Q+A with Hannah Gross
N- Can you please say three statements that are true about yourself as an artist?
I’m cautious.
I’m slow.
I expect a lot.
N- It seems through your pieces like you were trying to achieve a very specific frequency of thought in the spectator or relationship to the spectator in some way, either by long slow moving images, or repetitive movement or emptiness, is this in some way true? If so which piece of yours did you feel was the most successful from your point of view? Why?
Yes, I think it’s true. Although I’m not quite sure exactly what I was hoping to achieve, if I knew at one time I’ve forgotten now, at least what I was trying to achieve specifically. But I’m very curious about the audience or the spectator or the viewer or whatever. I’m very curious about the relationship between the audience and what they’re viewing – the “contract” between the viewer and what is being presented to them. That last bit is more specific to theatre, I guess, but it looks like I tried to explore here it in these last 7 months (8 months?) without really realizing it. I’m very interested in that and I’m very curious about perception, the physiology involved in watching something. And with those two combined, I think, very basically, I was/am exploring creating/having an active relationship between the piece and the viewer.
I suppose the piece that best strives towards that idea is my first video. The emptiness of the image I think (I hope) invites the viewer to fill it with his or her own content. And I think the movement of the camera better facilitates that rather than if it was just a still image. Maybe because it tricks the viewer into staying with it in hopes that something more will happen. With that video I was also attempting to fiddle around with pulling from the montage aesthetic, except using juxtaposing sounds and images rather than just juxtaposing images, with the intent of the viewer filling the space in between what they are seeing and what they are hearing – creating their own bridge.
N- How do you achieve such minimalism of sorts? Where does the rest of your mental work go? Do you believe it is somehow in the piece, even if it is not completely tangible? Or does it stay with you and drive you crazy?
It stays with me. And either I just force myself to forget about it or, yes, it drives me crazy. I always begin with some grandiose idea verging on operatic, but that’s always how it stays: an idea. And it stays with me because the deconstruction of the idea is never physicalized. I never see all of the components in a room and then eliminate them, because of space/time/money limitations and my own limitations it has to happen in my head.
TS-If you could collaborate with any artist (alive or dead) who would it be?
Oh, gosh! How do you answer that? So many! My answer could change tomorrow, but right now I would say Satie. And if I got to choose one dead and one alive, I’d also choose Robert Irwin.
EF- Where do you see yourself in the quiet spaces of your work?
I’m not sure…I think I don’t really see myself. Unless I’m directly in it. But even then I still feel somewhat removed. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s a vulnerability thing. But I guess it’s also a preference thing – I don’t like looking at my work if I can see my fingerprints all over it, which could sound somewhat contradictory considering there’s an obvious through-line in most of my pieces, but I like making work that feels outside of myself even if that feeling is slightly delusional.
EM-How do you work? In the past has it been more helpful to feel the pressure of a deadline or work within an open-ended time frame? Better to have someone with a gun to your head bugging you to finish or to be left alone?
I resist it-the gun and the deadline, but the truth is, if left to my own devices I’d take longer than GnR’s Chinese Democracy.
EM-Typically where do you draw inspiration from? What is your relationship to inspiration?
Trains, books, eavesdropping, music, theatre, dance, airports, movies, plants, water, anything, although mostly literature. But I’m realizing my relationship to inspiration is somewhat detrimental – I wait for it to hit me on the head rather than seeking it out. Means a lot of waiting, which maybe isn’t necessarily always a bad thing, but makes me feel stale.
M- What do you think makes an amazing performer? Who is your favorite performer or the career of an artist you really admire?
Ease, a looseness. At least that’s the quality that makes me most want to watch someone, that allows for a level of danger and unpredictability. Gena Rowlands is someone who exhibits that, she’s one of my favorites. Who else...Mark Rylance is an obvious one. As far as careers go, there are countless of people I admire, basically anyone who can achieve some form of success and maintain credibility as well as their own artistic drive I find impressive, from Cassavetes to Karen Finley to Leonard Cohen.
C- If you could continue working on one of your forum pieces which would it be and how would you move forward?
Probably “That’s fine, tomcat”. I originally wanted to make a panel of 10 videos of me interacting with the camera (iPhone camera) in that same position all playing on loop, and actually did make 4 more other videos but I’m technologically incompetent and also dependent on iMovie so that didn’t happen. But I would like to do that. And I would spend more time on the soundtrack.
A: Do you think about stimulating a specific response or energy in your spectators?
Yes. Well, not so much a specific response, but I do think about how certain aesthetic choices would affect the viewer. Energy is a good word for it. I hadn’t articulated it to myself as “energy” before, but I suppose that best describes it. As I said in my answer to Nico’s question, I’m interested in the very basic idea of perception and curious about how a piece of work can alter/affect one’s perception, not emotionally or intellectually, but physically. I’m not sure why, but I’m drawn to particular space or place of energy - I describe it to myself as the “undercurrent”, but now that I think about it I may have to redefine it – a space outside of and under time. But I’m equally interested in what happens physically and mentally while in that space as I am in what happens when you come out of it.
W- Hannah, what was the genesis of your piece, How to:?
Erin’s prompt was ritual and so I wanted to take a gesture, a very simple gesture, repeat it over and over and over without thinking about it, as though it was second nature, and see if and how it altered over time and if anything else came out of it. If I’d had the stamina and patience I would have done it for an hour, but I think I only did it for about ten minutes.
JF-You made a film with a small dark speck moving in the background...did you direct/was that speck intentional? What did it mean? Does it have meaning for you?
I’m actually not sure which video you’re referring to...January?