CK: Your work feels public and
accessible, but also highly private and intimate.
AZ: People
will read about my work and drive up to the yard. I have lots of pieces
outside, but then I get really upset. Either I'm going to be a hermit and
I make work that goes in museums, or I'm going to have my personal life
and I have to be willing to open it up to people.
CK: The
invasion is a dilemma.
AZ: It's the opposite of what I want.
CK: Your practice might also be read as a series of satellite cities that
combines a self-replicating process with the medieval format of the
workshop as a form of collaboration and work. Each unit is not only
independent, but it references a larger modular government that's both
social and practical. Both the products you create and their method of
creation seem dependent on a highly organized de-centralized system that
references the organization of the city.
Andrea Zittel: A-Z West, both photos: Andrea Zittel
AZ: Do you see the satellite cities as A-Z West
or A-Z East?
CK: In a way, they're satellite cities of
each other.
AZ: The medieval format has been quite strong,
but not necessarily intentional. In NY, my assistants lived in my house.
We were together 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I had no privacy. In
California, one assistant lived in my house, another was a local kid I had
dated, another was a 21 year-old ex-felon I mothered. Now my assistant
lives elsewhere, though we're talking about starting a business together:
combining a gallery, an art store, and the Chamber of Commerce.
CK: What kinds of transformations have happened in the furniture?
Superficially, your work connects to minimalism and cleanliness.
AZ: The ideology has changed. In the early 90s, my work was about
compensating for human imperfection, finding ways to make us more
efficient and organized. Around 1997, I said screw it, people are always
going to make messes. You spend so much time on maintenance that you never
live. We've become obsessed with cleanliness as a moral standard. A
paranoia results.
Raugh was an attempt to loosen up. That work was a critique and
exploration. I've been working on the rules of raugh. One is when
you're buying a kitchen counter, look for easy-to-clean surfaces. I had
this epiphany: if it camouflages dirt, that's better.
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Andrea Zittel: A-Z West: Food
Processing Station (kitchen), Photo: Andrea Zittel
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Andrea Zittel: Detail Food Processing
Station, Photo: Andrea Zittel
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CK: You sold "registered"
licenses of your work, enabling people to make a "registered copy." Did
that reduce production costs and create greater "brand" recognition? Was
it similar to do-it-yourself homes?
AZ: Lots of institutions
did copies, but more takers wanted real pieces. There were six or seven
versions of the
pit bed, some exact copies, others did radical take-offs. I was
interested in production issues. A furniture company offered to
mass-produce objects if I designed them, but then I'd lose its
experimental nature. Students would say: "I'd love to live in a piece, but
I can't afford it," so I'd say: "copy it." People with a lot of money
bought official pieces and a student could do a copy. The idea of value
was important.
CK: Value has a trickle down effect, from
Madison Avenue to Canal Street, in terms of brand recognition.
AZ: It was a social study, like social research, seeing how people
work and choose.
Andrea Zittel: A-Z Cellular Compartment Units, 2001,
installation view IKON-Gallery, Birmingham, UK ,
Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery New York
and IKON-Gallery, U.K., © Andrea Zittel
CK: In the Middle Ages, a retreat was located on
a mountain, though Dante, "in the Vita Nuova, retreated to a private room
so he could cry without being seen." Does the retreat concept extend to
A-Z West as an operating system?
AZ: I've often thought
about this intense need for privacy. When you said Dante had a room he
could cry in, I can definitely relate to that. When I first moved to New
York, I'd walk out my door and two blocks away I'd have this anxiety
attack and go home. Ever since, I've wanted to make spaces that were
private, where I could breathe. One system works well for me, but it
screws me up when people stay here. The way I clean my house and get
dressed every morning is that I get out of the shower naked; for every
five objects I pick up, I put one garment on, by the time I'm ready to
walk outside, the house is clean. It works well, but you can't do it when
people are around.
Andrea Zittel: Wallens, 2002, inside and outside view,
Courtesy the artist and Andrea Rosen Gallery New York, © Andrea Zittel, Foto:
Oren Slower
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