Francesco Vezzoli: proof that experimentation is alive and well in art

GERMANO CELANT: As part of your latest installation, "Trilogy of Death"--on view at Milan's Prada Foundation through the 16th of this month--you created Comizi di non-Amore (Non-Love Meetings), a reality TV show that was inspired in part by Pier Paolo Pasolini's Comizi d'Amore [1965]. Like Pasolini's movie, it's a kind of survey about love, though I gather your aim was to make it less of a documentary and allow for more creativity than Pasolini's film. What else can you tell us about the project?

FRANCESCO VEZZOLI: I started by talking with a production company. I explained to them that I wanted to produce a reality show but that I also wanted to keep my identity protected so I could keep the vibe of the project and people's behavior more natural. They gave me their set designers, their lighting directors, their scriptwriters, their directors--all of whom are among the best in their fields--and they packaged a bona fide television show, under my supervision, in which all the participants were unaware that this project would be presented in a museum instead of on television. Obviously I had the help of the director and the producers, but very often I would be asked to make artistic or aesthetic decisions. My answer was always the same: Do exactly what you would do for a project that you would be selling to a TV station.

GC: What about the concept of the show?

FV: Well, of course, I brought the idea of creating what we can call a celebrity dating show to the table. It's a reality show in which people tell their life stories. By bringing their individual realities onto the scene, various women court potential dates. Then there's the celebrity aspect of it, meaning that some of the contestants are icons to a cinematically sophisticated audience, some are completely unfamiliar to a standard television audience, and some are familiar only to a television audience while totally unfamiliar to a cinephile audience.

GC: How did you choose your contestants?

FV: I chose what I would call a pantheon of icons of femininity, but a femininity that touches upon different aspects of itself and different mythologies. We started with Catherine Deneuve, a woman who in Belle de Jour [1967] does needlepoint and has daring fantasies. Then there are Antonella Lualdi, who serves as the bridge with Comizi d'Amore, because she is the only woman in my project who was interviewed by Pasolini for his film; Terry Schiavo, an ex-TV hostess, and for me, the stereotypical ordinary girl who ends up "networkified"; and Marianne Faithfull, the wild rock icon, the woman famous for being censored. I thought it was terrific that Marianne, in her 50s, would allow herself to be courted on a reality show. Then I finish the program with Jeanne Moreau, a cinema icon known from films like Querelle [1982] and La Bale des Anges [1963].

GC: So these icons are courted, but you have arranged courtships that are in fact traps.

FV: Yes. For each actress there are three suitors, and the behavior of these suitors, good or bad, always represents a challenge, with the goal of creating a revealing moment. For example, for Antonella Lualdi there are three strippers; for Deneuve there are three presumably die-hard fans; for Terry Schiavo there are two heterosexual men and a lesbian; for Marianne Faithfull there are two young men and a transvestite. The actresses don't have the faintest idea who their suitors will be, so their reactions are real.

GC: So while Pasolini was simply recording reactions, you are creating content for the reactions. For instance, you know that certain subjects--homosexuality, transvestism, etc.--can stimulate certain reactions. You construct these variants intentionally as well as the response of the audience. How did the reactions of Pasolini's public in 1965 compare with yours in 2004?

FV: What surprised me the most was seeing how very traditional patterns of conflict and debate were born inside this forum--the woman of a certain age defending classical femininity, the pseudo-intellectual guy defending sexual liberation, the classic Latin male attacking the whole problem without understanding it.

GC: So with respect to sexual relationships you don't see a change in the general public over the past 40 years?

FV: No, not with this project anyway. I concluded that if someone had conducted a comparison with 10 people in the time of Caesar, there probably would have been 10 opinions identical to the ones I encountered. I mean, in making this project I had to risk finding myself with a film full of ideas and moments that I don't agree with and that I wouldn't want to put my name to but that I'd have to accept since this is how things turned out. I never briefed anybody in the audience; I never told anyone to do this or that. It's all completely authentic.

GC: In Pasolini's film we see him asking questions. He sets the public apart from himself so there's no risk of his body or his feelings showing up in the film, but you put yourself in the audience. In doing so, you agree to follow the tradition of someone like Robert Mapplethorpe, who let himself he photographed in erotic moments, and even as he was dying. In other words you become a part of your own product.