Crying

Marcelo Spinelli: Let's talk a bit about Crying. Could you describe the piece?

Georgina Starr: That was a piece I had made when I was working on the Erik piece. I had a video camera set up and it was just recording me talking about Erik's stories, and I was just depressed and started to cry. And because I was frustrated with the fact that I was depressed, and couldn't work and all this sort of stuff, I just recorded myself. I was crying for maybe five minutes and it was right at the front of a tape, a sort of two hour tape, or something, and I never used it for almost a year and hardly told anyone about it and almost forgot about it. And then when I was invited to do a show in London, I just kept thinking about this video and should I look at it again; and everybody was saying, oh let's look at it, let's see it - just so that they could have a good look at me crying; is it real? and all that. So I showed a few people.

MS: You were detached from it by then?

GS: Yeah, by then it was me, but it wasn't...

MS: You were just as curious.

GS: Yes, so I watched it. They all reacted in different ways and I really liked the way everyone reacted differently. Some women laughed at it. Some of the men got really uncomfortable in front of it. And I really like putting people in that position; and having to watch it. They all were saying, what were you thinking about, and who was it that upset you? And I said, Oh I can't remember, at the time. I mean, I do remember but I don't want to say. People are always fascinated to know what it is. So I thought, yeah, I'll show it. I'll just show it in the corner of a room, like the place it was shot. But it got such a lot of response, because it was so simple I think. It was literally just me crying.

MS: Lots of people have this obsession with getting to know the artist intimately, don't they, and you can't get more intimate than that.

GS: Yeah, and it's not revealing anything but it's revealing a lot at the same time.

MS: It just gives you a sense of the artist being vulnerable, I suppose; emotional.

GS: And even if people don't like it, if it makes them angry, it's again a reaction to something like that. Because when people do cry you don't know how to react; it's sometimes difficult. Unless you really know them it's difficult to know what to say, what to do.