Interview with Neil Goldberg
by Jeanine Oleson
Neil Goldberg makes amazing video work. I've watched some of his pieces many times during our video tour of Russia last year, and every time, some new response would come to me. Goldberg approaches his process of art making with a conceptual structure of very ordered, repetitive editing and singular focus on the particular subject he is examining. He documents mundane activities until they become a kind of choreography or rhythm, which take on sublime new meaning. We sat down to talk about his tape, A System for Writing Thank You Notes (2001, 8 minutes). After the death of Neil's mother, his father devised an obsessive yet poignant system of sentences to construct the text of thank you cards. In this rigid single take, you see his father sitting in his messy office addressing his son's request for a diagram of his system...a funny yet Oedipal exchange between father and son, subject and artist.Jeanine Oleson: In A System for Writing Thank You Notes, your father's structure becomes a means of dealing with human emotion and loss. How do you use formal structure?
Neil Goldberg: In a couple of ways. Consciously, I like to set up a system that is as rigid and unvarying as possible so it begins to disappear. It serves as almost a rhythm, which somehow permits latent material — the stuff I'm trying to get to — to emerge. I often think of it in terms of music- structure and repetition form the rhythm of the composition and that rhythm supports the melody.
My Parents Read Dreams I've Had About Them, 1998, 8:30 min.
JO: In A System for Writing Thank You Notes, a very difficult moment has transpired. Your mother has died, and here you are, left with the one person this may be more difficult for- your father. Instead of devising a structure of your own, you examine the one he has created. What do you think your relationship to the idea of structure is based on growing up with your particular father?
NG: For me that piece is very significant, because I think it illustrates the archaeology of my own relationship to structure and order. Specifically, I think my father and I share a certain relationship to structure — one that is problematic but is also probably what helps make this piece interesting. In this case, dealing with repetition and formalism is a great way to not deal with feelings, because it is an infinitely absorbing — for him AND me. I think that's what made me want to document the system he'd created. Here he is in the middle of this grief after the loss of his wife, a 54-year marriage that he considered good. Five minutes after my mother died, he asked me to begin thinking of who we were going to include in the obituary, a little bit later, he began sorting through her wallet. I think for him, and through my complicated inheritance, focusing on structure becomes a way not to focus on pain, yet maybe to somehow metabolize it, though I'm not sure of that.
Hallelujah Anyway #2, 1996, 2:41 min.
JO: In your work, I detect a certain anthropology of mundanity as well as a structured choreography... Getting back to the tape, you looking at your father's systems of coping and transferring your own pain back onto him, it becomes a narrative. Not a theatrical one, but an encapsulation of an anthropological moment. But what is so amazing to me in your practice are those transcendental moments where the formal structure opens up to emotion...
NG: Intense sadness or despair, hope, elation, whatever -- I can experience these as overpowering, but I guess they're what I'm drawn to in my work. For me, the most accessible way to deal with them is indirectly, to create a structure -- often involving repetition -- by which they can emerge.
JO: You've told me that your family always comes to your screenings. What does your dad think of the tape in that situation?
NG: He thinks he's made a wonderful video that is getting a lot of attention. He doesn't understand it as a collaboration between us. He thinks it's more his work and loves the attention that the situation brings him. He has a huge capacity not to see what I think are the emotional subtleties of the piece. But on one level that's kind of a relief for me. I sometimes feel uncomfortable when he comes, but he always has a great time.
A System for Writing Thank You Notes, 2001, 8:00 min.
JO: Did your dad write out his own script to deliver in the tape?
NG: Yes, he wrote something originally that would have taken close to an hour for him to read, which would have been interesting, but I worked with him to edit the piece down to something a bit shorter...
JO: Have you ever thought of making a more constructed, theatrical narrative?
NG: Not really. Not as an adult, I'd say. I guess it comes down to my not being interested so much in "capturing" emotion in a traditional dramatic sense. I'm more interested in the way emotion is ascribed or projected, especially onto seemingly neutral, mundane experiences. Like when I shot merchants opening their shop gates in the morning as one of the channels in Hallelujah Anyway. I've had people tell me they find it incredibly depressing and others say just the opposite. Which I love, because that somehow matches my own experience -- that these moments have a shifting emotional valence. My favorite response was an acquaintance that said he wanted that tape played at his funeral! But I guess in terms of making a theatrical narrative I suppose for me it might be a good exercise, kind of what we did in workshops in Russia, asking people to make the kind of tapes they "aren't good at."
JO: But even that remains a conceptual structure for you...
NG: Yes... A System for Writing Thank You Notes has been really weird. I'm surprised at people's interest in my father. When it was screened at the admittedly specific audience of the Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center, mostly women asked very personal questions about my father like "How has he adjusted?", etc. In watching that piece I myself wouldn't think to extrapolate past the beginning or end. I also often get asked me how I feel about people laughing at my work. I never have a problem with that. I like it when people laugh even when they don't feel comfortable laughing or aren't sure why they're laughing.
JO: Do you feel like a member of the Goldberg family when making your work?
NG: There are a lot of mirrors in the piece. His method of how he dealt with his grief is also a model for me in some sense on a personal level, for better or worse. And also, the formal structure is a model for my process as an artist. I feel like all of my work employs or re-enacts models similar to my father's system for writing thank you notes. In terms of using my family in the work, they are very open and give me the benefit of doubt though I don't think they understand my motivations at all times. Then again, neither do I.
© Jeanine Oleson-Neil Goldberg 2003
all images © Neil Goldberg, courtesy of the artist
Neil Goldberg is a New York based artist who has been producing and exhibiting experimental videos and installations since 1992. His work has been presented at museums, galleries, public spaces, media festivals and broadcast outlets internationally. Selected venues include the Museum of Modern Art, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Wexner Center for the Arts, The Pacific Film Archives, The New York Video Festival at Lincoln Center, The San Francisco Independent Film Festival, The New York Exposition of Short Film, The Kitchen, NGBK Kunsthalle Berlin, The British Film Insititute, the Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona and Reel NY on PBS, among others. Goldberg's work has been supported with fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Experimental Television Center, the McDowell Colony and CEC International Partners, among others.
Jeanine Oleson is an artist and occasional curator who lives in New York. She makes video, installation, sound and photographic work. She attended school at the School of the Art institute of Chicago, Rutgers University, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has shown at venues including: the 2003 Portland Biennale; 24/7 at Centre for Contemporary Art, Vilnius, Lithuania; PS 122 Gallery, NY; Bill Maynes Gallery, NY; White Columns, NY; Centro Fundacion de Ludwig, Havana; Institute for Contemp. Art, Boston; Hallwalls, Buffalo, NY; and Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago, IL.