Interview with Thomas Lanfranchi, published in Area Revisited) e ( Skies! July 2010
What do you mean not "levitation monochrome and formal? What is your research?
You want me to tell you how it started?
Willingly.
Untitled, 1993 Courtesy
Semiose Gallery, Paris
I got my Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1991 in Marseille Luminy. In the fourth year I did an Erasmus exchange with Düsseldorf, Germany, and stayed until graduation. Kossuth was in the workshop. It was a workshop where they worked little but thinking much. In contrast, Joseph, I did not have a vision of emptiness and nothing similar to that most players entertained conceptual art. I often found them a bit too seriously, except Kaprow, Weiner or people close to Fluxus. I wondered what there was nothing before that? You know, this vision of the universe, when we ask "where does the universe? . I told myself that 'nothing' does not exist, that forces builders and generators existed long before. It's a bit strange, but I really felt, at least intuitively, and sometimes physically. I started thinking about it, and I thought working with other energies, still little known today. These so-called parallel forces or energies.
is this assumption comes the term "levitation monochrome". I cut a square in a trash bag, usually blue, and asked the ground. I group of people (when there were) around, trying to levitate the monochrome, by force of thought. Everyone was concentrating on his way. For my part, I felt this act as a letting go, a different way of understanding the world of books.
And it worked?
Yes, it worked. At first I was doing very badly, but then I makes a better experience, titled The cube of clouds. I asked people to sit outside, inside a square drawn on the ground to determine a shape from the mind. The aim was to focus on the clouds passing in the sky above us, by the sheer strength of spirit, reshaping gaseous material which consists of a cube. Besides the human relationship that was rewarding, I had little results. When you bring people, there must be something going on. And I do not go there much. Soon these experiences
concentrations, which may seem simple, inwardly disturbed me.
So I left the South West where I lived and I started trying to meet people with whom I could share my views and poins may be experiencing. Tibetans, all kinds of ufologists as the Raelians, spiritualists, Zen monks ... I had this experience with Tibetan monochrome. And it worked with them while they laugh all the time! They are in a real transcendental search for them the concept of profit is irrelevant, because it often hides the real world works and its impermanence. Then it was the much laughter: yes, these energies exist, but it is not very important. The side a little "magic" was ultimately not very interesting adventure to do much more. But I remain convinced that these performances of the early 1990s were an artistic core, possible bases for future development. I went home a bit lost. I started drawing me to hang up the real. I still draw on the envelopes. Every day I make a drawing: an owl, a swallow, ectoplasmic forms ... I did a search on the world of forms, to find other voice. This body of drawings has taken the name over the years, Thomas Lanfranchi, the great forger or the true story of levitation forms. At the same time began work volume, where I have reconsidered this square of plastic that was on the ground, started the tape, and build a cube. A cube as a space in which we could evolve as an extension of my body - mini temple or "Mertzbau" plastic to resume Kurt Schwitter. A place that could have been used for meditation or to accommodate everyone, I did not really know. I presented this research in one of my art center region, and chair rail gantry, near Albi; people marked me as visitors, most often warned, remained highly skeptical, if not disappointed. It is true that the materialization of my thoughts at that time, or at least their construction in space, was often close to the disaster. I then tried to run them outdoors in the open air. This work was born of flying sculptures. He took his followers, in the logic of my past performances.
Untitled, 2009 Courtesy
Semiose Gallery, Paris
You never called for public to attend this?
If it does not come or whatever. I then made films and photos of these shapes in the sky, like a trace.
Your forms need to be activated in space. However, this activation is to make them levitate in the air. Is the environment essential to these sculptures? My
forms arise, and ascend to heaven. It became the essential context. What's great about heaven is that there is no scale. The blue absorbs completely all. We can put something infinitely small as something great. We no longer know. The concepts of scale disappear. He is our only border with the rest of the universe, an area virtually unknown. I think there is in man an instinctive attraction towards the sky. Given this immensity, I believe that ultimately, what interests me most is can no longer make shapes. Art, historically, naturally turned to the sky, since its inception. The sky is most often leads to a domestic relationship, and we constantly away from the notion of purpose or return - I speak as an artist researcher. In this area of impermanence, the impalpable, the thing that is thought but not blue blue ... the sky is finally may be the area that interests me most. That's why I continued my practice.
What do the forms that you develop?
Nothing. I had started at the beginning, around 1993, a search on the heavenly Jerusalem. In the tables of Italian Quattrocento and stories that are told in predellas, Saints go into the sky from above the walls. It seemed that the wall, in its crenellated protective has a very important role in cutting between the real and the sky. I then did the walls, forms niche. Then came a second family of shapes, which works more in space, according to the principle of the connection. My thought at that time was more ideas post minimum footprint, Sol Lewitt and others. Since multiplication of volumes in space. A sort of snub to the gravitation of the world, a way of living space with a maximum of not much.
Untitled, 1996 Courtesy
Semiose Gallery, Paris
You realize sculptural volumes, with great economy of means: garbage bag and tape allow you to create forms inflatables. Why did you choose these materials?
I am hooked on plastic, I think they are fantastic and thoroughly modern materials. Moreover, we find everywhere. Cheap paper, the trash bag. What interests me is that the trash bag is both strong and hyper sensitive. It has a rated inadequate as a subject, what interests me. In this way too, I join the world of performance. The trash bag has a side transparent, and sound off when I like. Resistant plastics, I was not interested. Especially today, where there is like a race to overproduction, to render perfect, almost industrial. As if work was good because it has cost millions ... I'm in a bit of alchemy made rather on the side of the poor art.
How do you make shapes with tape and garbage bag?
Before the fine arts, I began scientific studies. I am very binary and a bit manic. The calculation in its pure form and abstract has always seduced. One day I bought an old paraglider, have cut .... Basically it is a story of crates that hold air. The air inflates the volume, there is a hole on the back that serves as a vacuum and air outlet.
No rods inside, nothing?
No, otherwise it would tear. It's very simple. At the same time, I often discuss with a friend researcher, who told me that this is far from straightforward and that I should patent them! Often they are called kites. They are not: the kite is still flat. It's a racket or a diamond based on the air. You put pressure down below with your body and the wind will push it. While there is the opposite. It swells, and once took the form a volume of air around will bring him forward ambient vibration. That's why I talk about levitation.
Being called a kite bothers me little, I always believed the most strongly that the creative act is always on the periphery, not the center of a human system. I often have many disappointments. The models work, if we can say, once in three ... But do not worry, all the better after all.
Untitled, 2001 Courtesy
Semiose Gallery, Paris
Do you handle the fact that the sculpture is important?
Yes because it's a performance. Moreover, if I'm not there, it does not work. I can not put it somewhere, hang it, fix it, it no longer works, I Guide. The report is important to the body. These are sculptures, beyond the three-dimensional relationship, are unlikely to be the fairest way I found to date to measure the real me.
You are very aware of the exposure conditions of your work in galleries. Now what form this takes place? How do you set this work?
I'm not a photographer or filmmaker. My results are closer to the testimony. I show the pictures I have, a moment of my research, and we often chosen together with the gallery owner or the person who expose myself.
And the videos?
The final work is the movie. The only trace I have of this work there. It is like the work and anti implemented. But at the same time, what is work? I still struggle to understand where the work begins, because in the gallery or in a place inside, we can speak only a trace.
Untitled, 1998 Courtesy
Semiose Gallery, Paris
What is interesting is that the flight forms can be seen through these films.
If one day I was flying these volumes with people around, which almost never happened, we could say that these people have actually seen the work, at least in situ (I hate that word). But since that time is fragile ... With the movie, we are quite lifelike. Even if there is ... If I was framing movies when I was telling a story, it would be different. But they are films that are only evidence of reality.
How do you see yourself in relation to Smithson, for whom the key non-site appears to be the notion of movement or transfer? Do you think moving an object on another website changes its meaning? It finally seems that the non site maintains a link with the original site.
I have already been proposed to install my volumes in a white cube and inflate them with a fan, but the film is so much better, I do not do it or whatever. If I can throw in size is awesome. I'd like to make face to face projected, with a model that evolves in different spaces. If I get back inside, I prefer to do my experiments with levitation. I did and it was good to CREDAC. By contributing to Smithson, I respect his work, but I'm quite at odds with the romantic idea of the site and no site. The site is important: I'm driving and suddenly I see a spot with good light, and I moved hop. Smithson, the problem he had is that at one time, its parts were left inside. That is the problem of land art, hence the theory of non-site a little easier wrong. My forms, for now, never found inside, as they are movies. It's a little pirouette that I imagined never to put anything inside. I broke once this view at the gallery in Paris Semiose. I was both happy to do while living the experience as a broken dream. Shortly after, I carried the same volume outside a little changed. It strangely worked better than others that seemed more appropriate. It was a movie and I'm very happy. I still thank Benoît Porcher for having the courage to show what kind of experience and encouragement.
What do you mean not "levitation monochrome and formal? What is your research?
You want me to tell you how it started?
Willingly.
Untitled, 1993 Courtesy
Semiose Gallery, Paris
I got my Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1991 in Marseille Luminy. In the fourth year I did an Erasmus exchange with Düsseldorf, Germany, and stayed until graduation. Kossuth was in the workshop. It was a workshop where they worked little but thinking much. In contrast, Joseph, I did not have a vision of emptiness and nothing similar to that most players entertained conceptual art. I often found them a bit too seriously, except Kaprow, Weiner or people close to Fluxus. I wondered what there was nothing before that? You know, this vision of the universe, when we ask "where does the universe? . I told myself that 'nothing' does not exist, that forces builders and generators existed long before. It's a bit strange, but I really felt, at least intuitively, and sometimes physically. I started thinking about it, and I thought working with other energies, still little known today. These so-called parallel forces or energies.
is this assumption comes the term "levitation monochrome". I cut a square in a trash bag, usually blue, and asked the ground. I group of people (when there were) around, trying to levitate the monochrome, by force of thought. Everyone was concentrating on his way. For my part, I felt this act as a letting go, a different way of understanding the world of books.
And it worked?
Yes, it worked. At first I was doing very badly, but then I makes a better experience, titled The cube of clouds. I asked people to sit outside, inside a square drawn on the ground to determine a shape from the mind. The aim was to focus on the clouds passing in the sky above us, by the sheer strength of spirit, reshaping gaseous material which consists of a cube. Besides the human relationship that was rewarding, I had little results. When you bring people, there must be something going on. And I do not go there much. Soon these experiences
concentrations, which may seem simple, inwardly disturbed me.
So I left the South West where I lived and I started trying to meet people with whom I could share my views and poins may be experiencing. Tibetans, all kinds of ufologists as the Raelians, spiritualists, Zen monks ... I had this experience with Tibetan monochrome. And it worked with them while they laugh all the time! They are in a real transcendental search for them the concept of profit is irrelevant, because it often hides the real world works and its impermanence. Then it was the much laughter: yes, these energies exist, but it is not very important. The side a little "magic" was ultimately not very interesting adventure to do much more. But I remain convinced that these performances of the early 1990s were an artistic core, possible bases for future development. I went home a bit lost. I started drawing me to hang up the real. I still draw on the envelopes. Every day I make a drawing: an owl, a swallow, ectoplasmic forms ... I did a search on the world of forms, to find other voice. This body of drawings has taken the name over the years, Thomas Lanfranchi, the great forger or the true story of levitation forms. At the same time began work volume, where I have reconsidered this square of plastic that was on the ground, started the tape, and build a cube. A cube as a space in which we could evolve as an extension of my body - mini temple or "Mertzbau" plastic to resume Kurt Schwitter. A place that could have been used for meditation or to accommodate everyone, I did not really know. I presented this research in one of my art center region, and chair rail gantry, near Albi; people marked me as visitors, most often warned, remained highly skeptical, if not disappointed. It is true that the materialization of my thoughts at that time, or at least their construction in space, was often close to the disaster. I then tried to run them outdoors in the open air. This work was born of flying sculptures. He took his followers, in the logic of my past performances.
Untitled, 2009 Courtesy
Semiose Gallery, Paris
You never called for public to attend this?
If it does not come or whatever. I then made films and photos of these shapes in the sky, like a trace.
Your forms need to be activated in space. However, this activation is to make them levitate in the air. Is the environment essential to these sculptures? My
forms arise, and ascend to heaven. It became the essential context. What's great about heaven is that there is no scale. The blue absorbs completely all. We can put something infinitely small as something great. We no longer know. The concepts of scale disappear. He is our only border with the rest of the universe, an area virtually unknown. I think there is in man an instinctive attraction towards the sky. Given this immensity, I believe that ultimately, what interests me most is can no longer make shapes. Art, historically, naturally turned to the sky, since its inception. The sky is most often leads to a domestic relationship, and we constantly away from the notion of purpose or return - I speak as an artist researcher. In this area of impermanence, the impalpable, the thing that is thought but not blue blue ... the sky is finally may be the area that interests me most. That's why I continued my practice.
What do the forms that you develop?
Nothing. I had started at the beginning, around 1993, a search on the heavenly Jerusalem. In the tables of Italian Quattrocento and stories that are told in predellas, Saints go into the sky from above the walls. It seemed that the wall, in its crenellated protective has a very important role in cutting between the real and the sky. I then did the walls, forms niche. Then came a second family of shapes, which works more in space, according to the principle of the connection. My thought at that time was more ideas post minimum footprint, Sol Lewitt and others. Since multiplication of volumes in space. A sort of snub to the gravitation of the world, a way of living space with a maximum of not much.
Untitled, 1996 Courtesy
Semiose Gallery, Paris
You realize sculptural volumes, with great economy of means: garbage bag and tape allow you to create forms inflatables. Why did you choose these materials?
I am hooked on plastic, I think they are fantastic and thoroughly modern materials. Moreover, we find everywhere. Cheap paper, the trash bag. What interests me is that the trash bag is both strong and hyper sensitive. It has a rated inadequate as a subject, what interests me. In this way too, I join the world of performance. The trash bag has a side transparent, and sound off when I like. Resistant plastics, I was not interested. Especially today, where there is like a race to overproduction, to render perfect, almost industrial. As if work was good because it has cost millions ... I'm in a bit of alchemy made rather on the side of the poor art.
How do you make shapes with tape and garbage bag?
Before the fine arts, I began scientific studies. I am very binary and a bit manic. The calculation in its pure form and abstract has always seduced. One day I bought an old paraglider, have cut .... Basically it is a story of crates that hold air. The air inflates the volume, there is a hole on the back that serves as a vacuum and air outlet.
No rods inside, nothing?
No, otherwise it would tear. It's very simple. At the same time, I often discuss with a friend researcher, who told me that this is far from straightforward and that I should patent them! Often they are called kites. They are not: the kite is still flat. It's a racket or a diamond based on the air. You put pressure down below with your body and the wind will push it. While there is the opposite. It swells, and once took the form a volume of air around will bring him forward ambient vibration. That's why I talk about levitation.
Being called a kite bothers me little, I always believed the most strongly that the creative act is always on the periphery, not the center of a human system. I often have many disappointments. The models work, if we can say, once in three ... But do not worry, all the better after all.
Untitled, 2001 Courtesy
Semiose Gallery, Paris
Do you handle the fact that the sculpture is important?
Yes because it's a performance. Moreover, if I'm not there, it does not work. I can not put it somewhere, hang it, fix it, it no longer works, I Guide. The report is important to the body. These are sculptures, beyond the three-dimensional relationship, are unlikely to be the fairest way I found to date to measure the real me.
You are very aware of the exposure conditions of your work in galleries. Now what form this takes place? How do you set this work?
I'm not a photographer or filmmaker. My results are closer to the testimony. I show the pictures I have, a moment of my research, and we often chosen together with the gallery owner or the person who expose myself.
And the videos?
The final work is the movie. The only trace I have of this work there. It is like the work and anti implemented. But at the same time, what is work? I still struggle to understand where the work begins, because in the gallery or in a place inside, we can speak only a trace.
Untitled, 1998 Courtesy
Semiose Gallery, Paris
What is interesting is that the flight forms can be seen through these films.
If one day I was flying these volumes with people around, which almost never happened, we could say that these people have actually seen the work, at least in situ (I hate that word). But since that time is fragile ... With the movie, we are quite lifelike. Even if there is ... If I was framing movies when I was telling a story, it would be different. But they are films that are only evidence of reality.
How do you see yourself in relation to Smithson, for whom the key non-site appears to be the notion of movement or transfer? Do you think moving an object on another website changes its meaning? It finally seems that the non site maintains a link with the original site.
I have already been proposed to install my volumes in a white cube and inflate them with a fan, but the film is so much better, I do not do it or whatever. If I can throw in size is awesome. I'd like to make face to face projected, with a model that evolves in different spaces. If I get back inside, I prefer to do my experiments with levitation. I did and it was good to CREDAC. By contributing to Smithson, I respect his work, but I'm quite at odds with the romantic idea of the site and no site. The site is important: I'm driving and suddenly I see a spot with good light, and I moved hop. Smithson, the problem he had is that at one time, its parts were left inside. That is the problem of land art, hence the theory of non-site a little easier wrong. My forms, for now, never found inside, as they are movies. It's a little pirouette that I imagined never to put anything inside. I broke once this view at the gallery in Paris Semiose. I was both happy to do while living the experience as a broken dream. Shortly after, I carried the same volume outside a little changed. It strangely worked better than others that seemed more appropriate. It was a movie and I'm very happy. I still thank Benoît Porcher for having the courage to show what kind of experience and encouragement.
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