Ryan Trecartin

Interview by SteveLafreniere

Portrait by Tim Barber

A Family Finds Entertainment

Any Ever

Pickle Surprise

Tommy Chat Just E-mailed Me, Girl God,

Wayne’s World

Any Ever

Vice: Any Ever, your show that’s currently traveling the world, is billed as a seven-part video. But it seems more like a trilogy and a quartet.

Ryan Trecartin:

By “broadcast” you mean…

No, it’s interesting. Was that from your collaboration with David Karp, the founder of Tumblr?

Did you study video in school?

Why not go to film school instead?

You always collaborate with a large group of people. Is that why the original three videos that you told me about a year ago became seven works?

laughs

The Re’Search

It’s also hard to control where it ends.

The new videos are faster and sleeker. They go into your head in a clearer way. They’re more hypnotic. They’re funnier. Everything’s been amped up, but it took me a while of watching them to realize this. How do you see that advancement from, say, I-Be AREA a couple of years back?

I-Be AREA

It’s strange to me that more video- and filmmakers haven’t explored those kinds of formal constraints. It’s always something like the Dogme 95 rules instead.

I’m fascinated by the odd logic that comes up in your work. Each line or shot relates to the previous one, but not necessarily to the one previous to that. Is this built into the dialogue, or are you growing it bit by bit as you shoot? Or is it in the editing room?

Where do you start?

Clockwise from top left: P.opular S.ky (section ish), 2009. The Re’Search (Re’Search Wait’S), 2009-2010. I-Be AREA, 2007. The Re’Search (Re’Search Wait’S), 2009–2010.

All images courtesy of the artist and Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York.

There certainly are weird-chemistry duets by actors in your videos. So, what happens to all of this in editing?

Your characters speak in what on the surface seem like non sequiturs. But if you listen closely, they’re constantly being pulled back into meaning. You’re either bending new context around them—even for a moment—or having a line delivered in a way that files it in my brain in some unexpected place from where it might pop out at me later. So how much of that is planned?

It sounds unwieldy.

that

laughs

laughs

I’m actually more interested in where you took it than what I initially asked you. I just wanted you to identify your way of writing.

Can you give me an example?

The idea of crediting is certainly going to transform.

Is there a wish list of people that you’d like to work with?

What do you look for when you’re casting?

That comes through.

You might stretch that point to include the audience. For the last few years, you’ve allowed me to show your work in the small rural town that I live in, at a local coffeehouse. It’s mostly teenagers and 20-somethings, and they really get it. A lot of them ask me how they can be in one of your videos.

So, are you inundated with people trying to be cast?

laughs

Clockwise from top left: I-Be AREA, 2007. A Family Finds Entertainment, 2004. A Family Finds Entertainment, 2004. I-Be AREA, 2007. All images courtesy of the artist and Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York.

What other kinds of feedback have you gotten? Besides from art critics.

What do they tell you?

What sorts of misinterpretations of the work do you get?

laughs

technology

young

Why?

But the new 20-year-olds…

So the videos in Any Ever were largely made in a house in Miami. How long did you live there?

It looks pretty wrecked by the last videos. What did the neighbors think?

How many people were living there?

That must have affected the project.