Robert Wilson and Umberto Eco

Robert Wilson and Umberto Eco: A Conversation
Author(s): Robert Wilson

Source: Performing Arts Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Jan., 1993), pp. 87-96
Published by: Performing Arts Journal, Inc.
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Robert Wilson and Umberto Eco

A Conversation
ROBERT WILSON:MR. BOJANGLES'MEMORY...

Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1991)
og son of fire
In November 1991 the Centre Pompidou presented an exhibition of Robert

Wilson's furniture/sculpture work and videos. His conversation with Umberto Eco appeared in the catalogue printed for the event.
It's always silly to ask an author, "What did you mean by this or that?"
It also happens to me and I answer: "If I meant something more, I would
have written it." It can be more silly with you because it's notorious
that when you are asked something like that, you say: "Well, I did it
because it's beautiful!" So I won't ask you about the meaning of your
works, but rather about your feelings before and during some of them.
Today I saw the maquette of this exhibition. As a first impression, I
saw there a city that I can focus from different perspectives. I don't know
if you are familiar with David Lynch's book A View from the Road, on
the American city designed so as to be viewed from the highway. When
I think about your work-what I loved most was Einstein on the BeachI have the suspicion that you start doing something thinking of a city,
of somebody who moves into a city, who can drop one thing and look
at something else, who changes his own perspective, who is allowed to
refuse to consider something today, in order to reconsider it tomorrow.
It seems that you foresee an audience able to complete your work. I have
written a book, The Open Work, in which the same ideas were used for
literature.
Yes, I think it's a good analogy to compare it to a city. I am looking out
my office window now and I see a contemporary building. Next to it is
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a building from the eighteenth century and over there is a building under
construction. I see not only the Parisian present but also traces of its past
and premonitions of its future.
I look above and I see clouds changing. An airplane crosses. On the
street I see a man walking and a car passing. All of these events happen
simultaneously and at different speeds. The exhibition is a little bit like
that, full of various spatial and temporal layers. The space is like a battery
with different energies. It is a space that is full of time; I would not say
timeless, but a space for memories.
One of the layers in this exhibition is the videos. These videos are very
different in nature, rhythm, color, texture, and structure than the rest of
the room. The room is rather severe in terms of its materials (steel, lead,
copper, and black and white lacquer) and colors (gray, black and brown).
Amidst these cold materials, the video is something very bright, very
colorful, very light and often quite humorous. They are the counterpoint
to the rest of the exhibit. They are like punctuation in Kabuki theatre;
you see a character moving very slowly for a long passage and suddenly
there are very fast movements. Likewise, the videos in the exhibition are
a punctuation of the space, an interval that supports the continuous line.
The videos are about close-ups and things that move fast and have bright
colors.
I understand the difference between the exhibition space and the movies,
but my analogy would cover the whole of your exhibition and maybe
of your activity. Each of your works seems to me like a video where one
can select different images by maneuvering a sort of remote control.
From another point of view, when I think of Einstein on the Beachwhere it was possible both to look at ALL the frames at the same time
or to select your area of interest-I feel tempted by another analogy
(maybe I am exaggerating with analogies): it seems to me that in computer terms your way of working is not a serial, but a parallel one.
Yes, I think so. I believe that we think like remote control. One of the
first plays that I wrote, A Letter For Queen Victoria and several other
pieces I did after that, I Was Sitting On My Patio This Guy Appeared I
Thought I Was Hallucinating, were very much along the idea of a remote
control. I grew up in a small town in Texas and as I was growing up my
father never allowed us to watch TV.I went away to a university and when
I came back I was surprised to see my father was watching TV constantly.
He would sit with a remote control and watch all the channels at once.
He would watch a bit of this, a bit of that, and this fascinated me. My
early plays were very much like that. They consisted of numerous little
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pieces which had to be put together by the viewer, just as if one were
watching a channel that had a thousand programs and one could constantly
switch between them. This exhibition is similar. One can free-associate
all these parts in multiple ways. There are no definitive ways to link up
the various images, sounds and other pieces of information. There are an
infinite number of possibilities. It is a space in which we hear and see
and experience, and then we make associations.
Since you want to make a "non-literary theatre," a non-story theatre,
why do you choose, as a starting point, names (Freud, Curie, Einstein)
who bring with them a story as a background? Don't you see a conflict
between a refusal of a story and the pre-existing story of those persons
and, therefore, the expectations of the audience?
No, I don't see a conflict. Men of the theatre like Euripides, Racine, and
Moliere, frequently wrote about the gods of their time. I think that figures
like Sigmund Freud, Joseph Stalin, Queen Victoria, and Albert Einstein are
the gods of our time. They are mythic figures, and the person on the street
has some knowledge of them before he or she enters the theatre or the
museum space. We in the theatre do not have to tell a story because the
audience comes with a story already in mind. Based on this communallyshared information, we can create a theatrical event. An artist recreates
history, not like a historian, but as a poet. The artist takes the communal
ideas and associations that surround the various gods of his or her time
and plays with them, inventing another story for these mythic characters.
Well, the spectator is free to choose his own itinerary in your story. I
agree that you are making "open" structures inviting people to collaborate but (this is a very malicious question that concerns some of my
present preoccupations) would there be a certain way of responding to
your painting, to your theatre, a certain way of interpreting it, of using
it, that you would refuse, by saying: "Oh no, there is an ultimate point
beyond which you cannot go"? Suppose I say: "Oh, you know, that reminds me of Versailles, Ifind it very Molieresque." The American-ItalianFrench Constitutions allow me to make this interpretation, but do you
have the right to be dissatisfied with such a reaction, or not?
No, I don't have the right. My responsibility as an artist is to create, not
to interpret. This is true of both my work in the visual arts and in the
theatre. I am working right now on The Magic Flute and I tell this to the
singers all the time. This is very confusing for them because they are
accustomed to thinking that they must interpret their roles and play in a
naturalistic manner with psychological reasons for everything. I think
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interpretation is for the public, not for the performer or the director or
the author. We create a work for the public and we must allow them the
freedom to make their own interpretations and draw their own conclusions.
But you are at this moment interpreting the text of Mozart, and then
somebody else would interpret your interpretation of the text of Mozart.
I do not think I am interpreting, but anyway, go ahead.
No. Why? I think that directing a symphony of Beethoven is a way of
interpreting it, because you can stress a given rhythmic passage in order
to direct in a given way the attention of your audience. I use "interpretation" in a very wide sense.
In that sense, there is, of course, my interpretation of doing it.
OK Mozart was a Free Mason and he believed naively in those very
vague, sentimental, moral principles exposed in The Magic Flute. In the
same way, in Don Giovanni, he wanted to say that the Commendatore
was an evil character destined to hell. So, Mozart took a position. YOUR
interpretation, your way of staging Mozart, can stress certain elements
of the libretto or of the musical score, to focus more or less the attention
of your audience on the moral issues of Mozart. There are moral issues
in Mozart! What do you do in this case?
First, I don't agree with your premise. I don't believe that Mozart understood what he wrote. I don't think that Shakespeare understood what he
wrote. It's something that one can think about and reflect on, but not
completely understand. The works are larger than the man. I directed
King Lear last year. It is not possible to fully comprehend King Lear. It
is cosmic. I am the kind of artist who does not want to pretend to understand what he is doing because I think that is a lie. If I said that I
understood a work, I would be limiting myself. I would overlook the many
interpretative possibilities that are in each great work of art by choosing
only one perspective when I claim to understand it.
I can read King Lear one night in a certain way and read it completely
different the next. It's the same with The Magic Flute. On one hand, the
story seems very simple, but on the other hand, it is very complex. It is
something that one wants to reflect on. If we know why we do something,
there is no need to do it. That is why both King Lear and The Magic Flute
are great works of art. That is why they live through time and why we
go back and rediscover them. They become avant-garde as we rediscover
them.
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Yes, but you can do something in order to encourage the people to read
Mozart on the surface level as a simple structure, or to encourage them
to read it as a complex story. That is already an assumption of interpretative responsibility. And when you think "I WANTthem to see that
it's very complex," then you make a decision. The meaning is unprejudiced, but the attention you stimulate depends on a decision on your
part.
Yes, I think that's true. The danger is that you should not believe anything
too much. This is why I prefer formalism in presenting a work because
it creates more distance, more mental space. If I aggressively say, "I WANT
TO KILLYOU!" that is one thing. But if I say, "I want to kill you," and I
am smiling, it is much more terrifying. I think it is the same way in directing
Mozart. The singers can be very serious, but somehow they must also
know that there are other things going on. The mystery has to be deep
in the surface, but the surface itself must be accessible.
We make a work in the theatre or in the museum so that the surface
a person from Africa or China
is simple and accessible to everyone-to
or to that man on the street we saw earlier today. Everybody should be
able to walk into the museum and get something from the exhibition. The
same is true in the theatre. The surface remains simple but beneath that
it can be very complex. The surface must be about one thing, but underneath it can be about many things.
Apparently, it's a marginal question but it has something to do with
the same problem: let me say roughly that usually your furniture is very
geometric. Let's say it reminds me of Mackintosh or Mies van der Rohe.
Except the "Stalin Chair" which is terrestrial, made with a sort of underworld material, like lava. Why? Is that a way of interpreting the
character?
Yes, I think so. I had two chairs built in lead for Queen Victoria (A Letter
for Queen Victoria). They are very severe. The chairs have right angles
and car lights with large electrical cords protruding from the backside.
They sit facing each other. They are very simple. I shouldn't tell my own
ideas and associations about these works because I do not want to impose
my ideas on others, but for me, these two severe chairs are like Victorian
time. For Stalin, a twentieth-century figure, I built two draped, organic
lead chairs. Stalin had two identical apartments. Everything was the same:
the same furniture, the same stoves, everything down to the smallest detail.
In each of these apartments there were two armchairs that were always
draped with fabric.
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I associate the blast of an atomic bomb and its mushroom cloud with
these chairs. I think that one of the greatest discoveries of our century
was the splitting of the atom. It is the splitting of the mind. The splitting
of the atom takes place in our mind. I liked using this free, organic form
for Stalin and the very severe use of this same lead materialfor Queen
Victoria.To me, the two types of chairs represent two very differentuses
of materialand somehow relate to two very different times, namely, the
nineteenth and the twentieth centuries.
You said a few minutes ago that in order to keep the interpretation
unprejudiced,you choose formalism. But now, you are telling me that
choice of a form expressed an ideological position. Thusformalism is
not the denial of interpretativeengagement. It IS an ideology, and you
know it, evidently, because you said it!
Rules are made to be broken!You should not believe anythingtoo much.
You must always contradict yourself! When you turn left, think that you
are turning right!
How did Walt Whitman say it? Do I contradict myself? Well,I do contradict myself! But, a propos of contradiction, I don't know everything
of your painting, but I have the impression that while in furniture you
are very geometrical (let's say Mondrian-like), in painting you are informel. It seems that there are two radically different choices. Is it due
to the different matter, or is it your split personality, or something else?
The drawingsare like diariesfor me. I can go back and look at a drawing
that I did many years ago and say: oh! that is when Nixon was resigning
as President,or this is when I fell in love with someone, or this is when
such and such happened. I can read the lines and they evoke memories.
MarthaGrahamonce said that in her work she was chartingthe graph of
her heart. In some ways, my drawings are like that. They are different
than my work for the stage or my furniturepieces. They are much more
emotional, very personal and very private; I create them alone. In the
theatre, I work with many people in collaboration and when I create a
piece of furniture,I work with craftsmenand other people. The drawings
are something completely personal, coming from my hands and fingers.
Recently I met Gunter Grass in Italy. He was exhibiting his drawings.
Very beautiful. And curiously enough, he said: "I would prefer to be
rememberedas a painter rather than as a writer."I don't know whether
he was sincere or not. Whatwould you answer if you had to choose, to
be rememberedfor your drawings or for your structures;for your two-
92

dimensional activity or for your three-dimensional activity, or for your

four-dimensional activity, like theatre?
I think that it is all part of one body of work. I would like to be remembered
for my work in each field.
In which way was your work influenced by your initial activity with
Soleri?
I apprenticed with Soleri in the early 60s. At that time, I was more interested in the ideas behind his architectural designs than in the individual
designs themselves. I was fascinated by the scope of his thinking. He was
a dreamer. He was designing cities that were underwater, spanning the
water and in the sky. I was finishing school at the time, and my classmates
were designing office buildings for their theses. I could not do that, it
didn't interest me at all. Soleri was a man making architectural designs by
drawing in the sand with a stick. He didn't know what it was going to
be-a game room or an auditorium or whatever-he would simply start
drawing. That is how he would plan buildings. It was amazing to see an
architect work like that. It really impressed me. It was the same with
Einstein-Einstein was also a dreamer. At the time I was finishing school,
I was quite confused, and these men were a confirmation for me, because
I was also a dreamer. For my thesis, I designed an apple with a crystal
cube in the center. This crystal cube was meant to be a window to the
world. It could reflect the whole universe.
I worked once in a hospital with paraplegics, quadraplegics and people
with iron lungs. It was a hospital on an island in the middle of the East
River in New York, where the patients were geographically isolated in
addition to being paralyzed. They didn't have Junior League Women or
volunteer people come into the hospital because it was very difficult to
reach. The patients were people living on welfare. When I worked there,
we raised money in order to bring television into the hospital wards. It
was fantastic because we opened a window to the outside world for these
people who had been isolated for so long. They could watch what was
happening in China or Africa-even go to the moon with the televised
space launchings. The television functioned as a window to the world for
these people.
I think the Centre Pompidou is also a sort of window to the world. It
is in the center of Paris and it is a center in itself. It is the cube inside
the apple that reflects the whole world. It is a place where people congregate, where they can gather together to observe and be observed, a
space which people can move freely in and out of. It's the number one
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tourist attraction in Paris, and it is a museum! It is not a morgue or a

place that is just collecting works by artists. Artists can go to the museum
to create work. I just created my videos in the sound studios there. The
medieval city had the cathedral as its core. It was not only a place of
worship but also the center of cultural and urban life. I think the Centre
Pompidou is similar.
And sometimes the events taking place outside, on the square, are more
interesting than those taking place inside.
That is certainly true. It is exciting not only for what happens inside the
building but also because of the people who gather around it. Another
interesting thing about the Centre Pompidou is that it has extensions
throughout the city. It once sponsored a work of mine that did not even
happen in the museum, but in a theatre outside the Centre. Art can radiate
out of the museum and reach the whole city. In that sense it is a true
center. That is what we need in cities today.
So you see that the analogy of the city is still returning. This conversation
probably will be read by people before entering your exhibition. There
will be very smart visitors who will recognize the chair of Einstein or
of Freud. But there will be normal people who can have different attitudes towards your pieces of furniture. First: Oh! I WISH to sit in this
chair. Second: Obviously, I cannot sit in this chair, this is the Platonic
idea of a chair. Third: It is a torture chair, a "machine celibataire," like
in Duchamp or in Kafka's The Penal Colony. Or fourth: It is a Brechtian
action to defamiliarize me with the chair, you know, I look at it in a
new way, Wilson has succeeded in what the Russian formalists called
the "priem ostrannenjia" or, "the device of making it strange." You are
not obliged to select a single kind of reaction, maybe you are sympathetic
to all of them ...
There are many different ways you can look at them. First of all, many of
the pieces were previously seen in the context of a theatre piece. Now
they are seen in a museum and arranged in a certain way. They are in a
completely different context. They are like molecules that break apart and
recombine. They change through the deconstruction process.
I think that the chairs are sculptures. They are pieces that you can sit
on or be seen sitting on or imagine someone else sitting on. They take
on personalities of their own, evoke associations and thoughts.
But why is a given chair compared with Giacometti and another one
with someone else?
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I think that it is my concern with form. I design a chair with as much

careful attention as when I create a play. All the details relate to form,
line, time and space. It is interesting that you previously mentioned Kafka
and the theme of torture. There was once a form of Mongolian torture
that is a little bit like my chairs and this exhibition. A man was buried up
to his neck in the desert sand. His hair was completely shaved and his
head tightly covered with an animal hide. In the intense heat of the desert
with his head covered, the hair would not grow out but inward into the
brain. The result for the man was a loss of memory. Maybe in some strange
way, this exhibition is also about the loss of memory. When I was creating
Death Destruction & Detroit II, I kept thinking about a room that would
create an experience of loss of memory. That piece was actually based
on Kafka. Perhaps this exhibition is such a space.
Walking through a new city always implies a loss of memory. A city is
a place in which you walk without being able to draw its map. Very
seldom do you know the map in advance. I think you like your visitors
to walk-in time or in space-through your works, losing memories of
certain parts, then recollecting something, or dropping something else.
In the middle of Einstein on the Beach I went out to the corridor to
smoke a cigarette and then I went back in. I am the kind of person who
likes to enter the movies not at the beginning but at the middle because,
as I say, movies are like life. I entered my life when Julius Caesar was
already assassinated but I reconstructed everything pretty well. You like
this way of visiting places and stories, I suppose. You could think of
one of your plays like a ring, perhaps like a Moebius ring.
There was a song that Dionne Warwick sang in the film The Valley of the
Dolls which had the constant refrain, "I got to get off, I got to get off this
merry-go-round." The song kept repeating all the way through the piece.
It could have gone on forever. I was especially concerned with this theme
of eternal recurrence in my early plays. I created plays that were twentyfour hours long or even one that lasted seven continuous days. I even
thought there could be a theatre with a play that ran continuously, so
that you could go for your lunch break for fifteen minutes or for the
afternoon the way you go to the park to sit and watch clouds changing
or people walking. There would be no beginning, middle or end like in
Shakespeare, but simply one continuous line.
To enter a theatre and to stay there from beginning to end is a very
recent idea. Think of the Greek theatre-four tragedies plus a satyr play,
and people eating and chatting in the meanwhile, or Mozart's operas,
95

with people making love in their loge with the rideau closed. Well, I
think theatre is more that than Ibsen. You are in the mainstream.
ROBERTWILSON:MR. BOJANGLES'
MEMORY... og son of fire. Paris:
Editionsdu CentrePompidou,1991. Reprintedby permissionof the Centre
Pompidou and Umberto Eco.
96


Robert Wilson and Umberto Eco

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Robert Wilson and Umberto Eco: A Conversation

Author(s): Robert Wilson

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.105 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 08:47:08 AM