am making a film, even when I make a film. In this case, I would say it involves a day of shooting for my new film, or one of the shooting days, which will take place at the Secession.

CR That means that other scenes will be shot outside the exhibition?

PG I don’t know yet; that depends on how the material turns out.

CR So you have been carrying the idea of this film around with you for some time, and you are taking the exhibition as an opportunity to make a start?

PG Yes, a shooting day will take place in the exhibition, and the results of this shooting day will flow into a film.

CR In your case, then, there is nothing to see most of the time but the stage in the exhibition—and we will not get to see the finished work either.

PG Certainly not, but this object by Angela Hareiter is something very special.

CR How did the idea of a stage for your performance come about?

PG The great thing is that we didn’t actually communicate much. As far as artistic matters are concerned, a few sentences are enough, and in fact we spoke very little. Then the first drafts came, this oversized record player, and she wasn’t sure whether I would like it. I was delighted from the first moment. I didn’t have to think about it at all, that was it.

CR Does it matter to you that the idea of the stage refers to a record player?

PG It was very inspiring for me. It’s clear that I want to dance, and dancing has
to do with music.

CR Where does your wish to make a dance film come from?

PG If only I knew—probably from the need to say what I have to say through dancing. But why is it important to know all that? I can’t understand this interest in finding out why people do their work the way they do. I am not at all interested in why and how someone does something. I am only interested in the product. I am interested in why people do something in private; I am very interested in why someone has behaved in a certain way. When something irritates me or even surprises me, then I want to understand that. Why artists work one way or another—I’m always surprised when someone goes into that, not only in reference to my work, but also to the work of others. I am always bored to death at lectures where artists talk about themselves…I usually just want to see the work.

CR Let’s go back to your work. The shooting will take place during normal opening hours.

PG The whole day of shooting is open to the public; visitors can watch all day.

CR Which music are you going to use?

PG I don’t know yet.

CR I like the idea of a stage as an announcement, it’s like a promise. The stage waits for you, it is used once, and then it belongs to the past. It’s a way of playing with present, past and future. It is like a secret in the exhibition, there is something mysterious about it. Also the equality between process and product…

PG The text that I gave you is like that, too: encoded. That’s the way I do things. I’m being cumbersome, it’s agonizing to have to explain that exactly now. It goes against my grain to translate art into theory or theory into art.