Page 38 - Studio International - November 1971

Dennis Oppenheim

interviewed by Willoughby Sharp

I
ws: From the summer of 1967 to 1969, you were
concerned with increasingly large-scale earth-
oriented projects, ranging from the pieces in the
snow at Fort Kent, Maine, to the Cancelled Crop
project at Finsterwolde, Holland.
Can you pinpoint a time when you made the
shift in focus towards your own body which has
been a pivotal feature of your work for the last
two years ?
Do : Yes, I had begun to think in those terms
during my one-man exhibition at the Yvon
Lambert Gallery, Milan, in early summer 1969.
One of the most important pieces I did there was
Sound Enclosed Land Area, which consisted of a
sound tape of my footsteps while I walked
around a selected area of the city for a specific
time following a map. At this particular time, I
made a major re-evaluation concerning my
physical interaction with material. It implied a
re-acceptance of the manual, physical aspect of
art-making which had been totally relinquished
when I based my land projects within a
conceptual framework. Later that summer I
proposed Weight Displacement for the 'Art by
Telephone' show in Chicago. I asked that piles
of five materials prominent in the construction a piece of museum architecture. ws: What other films did you make in the Fall of
of the museum be distributed on the museum ws : Was it about this time that you made your '69
floor in piles equal to my weight at the time of first film, Backtrack? DO : Wrist, Arm and Asphalt. The use of film was
installation. Do: Yes, that was executed on Jones Beach in very difficult for me to accept. Throughout
ws : How exactly were you relating back to your September 1969. I had always conceived of the 1968/69, I had the sense of trying to get further
body ? piece in terms of filmic documentation. The away from any traditional usage of material. I
DO : By using my changing physical condition as project acted as a release: it had been years since felt a great incongruity between my position and
a measure of control for a piece, attempting to I had consciously focused on a physical activity. almost everything that was a product of the art
regulate its volume/scale ratio from a great My aim there was to fuse the spanning of the system. I think this was also sensed by a lot of
distance. land with the act of making. The body had artists involved in this radical break, in terms of
ws: What were the materials ? turned tool, its manoeuvres, weight, and gestures how their work related to what was developing
Do : There were piles of progressively heavier being recorded on beach sand. I wanted this contemporaneously.
materials : insulation, sawdust, gypsum, cement, film to consolidate my changed aesthetic ws: What are you referring to ?
and iron filings. Each week the museum would position. I was trying to get as close as possible Do: Painting and other sculptural concerns. I've
call me and adjust the piles according to my to the material that was supporting me, to always thought that the aims of the earth-
weight. My everyday activities were thus interact directly with it instead of vicariously oriented work were far more ambitious on most
controlling the proportions of the material. In activating an ego-system, to become the sole levels than the process-oriented work, which
June 1969 while in Berkeley, California, I was stimulus operating on a primitive physical reeked of associations with a past aesthetic that
still thinking about a certain aspect of physical level. we understood only too well. In some way I
contact, arising mainly from the Concentric ws : Would you say this was as significant a applaud somebody like Les Levine who was
Rings piece I did in New Haven in 1968. Then realization in terms of the subsequent evolution able to deal with a fragment of real time within
the sense of physically spanning land, activating of your work as the Oakland wedge, that first an art context. His restaurant was an example.
a surface by walking on it, began to interest me. cut you made into a sloping hillside in '67 ? ws: True. He was very interested in getting
When you compare a piece of sculpture, an DO : It would be safe to say that the pursuits away from the art object and a pioneer in terms
object on a pedestal, to walking outdoors for ten surrounding the Cancelled Crop project in of presenting residual information as the work.
minutes and still being on top of your work, you Holland in September '69 were enveloped in Do : Part of my apprehension concerning film
find an incredible difference in the degree of quasi-scientific systems that were alien to the arose from the separation between the art
physicality and sensory immersion. The idea of kind of aesthetic mechanism I could easily mechanism and my motivation for engaging in
the artist literally being in the material, after relate to. It wasn't until I did Arm and Wire that outdoor work. It didn't have much to do with
spending decades manipulating it, appealed to I began to understand the relationship between the convenience of making a film. I suppose the
me. I think those considerations lay behind the the initiator and recipient of an act. Almost whole issue of documenting one's work was just
Weight Displacement proposal for Chicago, in immediately I realized that this presented a more not prevalent at the time.
linking my weight to something as foreign to it as compelling direction in which to work. ws : You didn't want to get into film problems.
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