FID Marseille | Fe sense Obres Morta és

You won’t find Antoni Tàpies in Albert Serra’s new film. And yet, it is indeed a film about Antoni Tàpies—or at least, a film produced by the Tàpies Museum. Perhaps it’s a question of language: Fe sense obras morta és isn’t a film “about” Tàpies, one of the most important Spanish visual artists of the 20th century, but it may well be a film “after”, “based on” or “alongside” Tàpies. Invited to make a film by the museum that houses a large part of the Catalan artist’s oeuvre, Albert Serra seizes the opportunity to delve deeper into one of his latest obsessions, which has strangely gone largely unnoticed: the composition of images within images. Discreet but present in his previous films such as Pacifiction, this technique becomes one of the leitmotivs of this film, perhaps due to the Matterist character of the Catalan painter’s oeuvre. Tàpies incorporated all manner of things into his paintings, which were built up through layers, marks, gestures, and matter. Like an audiovisual extension of the painter’s informal practice, Serra composes shots made up of multiple images, in a form of digital collage where motifs overlap to create a semi-abstract, pictorial whole, seeking to evoke the spirit of Tàpies whilst avoiding portraiture, biography, hagiographic documentary or the simple filming of paintings. If any trace of Tàpies remains in the film, it is most evident in the subtitles which draw on texts from the artist’s paintings without bearing any relation to the images. The texts are overlaid like an additional layer of meaning… or confusion. So, what is Fe sense obras morta és? At the very least, an invocation.

Gonzalo de Pedro Amatria

Interview

Albert Serra

How does one make a film about a central figure of Catalan art such as Antoni Tàpies? Your film seems to suggest that it is not possible, that the only option is to flee from the subject being portrayed. One might say that, in any case, the film “invokes” him, but does not portray him.

The film invokes him through graphic motifs in the image and spiritual motifs in the subtitles. Beyond that, not only in this case but in general, the subject of films matters very little to me. There is a beyond-the-subject, something much more concrete, that emerges at the moment of filming, with no prior mental precedent, and that is usually embodied by the actors — that is, by human beings. It is the only formal dimension that interests me, harmoniously joined to other elements — time, space, voice, costume… — which give it the manipulative and beguiling power of fiction.

In this film, you take to an extreme something that was less noticeable in your previous films: “collage”, composing images out of many images. How did you work on this digital montage, and with what intention?

I have been doing it forever; nobody knows because it remains hidden within the logic of fiction, but I have been an absolute pioneer. My recent cinema, from The Death of Louis XIV and Singurality onwards, cannot be understood without this, although nobody knows it except those who made it. Liberté was the apotheosis. What happens is that, in these films for the world of contemporary art, I allow myself degrees of irony and humour that would be out of place in theatrical films. There, the matter is more subtle.

The only visible trace of Tàpies, or the most visible one, is the texts taken from the painter’s canvases, which appear here as subtitles and form a kind of parallel narrative. How did you work with those texts, and with what intention?

Believe it or not, we scanned all of Tàpies’s paintings — including the graphic work! — more than two thousand, if I remember correctly, in order to transcribe all the texts he wrote in his own hand — this is very important — on the surface of his pictorial works. Then, with the editor, arbitrarily, we chose those that inspired us most and seemed most relevant. People are stupid and grotesque: they do not know that the editor and I understand Tàpies’s personality and work far better than the greatest academic experts; we have studied them very, very closely since we were young. Another matter is whether we are more or less interested in doing something with that knowledge, or whether we deliberately do not want to please anyone in the editing. After all, it is my work and I decide. That is why I am the artist, like Tàpies.

Interviewed by Gonzalo de Pedro Amatria

Fe sense Obres Morta és, Faith Lacking Deed lies Dead

Interview

Technical sheet