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Nous reprenons ici l'entretien que nous avions publié sur le blog elles@centrepompidou
Née en 1934, San Francisco (Californie, États-Unis), Yvonne Rainer vit à Los Angeles (Californie, États-Unis).
Aliocha Imhoff & Kantuta Quiros/le peuple qui manque : Yvonne
Rainer, nous souhaitions vous interroger à propos de la double
transformation qu’a connu votre travail pionnier de chorégraphe au sein
de l’avant-garde new yorkaise. Votre travail s’est en effet de plus en
plus politisé, partant d’un travail chorégraphique très formaliste, jusqu’à une
prise de conscience féministe dans les années 70, pour enfin donner
naissance à un film comme Privilege en 1990, qui met en scène
l’entrecroisement des relations entre racisme et sexisme. Or, c’est
dans le même mouvement, que vous vous êtes tournée vers le cinéma vous
distanciant progressivement de la danse. Comment s’est passé ce
passage de la danse aux images, au cinéma ? Enfin, comment
concevez-vous le lien entre art et politique dans votre travail ?
Yvonne Rainer :
In the early 70s when I made the shift from dance to film, the
reasons were multiple: an aging body, a disinclination to form a dance
company with all that entailed, an interest in experimental film, which
I had followed from the late 50’s, and wanting to deal with narrative,
with fiction and with the feminist issues that were arising, and my
experience as a woman. Film, with all its possibilities for combining
image, text, and voice, seemed to offer more possibilities than dance,
or the kind of dance that I did, which was not narrative, but athletic and abstract. Film just seemed a much more open arena for exploration.
Some years ago someone asked me “why do
you always concern yourself with exposing the conditions of production
of filmmaking and do you see yourself as progressing beyond it?” This
is a very political question, and I responded as though someone had
thrown down a gauntlet:
”The word ‘beyond” suggested a failure
you have to overcome. The question also implied that one was making
films simply for antagonistic or contestational reasons. I was
interested in the positive conception of formal playfulness as opposed
to the negative connotations of the deconstructive position. There was,
of course, a serious justification that had to do with the fluidity of
signifiers and disruption of fixed social positions. If narrative
structure was an analogue for social hierarchy — and there had been
much theorizing about this — then the disruption or messing around with
narrative coherence had a positive function in pointing toward
possibilities for a more fluid and open organization of social
relations. This was, of course, an ongoing project, not at all subject
to aesthetic fashion, not something I attempted or intended to “get
beyond,” or “cross over” from, or rise above. By the early 80’s my own
relation to narrative had become increasingly complicated. I saw
narrative as an effective “gripping device,” or means of engaging an
audience and as such, something that had to be considered and mastered.
This meant that situations and characters had to have varying degrees
of credibility. It was necessary, however, that the coefficients of
time and space be played with - for comic relief, for disruption, for
foregrounding “the apparatus,” for allowing analysis and commentary. I
was echoing Brecht and Godard, perhaps, but with regard to Brecht, I
wanted more details of everyday life, and regarding Godard, I wanted
more psychological truth.
For awhile I followed and was
influenced by the arguments and critiques of feminist writers like
Teresa de Lauretis and particularly Laura Mulvey’s famous “Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which construed mainstream cinema as a
vehicle for men to overcome female obstacles to their self-discovery
and attainment of manhood. These writings described the deployment of
female figures in the noir and western genres as the creation of
enigmas to be deciphered and controlled or threatening landscapes to be
traversed and possessed. And narrative structure, with its
development, climax, and dénoument, was in and of itself implicated.
But subsequently I realized that there are all kinds of narratives,
histories of marginalized or “disappeared” people who have not had a
fair shot at being represented, and it seemed obvious that narrative
structures can be used for both progressive and oppressive ends. As a
consequence, it became difficult, for me at least, to sustain a
political critique of narrativity. Let me just say that I was
interested in creating situations for different kinds of spectator
engagement within a given film. And narrative was only one of these.
Another question arises: Why was it so
important for me constantly to remind the audience — via all kinds of
strategies — that these apparitions on the screen are fabrications?
Around 1985 I wrote, “…words are uttered but not possessed by my
performers…” When I first started using more than one performer to
play a given character – in Film About a Woman Who…
two women stand in for the “she” – it was more an aesthetic or formal,
rather than political choice; mixing up the referents simply made
things more interesting and lively. Later I would say that detaching
meaning from the speaking subject was one way of forcing the spectator
to deal with issues in a broader social field rather than being
vicariously swept away on a tide of simulated individual experience.
The visual de-centering of the subject has a philosophical and
historical parallel in poststructuralist writing, like Barthe’s “Death
of the Author”, Foucault’s “What Is an Author?” and Julia Kristeva’s
work, which I was reading around 1980. The romantic notions of unified
personhood and stable identity were under attack for the next decade.
Kristeva’s “subject-in-process” was especially appealing to feminists
who were struggling to get out from under the tyranny of gender
masquerade. With the advent of post-colonial writing, however, the
focus of discussions shifted from gender to race, and there were
wonderful films made about African-American experience, particularly
those of Charles Burnett and Julie Dash. The writings of Stuart Hall
and Homi Baba have been influential in recasting the debates about
identity in terms of cross-cultural hybridity.
This is all very superficial and
sketchy, but it may provide a framework for following my particular
path from formal avant-garde to experimental social narrative. Here is
an afterthought: From my earliest choreography, I never thought of my
chosen medium as a vehicle for “self-expression.” This was partly John
Cage’s influence; somewhere in my head I hear either him or Merce
Cunningham saying “If you want to express yourself, take up
basket-weaving.” Which in retrospect makes little sense, given Native
American traditions and the cultural and social functions of basket
weaving. But at the time I interpreted it to mean that of all the
things in the world available to the artist, the self, or its
integrity, is only one inconsequential element. Of course, in terms of
Cage’s practice, disposing of self-expression was key to the
elimination of personal choice in art-making via aleatory methods of
composition, and was even perhaps an indirect influence on subsequent
notions of gender mutability.
I use the past tense in the above
paragraphs because I have not made a feature length film since 1996
(MURDER and murder), when I began to drift back in to choreography. If
I do re-enter the film arena, I’m not sure what my modus operandi will
be.
Yvonne Rainer
1990-2008
Entretien inédit réalisé par courriel en juin 2008 par Kantuta Quirós & Aliocha Imhoff / le peuple qui manque
Le peuple qui manque est une
structure indépendante de programmation et de distribution de films,
œuvrant principalement entre art et politique. Créée en 2005, elle a
conçu de nombreux événements, rétrospectives, cycles de films, cartes
blanches et festivals, dont plusieurs consacrés à l’art féministe et
queer. Le peuple qui manque distribue une collection de 200 films et vidéos d’artistes, entre cinéma et art contemporain. http://www.lepeuplequimanque.org
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