Interview
so the interview is a little lengthy, what can I say I have an inquisitive mind. Thanks to the artist for putting up with my excessive questioning, you had a lot of interesting things to say!
Question: So I wanted to give DC fans a behinds the scenes look at the artist and exhibition. I always find it very telling of how an artist comes to be an artist – so I’ll start with the question – Have you always wanted to be an artist?
I have always made stuff. I don’ know about necessarily being an artist, that wasn’t instinctual, that was more of the business part of it, but I have always made stuff – waking up to make stuff is pretty normal for me.
Question: So did you know when started at the university of Kansas that your interest in making stuff would turn into a career as an artist?
Answer: I started school as a visual arts major and eventually changed to a degree in theatre and film and English. And then I moved to LA and that’s when I pursued my art career.
Me: Wow – I can’t believe you majored in all three of those things
Gilbert: Yea when I was in college I was still making work still kind of instinctually but I think becoming a film major and studying theatre and English kind of informed another narrative into my work – which I think is important to what I am doing now
Me: Is that part of the reason you use so many different types of media in your work?
Gilbert: Well I don’t want to limit myself by material. I tend to go after Identity based projects and narrative based projects. Whatever materials I need to communicate the best is what I use. There aren’t really any materials that scare me off – I just need to find the right one for the right project.
Me: So in this project you are using video, have you done any projects with video in the past?
Gilbert: Um I have.
Me: To this extent? I am under the impression that there is a lot of video art in this current exhibition you are working on.
Gilbert: I have made 14 videos for this project. They are absurd little narratives that kind of go along with the themes of the project.
Me: The themes of the project – those would be safety and security?
Gilbert: Safety and security and mass transportation, but also dealing with a sense of fear and uh over protective behavior – so much so that we tend to take out the common sense and sense of humor in our daily lives.
Me: and where did you get the inspiration for this project?
Gilbert: Well for me, I always respond to what’s happening around me. I am responding to news to current events and pop culture. There is a hyper sensitivity towards..uhh.. well let me back up and going into these other identity based projects. They tend to take away privacy. I went to the original ideas of privacy from earlier projects to taking the privacy of when you travel in terms of you know how you have to give up your belongings, and sort of in terms of how you can’t bring certain things on to air planes and how they sort of go through all these security lines. That’s a certain level of privacy that I am exploring. So I started taking to the security issues that are related to privacy in the sense of safety and security – they are related to that.
Me: So this project now connects to all of your past work?
Gilbert: Yea I mean, its all related. I think just how each project has a narrative, each project has a common thread connected to past projects and it’s just a continuation of them.
Me: What was the last project you did, the underwear?
Gilbert: yea it was dealing with um identity and privacy and transparency and social networking.
Me: and are you for social networking? Art you up to date with all the uh..
Gilbert: Yea – I mean I’m not against. Uh, I don’t necessarily use it for myself. But uh anyway to use it fine and one day I probably will use it. Um it just hasn’t been right for me just yet.
Me: hmm well yea I mean it {social networking} really is kind of an invasion of privacy
Gilbert: Well I mean you I mean you put a lot of personal information out there and anybody can kind of see it. The last project I explored kind of how you protect your own privacy when you are willing to put it out there – the personal information. I am naturally private person, so that’s not right for me.
Me: so then I take it you probably don’t have a facebook account?
Gilbert: I have a journal
Me: (haha) a journal that nobody else sees I take it?
Gilbert: that’s right
Me: Maybe one day that will publish it as part of your memoirs
Gilbert: I can’t guarantee that
Me: They just put me in charge of fb and twitter along with the blog. And twitter is a new phenomenon to me, but its where everyone is getting their news
Gilbert: I actually like it. I don’t follow any specific twitters and I don’t participate in it necessarily but I think it changes how we get information, faster information, the length of our information, um in changes how we operate – the speed that we operate – and the level of um.. I don’t know – our level of patience.
Me: So did you ever wish that people would slow things down?
Gilbert: No not necessarily, I mean I like the pace of things. Things keep on getting faster, which is fine, its bound to happen. But I thing we all respond to psychological in a different way, we respond to the media psychologically.
Me: So would you say your string of projects in your way of responding to this psychologically?
Gilbert: Well I mean my project is psychological. Its certainly dealing with some fear based issues. Umm going back to dealing with safety and security and how we respond to those things.
Me: So your project is composed of several parts, a plane, a life raft, a..
Gilbert: There are several components. There is the plane which is in three different parts. Each one is going to have video. There is the life raft, which is going to be based of the raft of medusa – mine is the fun raft of medusa. And then there is the life vest. Everything is designed to be partially disaster and partially play ground.
Me: So then the people that visit the exhibition will physically be interacting with the art..
Gilbert: Yea I mean its designed so you can walk through things, around things, uhh its going to be kind of maze like, play ground like, uh..there is lots of stuff to see, stuff to hear, um lots of components to it, its very interactive.
Me: So how do you feel about using such a large space, was it a challenge, or were you really excited?
Gilbert: No I mean I think its great. The scale of the project really calls for it. You know you can’t really create a disaster on a small scale to be as effective psychologically. And to create the disaster and a play ground on a large scale is a benefit so it was exciting
Me: so you says its part disaster, part play ground, is it an equal part of both?
Gilbert: Yea
Me: I hope I am not being to redundant, is this a lot of what you talked about in the Artist talk? ( here I was trying to weasel in a re-cap for those of you that missed the event)
Gilbert: ( I think it worked!!) You know it my artist talk I didn’t have a slide show and I didn’t have an exhibition to walk through so what I did in my artist talk is I backed up all the way to some of my first projects maybe 10 years ago, 12 years ago and talked about the themes and why I was making that work. I translated it to the next project, to the next project, to the next project, and how they all kind of relate. So you can go back 10 years from now and see where the core of what my art practice is about started 12 years ago and now I am following that through and kind of of responding to current themes on this new project.
Me: So would you look at in terms of progression, evolution…
Gilbert: I think that it is definitely a progression
tbc!
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