Transcript of the interview 10/10/03 This interview took place at the Airport Express Station in Hong Kong before Christian Jankowski’s departure. In the 10 days before, the German artist not only installed and opened a “one week exhibition” at Para/Site Art Space but also produced a new work, a series of still of the production and the scenes that documented an imaginary film production. The work has the same title as his exhibition at Para/Site Art Space “The life that changes your week”. The production shots have written explanations with them, telling the viewer what is happening on the picture. While producing the work the artist also interviewed the actors. On this first visit to Hong Kong Christian also visited Shenzhen, went hiking in Shek O and attended a wedding party at Lantau Island. TB: Tobias Berger // CJ: Christian Jankowski // CL: Christina Li TB: Let’s start with the Hong Kong piece, “A Life that Changes Your Week” How did you end up with that title? What is the story around the title? CJ: The title just came from exchanging ideas between you and me, because we needed the title to make the exhibition card and you suggested “The Week that Changes Your Life” out of a reference of the one week the show was only on view. Because you had only this gap between two planed exhibitions, so that was clear that Para/Site had one week to do the show. I thought the title was good, but I actually liked it better the other way around. TB: It’s much less pretentious? CJ: Yes, if you would say “The Week that Changes Your Life” it would be too much for a oneweek exhibition, then you will need at least two. TB: This idea about dialogue, which is the dialogue between you and me, is quite typical in your work. CJ: Many times this reaction is there; the situation, or expectations, or somehow something was thrown at me and I threw it back TB: A lot of times, people talk about site-specificity, but I think in your work, it’s more about spaces and situations, CJ: For me, that site-specific thing is more of the site-specificity of a studio. You do something on a certain location because you have a chance to do it and hope to do some work that lives beyond the site. It also hopefully makes references to universal situations that you would also find in the similar sense somewhere else. Coming back to this new piece, there are film crews all over the world; all of them know the genre of “Still Photography”, which I think, is more situation referral… TB: It’s more about situations, and peoples and connections then. CJ: And machinery and processes that lead to an image, like these collaborational processes, like film crews and television programmes or (tries to think of other examples)…help me… (laughs)
TB: But then it’s also this huge idea of chance, it’s quite Cageian, whatever comes and whatever happens, is somehow right and will work out. CJ: Yes, maybe in that sense, it’s performance related; but on the other hand, I would also say that when you work with professionals who have a certain strategy to come to an image, you can somehow expect some roles, or filling up some roles on their behalf. So, of course it sometimes slightly changes when the element is different form how you normally behave in their productions. But of course when you think about the camera crew or the film team shooting without film inside the camera, you will behave differently, maybe the actress feels different in front of the camera, maybe it relieves some of the pressure, maybe it’s just the opposite. TB: How were your experiences here? You more or less had a professional cast… CJ: Super professional. TB: … a professional camera crew, we also had a producer who was a director, David (Chow), which is something in between - a person who does documentary film and is a filmmaker. You normally don’t have a filmmaker there. But it was good to have him there, so how was the experience? CJ: I think it was almost like jumping into something where nobody knew if it would eventually work. I was surprised that I found them in different ways, and some of them came into the set and already knew each other. Because photographers and actors, they work at commercials and they know each other from other productions. In the Hong Kong film world, there are some limitations; but maybe in Hollywood, they would still know the film makers, cameramen and directors, they would know each other from other productions. So, yeah, in this kind of community, for me, it was a great experience. First of all, to have them there at all, because it was so on the edge, I was still looking for actors one day before … TB: … starting to look for actors, one day before… CJ: We were starting to look earlier than that, but the main actress was missing, but it seems almost like an impossible situation, and also very disrespectful to the actors, and on one hand, I had no chance to do it differently… TB: That notion of respect is actually quite interesting, because on one side, you come to a place and you look for people and you have this enormous respect for them because you get a lot of ideas from them. A lot of times you, through connections, meet them; and then you hire amateurs or amateur professionals … CJ: …or real professionals… TB: or people around, but again you take them, also, out of their own routine and put them into a new situation. CJ: Yeah TB: You don’t treat them with the respect that they normally are treated with.
CJ: Yes and no, somehow, they already expect something different, because that they know that it’s not for the usual purpose of their profession. The film crew people, they know it is going to be slightly different. You know, the talk master in “Talk Athens”, she knew that I was not going to speak a single word. So she already expected, on one hand to do her show, but also to have some surprises. She will not know what before is going to happen. TB: Also in “The Holy Art Work” CJ: Yeah “The Holy Art Work” as well. TB: The TV preacher. He knew that you were going to fall down in front of him and most of the participants know the scenario already, so how do you get all these people to play with that? How do you make them do it? CJ: Just convince them that it would be a good experience. The most important thing is, to have them, I mean the very first thing is that you need to believe in your own ideas, and when you think it is a good work to do, then you can also get others to do it. Like starting a party, when you tell others, “It’s going to be a good party tonight”, you are more likely to get some people to dance with you or to do something. And a lot of times it is important to convince them. Luckily, most of the times it works out that the people didn’t regret doing the project. Many times, I stay in good contact with the participants or the collaborators. There are some projects where you put a lot of energy into it and it doesn’t all come super good together. It can be out of different reasons. There is always a risk involved in all things like that. For some reason, the energy changes, and then you feel that it is a little forced, and that is, at least for me, not that satisfying. Also, maybe, for some people in part of the production as well, but sometimes I realize that some people do not feel the tension at the end when they see the work, because of course in some pieces, I really try to get the participants to go pretty far with me. TB: But doesn’t every piece, go through different phases? Like here in Hong Kong, there are times when it went smoothly, but there also are certain hours when… CJ: Did you know that it was also in the middle of my shoot; I started to take my camera out. I just made these interviews to also get me concentrated and give another direction again. I don’t know but some crisis moments also have their point. They are always good to fill the production process with some drama. Then you want to switch it around again, to walk beyond that, and not to dig into the crisis. It is important that you, yourself, have to enter something that you are not totally aware of all components, TB: So what was special about the Hong Kong experience? CJ: What’s special was- extremely short time frame, and extremely good support from various people. There was a black moment that even though you could say, “This might be looking too rushed.” It’s important to have the photographs where you know the photographs won’t look very much different, I don’t know, even if I had four weeks to prepare. You can only do that with real professional people, and people that are supportive. There were many different reasons why they were supportive, some come from Para/Site, a lot of your friends and people who were involved in Para/Site supported the project very well. But also, big help was from Cynthia’s (Christian’s partner) friends; actually the main reason I came to Hong Kong was for the wedding of Cynthia’s friends. She also supported me with her friends, some people I met before in New York, because they were visiting us, like Ann (Woo), the photographer and Tim,
who also organised the second photographer, Rensis (Ho). It was almost like 50/50, without Cynthia’s connections, we would not be in that point where we were. That was special about this project. For me, also it was very special because this year I was doing a lot of survey shows and working on a lot of survey catalogues and somehow I was looking forward and took a few days to really build up a work, and I was really waiting for that again to do a new piece. That was also a great moment for the very first time in Hong Kong, to meet all these kinds of people in different environments and different situations where you need them, you party with them, you work with them, so I think it was a great introduction for me to Hong Kong. Many of the people are not only Cynthia’s friends, but I also developed my own relationships with them. And I think it was great. CL: Are there any places where you thought it would be better if you had more time, or things that you would have included? CJ: I thought before, like a day or two, I though oh yeah, we need a little bit more time, so many edges were swimming, there was definitely that moment. CL: You said you might include your interviews of the people involved in this piece. So how are you going to put that all together? CJ: By thinking about the work that I got the idea from, which was from this one exhibition we saw at the Cattle Depot, I was just reminded again of this genre of Still Photography. Many times in my pieces, I am not very good in documenting. So sometimes, I wished I had this good photographer, who would capture some of the moments. It’s funny because it is almost like I turned it around, forgetting about the photography; I just took care about the photography. I lost it… what was the question again? CL: How are you going to put the interview section together with the still photography… CJ: Yes, yes, look at the photography that were documenting the movie, I thought it was nice to do this descriptions of the photographs and the situations, and it’s all the drama that is already involved in this kind of very minimalistic descriptions, because they are like some slogans or convey one or two ideas you do with the construction of a photograph. And then it’s almost working like a collage, because they look different in the pictures when you know who are the main actors and a little bit about the scene, the background of the production and what they are facing in that moment. They then become iconographic situations like they are waiting for an actor or waiting for a director to give orders. Then you are reminded about so many moments when you are sticking with others in some impossible situations waiting for the camera to start. There is always something that is not right, such as the lighting. But at the same moment, if you think about what accidents can happen on film, such as a moment when the two main actors are running down the hill, and were running into a car, and it was like real drama, sweating and then laughing later as they are very relieved and very nervous at the same time after encountering a ‘life and death’ situation. And if you put words under it, it reflects about life, and as well as film, as well as how far are you ready to go for film: what you win, what you lose and that you don’t want to lose your life. You can lose a lot with it, but not only money, no? TB: What I like about that piece is that it talks about the production of an artwork, and what is important about the artwork. Is it the production, the story or is it the final product. The work talks about the media and the construction of media, which is seen in most of your works, the questioning of the position of media. Most of your works are not classic performances, nor are
they only installations, and they are not pure films. They are very conceptual, it asks that question again: What is it? It’s not a production, because it is not a film, it’s not a film shoot; it’s this in between idea. CJ: There are two genres in this photography, production stills - normally showing the context of people filming a scene; and then a film still - a still from the film, that somehow the photo camera mimics how the camera will normally shoot. I think on one term, it is about the film still, there are different moments inside, there are different iconic moments in the movie, I really like the idea there are different moments inside, like there are different iconic moments through the movie, somehow the audience, that I would wish, they would connect through the scenes, with the knowledge we have of films, working with your situations and working with your fantasies. Use your own background to somehow create a story out of that. That is, I think, also one part that interests me, how you make stories up with just still images, and you put your fantasy into a film, because you know how there are missing points in between, you can only document by photo stills and photography some part of the movie, TB: So then how does the text work with it? CJ: At the moment, we have the text only on the production stills, we tried also in the collaboration with Christina (Li) and with Yuk King (Tan), to think of the memories we had on that production moment and we tried to get across what was our unique situation when we were shooting and by mixing, somehow, making the viewer believe this is in some way a film production, but at the same moment is a photo production. So calling the whole thing, a production, is not a lie, right? And right now, coming now back finally, to your question… CL: … the videos… CJ: I thought it would be useful… because right now the story of the film, what is on the film stills is not written down yet. But I think it would also be nice to a have a little introduction text, a wall piece, that somehow brings across the elements that is in there. Something that invents the new Chinese hero, like showing the Hong Kong situation that many things are falling away, how you have… these are all quotes that came from the production team and the people working with me on it. Somehow, it also puts the viewer into that direction, then you don’t really have to put it under a theme and then you start it, looking at the production still, thinking “Who is the Chinese hero in there”, “Where do you show that Hong Kong is somehow changing, and something never be elsewhere or anymore anywhere…buildings are been torn down and something will be built there…” It will be documented with this film, most of the film is made in the old neighborhood with Hong Kong in the background. And what else was there, the love scene was not too hard, it was about colours. And talking about failures, how do you manage going beyond failures. Some people will connect the failure with the temple scene, or somebody coming out of prison, or when… it’s all open collages when everyone has their associations where everyone work to make a unique film and… CL: I think it’s interesting how you’re trying to work the videos together with images and the words together to create… Christian then has to run off, to catch the flight to Boston via Amsterdam and New York. In Boston his next museum show at the MIT Museum will open in three days…