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INTERVIEW, JUNE 30TH
By Robin Clark
Published in The Light Project, Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, 2008
This interview took place on June 30, 2008.
Robin Clark: Crystal World is based on a dystopian novel by the British author James Graham Ballard, which was published in 1966. To drastically summarize the novel, a British doctor specializing in infectious diseases travels to a leprosy clinic in rural Africa where he discovers that something there is causing the landscape and its inhabitants to slowly petrify into crystals. The doctor’s first instinct is self-preservation but ultimately he is seduced by the mystery and the quality of light emitted by the crystallization process. What is it about this text that inspired you to create your installation?
Ann Lislegaard: I was fascinated by the scenario, by the jungle location, and by the notion of a place in a constant state of transformation. Ballard is very much a conceptual writer and I think his idea for this novel is related to entropy, since the crystals are completely taking over, creating a sameness, a sort of all encompassing world of light and mirrors. Also, I see the Crystal World as a mental space, a state of mind.
RC: In different ways, the novel and your installation both circle around the idea of light as medium, as a scientific phenomenon that also has psychological and conceptual aspects. How are you using light as a material in Crystal World?
AL: I’ve worked with light in my sound installations but light has never been the subject matter itself. In the past I always used light as an element in relationship to ideas of space, narrative and gender. Crystal World plays with the notion of too much light. The crystallization of the environment is expressed through light that becomes so bright that it bleaches out and creates its own kind of blindness.
RC: Changing gears a little, I wanted to point out that Ballard set his novel in Africa. How did you decide to set your version in South America?
AL: I was invited to participate with the work in the Sao Paulo Biennale and I thought of this as an interesting opportunity to change the setting. So I included architectural elements from Oscar Niemeyer’s buildings in Brasilia and several buildings and social projects built by Lina Bobardi in Sao Paulo. I also had a rare opportunity to see Lina Bobardi’s home, Casa de Vidro. It is built on a mountaintop that can be looked into from all angles since it’s all glass. It reminded me of a big crystal. I wanted to bring some of these elements into the scenario of the 3D animation. In a way the architectural references in the piece, like the glass and furniture from Bobardi, can be seen as characters, as another layer in the mind space of the Crystal World.
RC: The relationship between Bombardi’s house and its environment leads to the next question I had, which is the influence of the Pulitzer site on your design for Crystal World in St. Louis. When you made Crystal World you showed it first in Sao Paulo and subsequently in Venice and Copenhagen, always in large indoor spaces. Do you think about it any differently as it is projected outside onto the Ando building at the Pulitzer Foundation?
AL: Yes, this situation is very different from the previous installations. It’s almost like tattooing a skin, tattooing the building with the double channel projection of Crystal World. I find this interesting since the piece itself has many references to architecture and then projected onto the Tadao Ando building Crystal World almost becomes a parasite architecture or somehow creates its own architectural history with the projection of modernist architecture and entropic imagery on to the specific Pulitzer Foundation building.
Another way that Crystal World is different in St. Louis is that people may discover it by chance, not only because they choose to go into the building to see art, but just by driving by. Maybe they will stop and watch it from their cars, like a drive-in cinema, or walk and see it from the little park outside of the Pulitzer. I look forward to seeing it unveiled.
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