CONVERSATION with CLAUDIA DEL FIERRO

Claudia del Fierro’s three-channel video Bits and Pieces to Be Whispered  (Piezas y partes para susurrar)  (2002) takes as its starting point the now historic earthquake and tidal wave that hit Valdivia, Chile in May 1960. The video contains a running sequence of images that were intended as poetic reenactments of the natural disasters as those were recalled, in bits and pieces, some forty years later by survivors. The earthquake, which was the worst in recorded history (9.5 on the Richter scale), destroyed most of the buildings in the city and in the surrounding areas, but fortunately it did not claim a record number of lives. 

Del Fierro worked with two anthropologists who traveled to Valdivia and the surrounding coastal areas for a period of three months. They interviewed approximately eighty people between the ages of forty-five and seventy-five. Among the stories recounted, three stood out, which in turn became recurring images in the non-linear sequences the artist adapted as a structural device. One of the episodes many remembered was that the streets were filled with shoes from two large shoes factories. Many others recalled that the sea turned red; and others that the streets were covered with fish. Del Fierro turned each of those three collective memories into recurring images in the videos.                   

 In creating the diverse scenes, the artist enacted a series of street performances, which she incorporated into the video. In one, del Fierro found a small body of water and placed hundreds of fish in it to re-create the image stored in people’s collective memory of the streets and beaches filled with fish. In another intervention the artist threw balloons filled with a red substance into a pool of water to simulate the red water of the sea. In videotaping the different scenes, the artist relied on “real” people living today in Valdivia, Chile. 

 And similar to other performance work the artist has done since 1998, the “real” people—as opposed to professional actors and actresses—were very convincing.  

Bits and Pieces to Be Whispered (2002) was originally conceived for the group exhibition “Arte y Catástrofe” curated by the artist for the Contemporary Art Museum in Valdivia / Museo de Arte Contemporáneo en Valdivia.

Julia P. Herzberg: Tell us about your background in anthropology, a field that seems to have given you a certain edge in developing this project as well as others you have done in recent years, such as Politically Correct  / Políticamente correcto / (January 2001).   

Claudia del Fierro: For the last few years I’ve earned my living by doing photography and documentary videos for anthropology projects.  This discipline has had an increasing influence on my artistic work. The idea of the artist as an “engaged observer” of his/her environment has been very important for me, especially when it comes to the actions and performances that I have done in public places.

JPH: Describe your interviewing process. Did you have written questions prepared or were the questions and answers taped? Were you surprised by what people remembered or by how much they forgot? 

CdF: My intention was to have a prepared questionnaire that would lead directly to a specific question. I wanted the interviewees to describe for me the visual image they associated with the moment of the disaster. I brought two anthropologists into the project  to develop a methodology for the questions; but the questions gave way, nonetheless, to unexpected situations as the people, overtaken by emotion, started telling personal anecdotes and narratives of family tragedies. Those were cathartic moments that made it difficult to guide the interviewees, and therefore I chose to record everything. 

JPH: Can you recall for us a few remembrances people shared with you of what they were doing or what they saw or heard when the earthquake or tidal waves occurred?  

CdF: I remember several stories that had a strong impact on me. For example, many recalled that the Corral Bay was almost totally destroyed. A man told me that, “the bay was covered with wood, dead animals, and the streets full of debris.” A woman remembered how they “found remains of heads and feet, which they took to the hospital where people would go to identify their relatives.” Most people recall mainly images of the effects of the destruction: the city or the bay littered with broken pieces things, the space we inhabited became a big garbage dump full of things that use to exist.

JPH: At what point did you realize that the three different characters, in each of the videos, would provide you with a narrative structure? Or when did you decide on a narrative structure that centered around three different characters? 

CdF: I decided to structure each video around a different character when I started working on the storyboards. I noticed that there were important differences between the stories as they were told by women, men, or those who were just children when the earthquake hit. So I compiled the narratives according to gender and age groups, and then I noticed that the three simultaneous videos related to each other better if each one centered around a specific character, thereby highlighting the intimate nature of the narratives.  

JPH: How did you turn the responses of your interviewees into a video? Recount for us the steps in the process? 

CdF: I recorded the interviews on site together with the anthropologists. Later, I transcribed the tapes into a written text. To do this I closed myself off so I could listen to the recordings and select the fragments I would use in the videos. The initial criterion was to choose sentences that alluded to the moment of the catastrophe; but as I re-read the interviews, I realized that the stories were quite powerful, and so I selected the most intense and exciting fragments. Then I organized the three stories on the basis of the selected texts. I looked for different locations where I could record the experiences of the people effected by the tsunami. Their survivors’ stories were converted into storyboards. It was then that I started putting the recreated scenes into video. 

JPH: Because you had a low budget for this video, you worked with non-professional people or “everyday people,” as you refer to them. Did you inform them of your work ahead of time or did you just videotape people on the street for the scenes you needed without advance notice? You have incorporated non-professional people into your previous work, haven’t you? 

CdF: In my works I have incorporated everyday folk not just by reason of the budget restraints, but as a way to question the limits between fiction and reality. Including real people in my productions allows me to locate my work in everyday places. In the case of Bits and Pieces to Be Whispered, I performed some actions unannounced in the streets and in the river in Valdivia, and people reacted positively. Something totally different happened in Idéntical  (2000), a performance I did in a crowded karaoke restaurant-bar where, disguised as a secretary, I sang “Bésame mucho.” The emcee exposed my disguise and took my blonde wig off in front of the audience. This unexpected intervention and the audience’s hostile reaction turned my performance into an (le dieron un giro) atmosphere of discomfort, which soon turned somewhat violent. That change of atmosphere became an essential part of the piece. 

JPH: Your previous work—from 1998 to date—has featured you in different performance roles, which are videotaped. Indeed, you were the protagonist in several scenes in Bits and Pieces to Be Whispered, such as the barbershop and other scenes.  How would you define your performance role in this video as being different from earlier performance roles that were videotaped? 

CdF: The way I addressed the performance work in this piece is quite different from previous ones. For example, in Politically Correct / Políticamente Correcto  (2001) as well as in Identical / Idéntica  (2000), the action centers on my performing the role of another person, which is acted in a public place as if it were a real situation. From my viewpoint, these are art actions intended as momentary interventions, which were documented and exhibited later. In the case of Bits and Pieces to Be Whispered, I decided to recreate someone else’s testimony, and then I performed their. The performance was carried out for the video camera, which became the final product.

JPH: Who are some of the performance artists whose work has interested you or whose work has been instrumental in the development of your work?

CdF: I am attracted to the work of artists who have dealt with genre issues, relating specifically to transgender performance, such as the early works of Orlan, Luigi Ontani, Urs Luti, or Paul McCarthy. I find Christian Jankowski’s recent works quite moving. For this particular piece, I had very much in mind Robert Filiou’s a 1960s piece called “Art History in Whispers.” It is a text for a performance that tells the history of representation through small, everyday episodes, as a celebration of his “art birthday.”  

JPH: You collaborated with the musician Ottavio Berbakow on the three individual musical scores, which when played together sound like one composition. How did this collaboration contribute to the overall effect of the work? 

CdF: The musician Ottavio Berbakow provided three musical scores to be executed in digital format. I asked him for an audio track for the videos and suggested a composition whose structure would be based on a rhythmic and numerical relation that I had felt existed in the storyboards. We got together to listen to the music he was composing for his latest record, and I pointed out to him the sound qualities that I felt were most appropriate to my images. Afterwards I gave him the texts along with one requirement: the three musical modules should work separately and at the same time make up a single composition that could be listened to as a single unit. I felt that this intervention of sound added tension to the sequences and intensified certain images.