Dancing with Strangers: A Conversation with Laurel Nakadate

Abstract

Laurel Nakadate is a master storyteller. The New York photographer and video artist, who grew up in rural Iowa, is in continual search of what is over (he next horizon. She has tossed used underwear out of a moving train, danced to Britney Spears in the middle of a desolate desert landscape, and made herself cry every day for a year. Part diary entry, part sexual expose, her narratives are a clever mix of voyeurism, tragedy, and slapstick in the style of Laurel and Hardy. Nakadate has achieved international fame in art circles since graduating from Yale University with an MFA in Photography in 2001, and her work has been exhibited at the Reina Sofia in Madrid, MoMA PS1 in New York City, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Her accolades extend well beyond the art world: her first feature film, Stay the Same.Never Change (2008), premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and in 2011 her second feature film. The Wolf Knife (2010), was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Her earliest photographs and videos record encounters with strangers, typically middle-aged, overweight, unkempt, and socially awkward men one might expect, to encounter in gas stations or at Walmart, not in a contemporary art rallerv. The scenarios range from silly (pretending lo be a dog and a cat) and absurd (having them sing Happy Birthday to her), to unsettling (a series of men screaming invectives at absent former lovers). The men are a stark contrast to Nakadate, who is physically stunning. It is hard to deny the sexual tensions bubbling just under the surface of her brash humor. Sigmuncl Freud suggested that all humor is a form of aggression; and since society prohibits the direct expression of anger and sexual drive, these desires are sublimated in joke telling. Like dreams, these jokes and slips of the tongue bear the traces of repressed desire. Do we laugh at Nakadate's exploits because we are uncomfortable? Aroused? Or merely perplexed? For her latest project, Three Performances in Search of Tennessee (2011), Nakadate teamed up with actor James Franco for a rcinterpretation of Tennessee Williams's 1944 play The Class Menagerie. The live performance opened with Franco and Nakadate sitting pensively on a darkened stage, as two mediums channeled the spirit of Williams, who died in 1983. In the second act, a large screen projected a video of Franco acting a scene from the play while actresses found through a Craigslist ad entered the stage to audition for the role of Laura Wingfield. The casting calls clidirt offer any specifics, and many of the women were dumbfounded to see the real-life Franco directing from the sidelines. But instead of interacting with him, they role-played with the project video by reading lines off the screen in karaoke style. Kakadate and Franco continually commanded the actresses to speak louder, look toward the audience, or show more feeling, as the audience roared with laughter. In the final sequence, several male actors, including the performance artist Ryan McNamara, auditioned for the part of Tom Wingfield by reciting his soliloquy from the close of the play. Partway through The Glass Menagerie, Tom is eager to tell his sister Laura about a magic show where the magician manages to escape from a sealed coffin, an apt metaphor for his own desire to leave behind his abusive mother and dull existence. And, by the play's finale, he is resolved to follow his dream and venture into a world that is lit by lightning. This is the kind of storytelling, one of very simple, very human emotions, in which Nakadate invests her considerable talents. This interview took place at Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects in New York City, in Tanuarv 2012. HARRY WEIL: Let's begin at the beginning. You went to Yale for graduate work in photography, but much of your practice over the past decade seems to be focused on video and film. LAUREL NAKADATE: I guess so. Well, I say that but then I think in the last three, four years I have made two feature films and then did a one-year performance that was photo-based. …