Tape Stories

For six long, cold, rainy months Dutch artist Johan Rijpma stood on his small balcony gazing at unrolling scotch tape. Every few seconds he'd turn each roll, and the tape would often more than 12 hours for to completely unravel. I know, I know, this probably strikes you as tediously boring, and probably also that this guy is a freak. Why not act like an interested human being for a second, watch the video above and hear this guy out.

Johan is a young artist who graduated this year from the art school in Utrecht, The Netherlands with this project "Tape Generations." It was picked up by numerous galleries worldwide and won him a couple of awards, even though his teachers advised him to do another project when he first started out.

VICE: Hey Johan, in your videos you seem to have some kind of strange obsession for slow things. Tell me what's so fascinating about slow stuff.
Johan Rijpma: I don't think it's slow stuff I'm interested in. It's more about time and unpredictability. I think time is interesting. In this case, with the tape, it is about slow stuff though. Things you can't see with your naked eye. Things that move, but in a way you don't normally perceive.

You must be incredibly patient.
I don't think so. I get angry quite easily when I'm working and things go wrong. I do hear that a lot though, that people think I'm patient, but I don't think I am.

Right, I read that you had to turn that disc every 30 seconds, and that one composition could take up to 12 hours. In my opinion that's pretty patient. What would you do while the tape rolled out?
I thought a lot about different stuff, so I got some new ideas. At one point I was really bored, so I started doing tables of multiplication that I didn't know yet. 13, 14, and higher and higher.

Wow. So how long did it take you to make "Tape Generations"? 
It was my graduation project, so around six months. But I had the idea a long time ago. It started out one night when I was working at my desk. Every night I sit down to collect all my notes and scraps that I store in this notebook that I always carry. I cut out and stick all the pieces i collect together because it's nice to have all the original annotations instead of just a copy. This means I'm always using scissors and tape, and I always stick the roll of tape to the edge of my desk so I don't need to look for the loose bit all the time.

Clever. 
That night it got later and later, and in the end I went to bed without picking up my stuff. When I woke up the next morning I saw that the roll of tape had unrolled itself all the way to the ground. This was fantastic! That little roll being pulled down by gravity and living its own life while I was sleeping. I thought it was fascinating, so I wanted to know how it worked. That's when I discovered that every roll had its own "unroll" speed, that every roll had its own personality, in a way. That's how I saw it. One of the most beautiful things I saw was that when I'd hang them up in the afternoon, the rolls would start descending at a certain pace. At night the pace slowed because of the cold, and when the sun came up they'd speed up again. It made me think of a kind of flower or plant. A living organism that reacts to light.

Yeah, Scotch tape is pretty amazing. I think I read somewhere that it also emits X-rays when you unroll it. 
I read that too! Though I didn't research that, I didn't want to add even more to my project. I also read somewhere that unrolling tape in a vacuum causes sparks. Scotch tape is actually incredibly interesting.

So, how many rolls did you use? 
I think I bought around 600 rolls.

Was there any difference between different kinds? 
I did do some research with different types. I tried the cheapest one, but it didn't have enough tape, which made it too light. And light means slow, and slow means I had to wait a long time. The more expensive ones were fatter and heavier, but they were also stickier, so they would also take extremely long to unroll. In the end I found a golden mean that I could work with.

So what are you working on now?
I'm busy with… no, I'm not going to tell you. People never understand when I tell them about projects I'm working on. The same thing happened with "Tape Generations." No one was like: "Wow, that sounds great" I actually think most people thought it was boring when I tried to explain it.

I was kind of stalking you online before this interview, and found this picture on you Facebook. How long did it take you to make this toast?
Ha! I think I started early in the morning and at the end of the day I had them lined up nicely. It's funny though, I tried to use this piece of toast to explain the idea of the tape project. To illustrate that every roll of tape had its own speed and personality, when they're laid out geometrically and precise. I did the same thing with this toast and the chocolate sprinkles. I laid them out neatly, in a kind of grid. Because of the arrangement it starts to be apparent that every sprinkle has its own character. Each one is bent differently, but you only notice that when they're laid out like this.

Did you eat it?
Let me think… I did save it for a while, I thought it would a shame to eat it. I think I didn't--no, I saved it for too long and it started to grow mold. I threw it out then.

Too bad. So, do you have any message for mankind? Be more patient, or something?
Nope. I'm doing this out of curiosity. I think it's less beautiful to make a movie or an animation with a premeditated story or message. I like being surprised by what happens.

Check out Johan's Vimeo account for more beautiful stuff that probably took a painful amount of time to make.