MATTHEW BARNEY:
"THOSE NFL FILMS
ARE GREAT."
- - - -
A Selection From the
December/January issue of
The Believer: Matthew Barney
in Conversation With
Brandon Stosuy.
- - - -
THE BELIEVER: Are you into those NFL highlight films?
MATTHEW BARNEY: Yeah, those NFL films are great. What's probably most significant about them, in terms of the way they influenced filmmaking, is the way they brought the individual character out of the chaotic mass of people. This brought a kind of psychological dimension to the viewer. Before NFL Films, the games were described by an upper three-quarters angle, maybe from one sideline, and occasional close-ups. These guys approached the game completely differently. They turned sports photography into a team sport. They'd go out as a squad with one camera responsible for one sideline, one camera would be responsible for the other, not just showing the game, but showing the reactions of the players and coach. Another camera would end up in the rafters with an aerial view, with others in the end zones and up in the crowd. Both exhaustive description and intimate nuances were new to sports broadcasting. I feel close to their way of working, but I think I approach it from the opposite end; I'm not really that interested in rendering characters as emotional entities, but rather giving the emotional agency to the environment. In this case, the stadium. I would start with the stadium as the main character, where for NFL Films the stadium is always part of the chorus. There's also this way of describing conflict in an operatic way—that's one of the reasons why metal is so interesting to me.
BLVR: You often reference punk and metal in your work—for instance, Murphy's Law and Agnostic Front in Cremaster 3 or Steve Tucker and Dave Lombardo in Cremaster 2. I love watching the kids getting ready to slam-dance in Cremaster 3—that overlapping with the Playboy Rockettes. There are a number of younger artists working with punk and metal (and, well, goth) in a manner that resonates with your practice. I'm thinking especially of Banks Violette, who has been casting in salt, come to think of it, and also Matthew Greene and Sue de Beer. The aesthetic's different in most cases, but do you see them, somehow, as descendents?
MB: I'm not sure. The feeling I got from the last Whitney Biennial was that there were a number of pieces that had to do with the artist as outsider, and these subcultures like metal, or a general abject sensibility, were being used to describe an outsider culture as a way of defining the role of the artist. I guess that's not really my interest in metal, or the extreme music scene—my interest has more to do with it as an abstraction of conflict. There's a way that conflict becomes abstracted into the architecture that interests me. Something to do with the relationship between the amplified music on stage, the active mosh pit, and the passive audience beyond the pit, and maybe even more to do with the trench between the stage and the pit, where the security guards are stationed to remove people from the crowd. That same trench is used to protect the performers in other concert situations. With extreme music shows, it functions differently, more like an overflow valve in a bathtub.
BLVR: Do you listen to metal when you work out?
MB: I don't anymore. I used to ... I don't think I listen to music as much as I used to, to tell you the truth. I live with a musician and I'm often surrounded by the music that she's researching or listening to ... and then the people who work in the studio tend to have a range of musical taste ... so by the time I actually have time to sit down and listen to what I like to listen to, I kind of enjoy the silence.
BLVR: All of this in mind, you don't fit the common perception of the artist. In fact, I've had friends refer to you as "a man's man." (Laughs.) I realize that's a limited conception of art and the artist, but if I ask my dad about art, he'll think of Warhol in his silver wig, or whatever. Do you ever feel like an atypical artist?
MB: I felt that way more when I was younger and just starting.
BLVR: Have you seen Art School Confidential?
MB: No.
BLVR: In it, this hunky guy shows up to class and the typical art-school kid says something like, "Who's that weirdo?" It turns out he's an undercover cop.
MB: (Laughs.) That's funny. I think over time you become an island, right? Then questions like that become less relevant. Not because situations change, but because you stop paying attention, not necessarily to the community, but to those sorts of expectations. But certainly as a student, when I had just stopped focusing all my energy on sports, and began making art, I found myself surrounded by a bunch of people from the graduate school who'd already developed a language and were truly committed, and I think I felt a little like the odd man out in that situation. But that changed.
- - - -
The complete interview appears in
the December/January issue of The Believer.
To subscribe, click here.
- - - -
OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES:
- - - -
Matthew Barney: "Those NFL Films Are Great"
Selections From the Notebooks of Max Roosevelt, 15-Year-Old Socialist By Ben Dwertman
Traveling Europe in Style With Auckland Dingiroo, Dark-Age Tourist and Critic of Food and Drink: Avoiding Mongol Capture By John Hallmann
Butterball Help-Line Help-Line By Alysia Gray Painter
My Prison Notes By Jim Stallard
Red dot denotes content that is new today.
Black dot denotes newish content.