’THERE’S only one rule in this studio…. You
can do what you like, but please don’t ignore it. The rule is: you must have
fun!’ It’s a hot summer afternoon in Milan and Candice Breitz is giving
instructions to the last performer of Queen (A Portrait of Madonna), the
work she is presenting this September at Sonnabend Gallery in New York and
White Cube in London. Queen, a multiple-channel video installation in which
a couple of dozen Madonna fans have been called on to reinterpret the track
list of ‘The Immaculate Collection’ (1990), is the latest work in a trilogy
initiated last spring in which Breitz realizes audio and video portraits of
famous pop stars documenting a cappella renditions of their classics by a
small legion of fans recruited through ads published in internet sites and
magazines. Unlike Legend (A Portrait of Bob Marley), the first episode of
the series inspired by Bob Marley and shot in Jamaica in collaboration with
the foundation T-B A21 Vienna, King and Queen, the two new videos dedicated
to Michael Jackson and Madonna, were made respectively in Berlin and Milan –
an apparently less-predictable choice but one which follows a specific
pattern. According to Breitz, Michael Jackson is huge in Germany, while in
Madonna’s case the explosive combination of transgression and catholic
elements in her early work resonates strongly with the Italian society.
Breitz has one eye on the monitor and another on the unusual crowd that
animates the recording studio on the last day of the shoot. Most of the
amateur singers cast in Queen are in fact still around despite having
nothing to do. There’s a loose and relaxed party atmosphere that affects
everyone, from the sound engineers to the cameramen – hardly the kind of
set-up that one would expect behind something as meticulously structured and
formally disciplined as Breitz’s work. Sol LeWitt’s Paragraphs on Conceptual
Arts (1967) and their interesting contradiction of establishing an arbitrary
set of rules with the goal of eliminating arbitrariness have been a big
influence on Breitz’s research on finding less subjective editing
strategies, and if on the one hand they seem to perfectly suit the
reanimation of old Hollywood footages that constitutes one side of her work,
on the other hand this working method needs to be refined when it’s called
to take into account the fact that the materials, as in this case, are real
people.
A central and somehow unexpected point in this most recent work by Breitz is
how this reconstruction of the identikit of pop stars through the voices and
the appearance of their hard-core supporters ultimately revealed rather
complex aspects of the psychology of the latter. One of the most amazing
stories is about a woman featured in King. Imprisoned for years in an East
German jail, where a tape of ‘Thriller’ was secretly circulating because of
its ‘forbidden music’ status, the woman couldn’t speak or understand English
but somehow learned to sing the whole album by heart. Less dramatic but
equally intense is the story of a young Italian, gay fan of Madonna who
broke into tears in front of the camera and dedicated Papa Don’t Preach, a
cry of a desperate teenager pleads for her parents’ understanding and
support, to his father. ‘There are so many different shades of obsession.
Our Michael Jackson fans could not have been more different from our Madonna
fans,’ acknowledges Breitz. ‘Several of the Jackson fans were extremely
fragile and vulnerable. Many told stories about difficult moments in their
lives. Their relationship to Michael Jackson was in many cases a kind of
therapy. The Madonna fans identified very differently with their idol,
focusing on her ability to reinvent herself and the perceived invitation
that she offers to the fan to reinvent him or herself, to be who you are no
matter who you are.’ Although a few of these stories are undoubtedly
perceivable in the video, the risk of them getting lost or diminished in the
resulting multi-monitor installation is real, and the colourful range of
Madonna’s fans who populate the Milan studio, from the over the top
exhibitionist that brought his own costumes to the extremely shy person who
overcomes his fears as he stands up and sings, seems to be an indirect
confirmation of this dilemma. ‘I’ve been interviewing each fan after the
shoot, asking each a series of questions which are intended to be fairly
simple, not too leading. I don’t necessarily want to extract confessions or
moments of truth from the fans. The interesting thing is that even in
response to the most neutral questions, people will often start telling the
camera extremely intimate and moving stories about themselves. The primary
way in which I wanted to think about the relationship between star and fan
was to get the fans to offer a re-performance of a favourite album, to allow
them free reign to interpret an album that has played an important role in
their lives. But I think it will also be interesting in the future to
include excerpts from the interviews in exhibitions of the portraits,
excerpts in which the fans narrate their relationship to Michael Jackson or
Madonna, choosing more directly how to frame their fantasies and
projections. I would eventually like to have a series of seven or eight
portraits of very different stars, to be able to explore a wide range of
star-fan relationships. Ultimately, there will also be a fair amount of
interesting archival material, including the interviews, which could be
included in a presentation of the works.
The transposition of real lives into a video format presents striking
resemblances with a strong part of our social environment today. TV
programmes showing the real lives of people and their desires to be public
or become famous are becoming annoyingly fashionable these days, and
although in the long run this dynamic is often reversed with the so-called
victims increasingly taking control of the situation, the relationship
between exploiters and exploited remains a delicate and complex subject. How
does Breitz avoid the cynical disruptiveness and the caricaturing that forms
such a large part of modern television culture and 15 minutes of fame? ‘Most
of the fans who sing for us do not have great voices, but they do offer us
extremely generous performances. It’s important to establish a relationship
of trust with each, and to avoid caricature or parody. Each fan is taken
utterly seriously. There’s a very fine line there, that I try to avoid
crossing, since I’m intensely aware of the fact that the portraits could
easily move into the territory of exploitation and exposure that we know so
well from reality television.’
The Bob Marley piece was a very good test of these tensions. The decision of
filming such portraits in different places became necessary not only to
avoid an appaearance of similarity, but to provide a social context and
history of the place in which the work was made in. Thus Legend differs from
King and Queen in a lot of ways. Firstly, it was made in Port Antonio,
Jamaica, where his legacy is enormous and local inhabitants’ memories are
strong. Secondly, unlike Jackson or Madonna, Marley’s association with
reggae music and cannabis not only responds to the cliché of a music star,
but, to some degrees, reflects a very common perception of a country like
Jamaica. Whereas King and Queen are jigsaw puzzles of different personal
stories and interpretations, Legend has an additional collective value that
from a fan’s perspective, and maybe against the artist original desire,
makes it a more iconic and somehow monumentalized portrait. Its reception in
the country where it was made could turn either into a very emotional moment
or a disaster. Fortunately Breitz doesn’t overlook the point. She will be
showing Legend in Jamaica in December: ‘I’m aiming as much as possible to
show each of the portraits in the city – or at least in the country - where
it was made. When we show Legend in Kingston, we’ll organize to get the fans
who were involved to come to the opening from all corners of the island. I
will be curious and nervous about their responses to the work... I would
like them to like the result.’ Breitz should be vaguely familiar with the
feeling. Part of the deal with this series of portraits, which is applicable
to most of her work, is that she doesn’t get to see them until the day of
the opening because of the huge amount of technology required for testing,
which is not always available. ‘I don’t get to see the works until they’re
installed for the first time, which often means a few minutes before the
opening. But this is all part of the process. The anticipation of the final
result is part of the fun.’
Michele Robecchi is Senior Editor of Contemporary