001. Klaus Taschler
Filmmaker and artist from Salzburg, lives and works in Vienna.
Are you doing mainly art, film or something in between?
It’s a good question. There are two kind of worlds, the art world and the film world and I’m always struggling between the two; is it in this direction or more in that direction? Which I also find strange in a way, that I have to question myself that. The question is just that I have a problem with it. Because I feel when I do a video as a kind of artwork, I have to limit myself, that I can’t make a straight narration, or a “happy ending” or whatever. And when you have a film/video project, you use a different language, you shouldn’t get bored when you watch the film. When you are doing art you can have more layers behind it, a theory that you don’t have to show directly; you are more free.
When you begin a new project, do you know which direction it will take?
I think that most of the time, I am thinking that it will be an artwork, and then it somehow could turn out that it doesn’t fit to the art scene. I see myself based in the moving image, mostly video, but then it could turn out to be photography-based, performance-based, a live set-up, or also drawings, for example.
How do ideas come to you?
Sometimes there is an image, sometimes it is an idea that I’m hooked to. Most of the times I start with an idea which is more conceptual, an interesting question that I notice, then I try to get an image to it.
Is there an over-arching theme in your work?
I noticed that people who see my work kind of notice a continuing topic, and there are some topics that I’m interested in. But I know that if I want to make a new artwork and I start thinking about “my topic is this or that”, or that the new work should fit into this, I feel totally blocked. That is a bad start! But it is true that there are some topics that comes again.
I have seen some of your work, and just from pure observation I could say that one of the reoccurring themes is the “ice cream theme”, is that a correct observation?
It has certainly followed me for some years, but I’m not sure I should let it follow me (laughs). For me, ice cream is so interesting because it’s so... it’s kind of childish, and you can enjoy it, it’s kind of sweet, but on the other hand this food is so artificially filled up with different meanings behind it; advertisements often add the sexual and seduction topic to it, you know, licking it. And this kind of fascinated me — two people can eat something together, but rarely you eat something when you can show your tongues (laughs). So it’s very direct, like finger food, sensual.
In a couple of performances I had, I added a meaning to the ice cream. The first project I had with ice cream I added the taste of my body into the ice cream and then I sold it to people, always explaining how I did it and then referring to the book Perfume. Next time I added oriental spices because I saw that it was being sold in the Naschmarkt in Vienna. The owner of the shop is into Arabic medicine. The idea is that you can have a meal that’s good and healthy, so I asked him to mix four kind of tastes that helps you. One is good for the liver, for example. So when I sold it I had to label it as something healthy as well, I wanted to add some more depth to the ice cream theme. So the first try was with the taste of my body, the second was with the herbs.
How did you do the first ice cream-project?
The technique is called enfleurage, as described in the Perfume, you put grease onto your body, which is a coconut fat, and when you do that it gets liquid and sort of melts. Then you remove the grease and mix it with alcohol. Then you can separate these two because the grease gets sticky and then you have a taste in the alcohol, you can then evaporate the alcohol and what is left is the essence which you can smell and taste. And they used to use this technique with some kind of flowers to make perfumes.
So this is how it started.
Then I made a video about a person waiting for somebody with two ice creams in his hands. This started as an image that I saw, a perception of someone who was waiting in front of an ice cream store. As I was walking by I saw this person, a woman, and she couldn’t do anything because both hands are busy, this image kind of stuck in my head. That you just show the image, but it tells a lot more. A lot, but also not that much.
Is the ice cream still with you?
I had problems with it and I kind of let it rest, but I want to go further with it now, continue and see what’s coming up. It’s not a label of mine (laughs), but at least I’m kind of known for it.
How many people are normally involved in the production?
Until now, I do a lot by myself, but for the video of the ice cream guy I had some assistants, but I try to keep it small. I always edit it myself, but for the sound I ask somebody I know. But normally, it’s a small team.
How do you think about distributing your films? Is there any strategy behind the different films depending on the audience that it is targeted for?
It’s exactly the same problem that I sometimes encounter, that when I finish a video or animation and want to send it to some film festival, it doesn’t quite fit the requirements. On the other hand, some videos only work in an art surrounding.
There is one video I made where a person is opening his jacket and there is a lot of money in there, falling out of his jacket, it looks like he is totally relaxed, he can finally let go of his money, then it turns out that all his money is just paper, paper bills. But this video is too slow, it takes a long time to watch it. I never could send it to some festival.
I could imagine some of your videos would be really successful online.
I have put some excerpts of my videos on Vimeo. I discussed with some friends of mine who also works with video about this topic, and its... it turns out it has to be a personal decision that you make, because there is no big reason to put it on the internet or not. And I kind of decided to let go of this idea of getting millions of views on Youtube. I rather put it away and keep control over my set-up. Which of course means that less people are seeing it, that is the downside of it.
Sometimes I think that if I am to put it online, it should be properly done. Like it is intentionally supposed to be viral, or send it to some special web pages, get it into social media. Sometimes I feel like I don’t want to be responsible for spreading it out there, but let’s see, maybe I change my mind on that and do something differently.
You had a video on a film festival last year, No Holidays. For me it obviously has a cinematic quality to it, would you consider this type of video online?
The video is one minute! And that is well enough in a way. You see someone placing postcards on a table and then the postcards start to talk with comic mouths, like “don’t think about the beach” and next postcard says: “don’t think about bath suit”, “don’t think about summer”... all the postcards are of course telling you “sun”, “mountains” etc. You see the postcards showing holidays but they tell you “don’t think about it”.
How do you mean?
(laughs) Well it’s this absurd... there is this kind of test, if you tell someone “don’t think about pink elephants”, the other person cannot stop thinking about pink elephants, it’s kind of the same idea. So this was kind of the start of the idea. The idea is totally simple, of course, and in a way absurd... surrealistic.
How did you do it?
It was filmed with a DSLR camera, then edited in After Effects.
Did you ever work with analogue film?
No, but I worked a lot with analogue pictures and continue to do it.
When you have finished a movie, and you present it at festivals. How do you feel about it?
It is weird, it is definitely weird. At the Crossing Europe film festival there was another video before mine, which was really funny, but somehow the pause between that video and mine was too short, so everyone was still kind of, not finished laughing, and my video was just one minute and you couldn’t get it right away, you have to kind of slowly watch it, it was over too fast. So I thought, that was horrible (laughs).
No one saw it! Maybe it wasn’t true, but that was how I felt.
Do you look forward to the reactions of the audience?
I don’t know. I like to hear reactions from people talking to me, but during the screening... it’s something between “I’m proud, I did it!” and “I’m totally ashamed I did it” (laughs). It’s really both of these feelings. Of course I only see the mistakes and so.
Then there was a moderated talk with the festival people, this was also kind of strange. It was a really relaxed atmosphere, but the questions were like “do you like writing postcards?”, “do you like going to holidays?” (laughs).
Is there a typical question that you would get from the audience or somebody else that has seen your film?
Sometimes I’m surprised that they don’t ask “what does it mean?”. Maybe it’s my approach to it, that it should be there and you shouldn’t get it straight away at a first glimpse, that it’s clear that you can’t describe it in two sentences. Because I don’t think that I’m doing videos that kind of jump out of my “geniousness”... and only I can understand it. It should stand for itself. This is somehow my approach; I did it, I planned it, but it should be living and speaking by itself.
Of course, like with the postcard film, “where did you get all the postcards from?”-question, these are questions that I’m happy to answer, it doesn’t really change the video itself... I think if the question “how did you mean it?” and somebody expects a straightforward answer, then it wasn’t a successful video, according to my rules, you know what I mean? If I could answer it in two sentences, I wouldn’t need to make a video about it.
So if somebody would question you about the meaning of the film, would you then have a clear thought-out answer, or would you try to elaborate a bit further into it?
If someone asks me about it, it probably depends on what mood I am in to be able to answer it. I think I would like to start discuss it. A wonderful thing would be if all the people individually, after watching it, sees something else, noticing different parts of it, that would be perfect, wonderful. I think this could be an answer to the question “what do you mean with it?”. Open your eyes and see what’s in it for you. Of course I can describe the things around it, like “I do like to write postcards” (laughs) or “I do like to eat ice creams”.
But you do have a description of them on you web page, at least a short description.
It’s at least something that I feel that the topic is about. I noticed that the more works and films that I’m doing, the shorter the descriptions get. Whatever that means, but it goes in this direction. I cannot describe in neither two or one hundred sentences, at least I don’t want to. It should be open for interpretation.
Do you know where you will go from now? Will you work more with video and film? Are you interested in other film genres, like documentaries, fiction, etc.?
Yeah, I’m always open for changes, to get other things into my work. I will definitely continue to work with moving images. I did once a video with different characters, sort of actors but without dialogue. I then noticed that I really enjoyed to use them as my tools, more or less. Direct them and tell them to do this and that.
Is this a finished work?
I filmed this and it’s finished, but it’s never been shown because it was in the process of making an animation. The animation was a kind of test but it turned out to be a stronger film than the video with the actors. The animation is made with a kind of monologue, telling a story. I noticed then that the monologue in combination with the film together with the actors, the result was too dense. You couldn’t listen and watch at the same time.
The story is like a fictional setting, the video was called VIP - Virus Infected Personality. So the setting is that there is a virus that can infect you to make a friendship, so it’s genetically based. I could give you my virus and genetically link you as a friend. Because viruses can get into the system, and if we both have the virus we have a genetic similarity in the bodies. So this was the set-up, and the person doing the monologue was explaining it, and also telling about the consequences; that in this fictional future you have to watch out for who you are shaking your hands with, every touch could be an infection, you would only want to infect certain people, and so.
The video animation was totally simple with portraits of different people, with a slow zoom to the faces, together with the monologue. There were different voices explaining what was happening. So you could transfer this virus with a business card, and then consider the consequences of it. The first part was in a beautiful furniture shop. Another scene was on a rooftop, were they were happy together, so you could see that they were “friends”, or infected friends. All in all it was shot in four different locations in Vienna. One was in the 16th district in a parking building. No actors were talking in the film, but I had really fun in directing them in these nice places. I want to try to do that again.
How did you come up with this science-fiction idea?
It started with an invitation to an exhibition called DNArt, from the Vienna Biocenter, part of the biological university, and they have a big space in the third district. They were inviting artists to show something there for the first time, so we could go there and look at the building and get an introduction to genetic technology (laughs).
So we were a total of six artists invited to do work around this genetic engineering topic. They didn’t limit us in any way, so we could have been more critical if we wanted to. It was very playful there, the introduction, they also do this for kids and so. In the introduction I got an explanation for the very first time how a virus works. It doesn’t have a DNA, it’s more or less an empty shell that can take over the DNA of a cell... so I was very fascinated about this virus concept, giving somebody a virus. These people are really trying to use viruses as a tool to get medicine into the body. An anti-cancer-treatment for example. It is probably much more developed now, since this was in 2006.
I was also thinking about having this system of infections, or having a positive view of virus infections (laughs).
You showed the movie to them? What was the reaction to it?
Yeah, they saw it, but I don’t know... there was no big reaction about it or so. Or maybe they did react about it, but never told me.
It sounds to me like you would consider going more into directing if you got the chance to do it?
I don’t really have the experience of working with a big team, but it’s funny that we talk about it, just recently I was thinking about it. I have been teaching video in Linz, and teaching it practically to at least a dozen people working on one clip, for example, and I recently just noticed that “hey, this is like directing”. It’s basically the same thing. You have to give people the overview, give everyone his job, and then it works.
Did any film specifically inspire you? Or a special style?
There were some movies that were really influencing me, one from Darren Aronofsky especially, his Pi movie. I totally loved that feeling, the high contrast and that it looked like it could have been done with a small team. I think it was his diploma movie. There are so many details in the shots, wonderful editing, and the sound... it’s also a kind of science fiction-ish movie, and I when I started out working with films, I started with this utopia topics that really fascinated me. To make a video about something that was not there, more or less. And to make the audience believe in this different worlds.
And there’s always these questions. Like with the virus movie, the question is “are viruses always bad?”, and what are they doing with it within the genetic engineering field. The question in the movie Pi is “can everything be described with science?”. At the end, can we describe the world with this one number? Which is like when they started to make encyclopedias in the 16th century, when they thought: let’s just start to write everything down.
It’s totally fascinating. Maybe we are now two steps further, with the Internet, and Wikipedia, and so on.
Read more about Klaus and his artworks on his homepage:
Interview by Anders Khan Bolin @strayl1ght
