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Juan Guardiola
As far as culture is concerned, the turn of the century has allowed us to witness how the end of unique thought and the proliferation of individual discourse have run alongside the expansion of the expressive resources available to creators. The contemporary artist, lucid obsever of his time, has stopped focusing the world from a single point of view. He now confronts it through multiple sights and visions. New strategies (and new territories) that, though at first might seem different, in the end coincide. Art, for a long time synonym with painting or sculpture, has appropriated digital and analogical images as mediums. This discipline decantation has made of cinema and photography two of the most emblematic sites of the cultural production of our times. In the case that occupies us here, it is not really about talking of filmmakers who do photography or viceversa. It is mostly about looking into a kind of relationship between supports that goes beyond mere anecdote. John Water's work is a good example. At first, it seems likely to be reduced to such an analysis, nevertheless, when we look at his "artistic" production we begin to discover intimate connections that have to do with his filmic work, as well as with the artistic milieu that originates them. This slim-moustached little devil, it turns out, is a very educated, intellectual person not to mention his good nature and natural humor. He's very far from the enfant terrible of trash culture myth that surrounds him and his work. These then are the guidelines of our conversation. - John, the largest part of your audience -critics and otherwise- has only seen in your work some of the most disturbing and "disgusting" films in the history of cinema. However, there are others who believe that even if this is true, they have been made in a lucid, satirical and intelligent way, taking on and mixing issues so far apart as the crisis of the family institution, gender, sexual confusion or even the death penalty. Do you agree with this double reading of your first film works? Well, I agree certainly that I've always tried to make humor from subject matter that maybe you never laughed at before. I think humor is liberation, I think humor is protection, I think even when I was giving you images that were repellent, at the same time I'm asking you to like this images and to maybe look at them in a different way. Give something that you hated before a chance. I think the only way to change anybody's mind is by making them laugh. And then they'll listen to you at least. At least they'll open the possibilities of seeing something differently. (…) (…) - I would like to discuss in this interview other aspects of your work that might give us a wider vision of it and that might help us in looking with other eyes at your "artistic" production. Please note that I am using the word ART with all its connotations (including boredom and pretentiousness). It is not that I reject your most popular side, even trashy if you like. On the contrary I champion it but only in relation with other readings or points of view. Do you accept this mix of high & low cultural critique?
I agree with those quotation marks because I would never call what I do "art". I am more humble than that. That is up to others to say... I certainly [accept this mix], I've always done that. I mean, my main influences when I was young were Ingmar Bergman and nudist-camp movies. I always mixed them together, I like the power of contemporary art to horrify people. When I was about seven years old I went to the Baltimore museum and bought a little Miró poster. I didn't know anything about it but I remember I hung it in my bedroom and the other kids would go: 'Ough! Anybody can do that! That's horrible! Why would you hang that up?' and I knew then that art would always interest me, that I would be a collector and that I would be involved in contemporary art because it's a secret language, it has the same power to alienate people and I find that very humorous in a way ... - As far as I understand, I think that in this combination lie some of the keys to understanding your work well beyond the restrictive coordinates of underground cinema and trash culture. That is why I thought it might be interesting to gather in the same context the "other faces" of John Waters, that is , your photography, your writing, and of course, your film work. Do you think that your interests, your manias and obsessions can come out in the interrelation of the three? Certainly. They're the three things I do the most: I make films, which is a narrative that is very, very visual, it's story-telling that's really about my writing. I think my income tax form says I'm a writer. I couldn't be a film-director unless I was a writer because I have no interest in directing movies that I didn't write. You see, the fun of it is making it up, and with the photos I'm writing those little movies myself. Hopefully, if I'm successful, the images that are taken from other movies, and in a completely different way than the original director had in mind, can become my movies. Because they are collages, they're taking images and putting them in a new narrative that was never, ever implied by any of the original directors. (…) (…) - You have talked about your photographs as "my little movies" or "the director's cut" ... Let me say that there were two more shows after that, two titles that you may not know, these were Low Definition and Straight to Video which is kind of an insult, like if your movie did so badly that it never even came out except in video stores ... - Do you not intend the same when through the selection and re-direction of the frames you look for the essence of what the film was for you? I look for the essence of an image that I liked in the film that could be mixed with another image and turn into something completely different. Richard Prince thought up "re-photographing" so I wanted to do almost a joke on Richard Prince by re-directing which is the ultimate goal: to take somebody else's movie and re-direct it in the way you think it should have been done. It was a satire, I mean, I love Richard Prince, I went to a show of his recently in New York and there was one of the first pieces he did that was just re-photographing furniture ads in magazines. They were so scary looking!. . .It's really good, I think he's a great artist and it was really an idea that shocked people. I mean, I love the idea that when Richard Prince does a portrait of you he says: "Well, show me three pictures of yourself that you like" And you show him those three pictures and he takes one of those and that's the Richard Prince portrait of you! It's delightful, it's funny and it makes people mad, that's the best thing about contemporary art! (…)
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