Visit To A Small Planet

Marcelo Spinelli: Can we talk a bit about the Visit to a Small Planet, the piece you are showing in the British Art Show?

Georgina Starr: I was actually working on Visit to a Small Planet before I started the collection, but I didn't finish it because I'd been asked to do this commission. What happened with the Visit to a Small Planet is that, because I'd been doing all these things about conversations and also with the Crying video, it became quite interesting to me knowing what people are thinking.

With Crying, people were always asking what were you thinking about? And with Getting to Know You as well, because I was getting to know this guy's character and, because I never met him, I never really knew what he was thinking about. We never met properly; we met at the end, but that was the thing that was really lacking about this relationship we had. Although I found out all this stuff about him we never had a relationship, like how you would normally react with somebody. You'd always be thinking, I wonder what they are really thinking, and I never knew because we never really had proper conversations. And at the time I was quite interested in the idea of mind-reading.

I'd done other work, I did a piece last year called Dining Alone. It was a piece that it was in a restaurant and you could hear my thoughts when I actually sat at that table and dined alone the week before. I was asked to make a piece for a restuarant and I went and ate there and it was the first time that I had dined on my own in a restaurant. Normally I'm with somebody or it's at home, or something. The paranoia of dining alone, and wondering what people are thinking of you: I tried to write everything down that I was thinking. So I read my thoughts out and recorded them.

You could sit at this same table and have the same meal and there was a place mat with the text on it, and under the table there were speakers so you could just sit there and hear my thoughts. I'd been quite interested in reading minds and thought control and hearing peoples' thoughts. And I remembered a really small section in a film that I had seen years and years ago when somebody could mind read. I couldn't remember what the film was and exactly the whole thing about it, but I remember this fantastic sequence with the guy who could mind-read: it was turned against him, and his real thoughts were amplified in the room.

All of a sudden he was just talking to someone and someone put a spell on him. It was like a sci-fi movie and what he was really thinking about this other woman was suddenly out in the room, and it was really disastrous. Everybody in the whole room - it was in a club or something - heard what he was thinking and there was a big fight. And I thought that would probably happen if everyone heard what anyone was thinking. So at the same time as being interested in the thought thing, I became quite obsessed with finding out about this film as well. I remembered it was a comedy, and maybe Jerry Lewis was in it, but I didn't know when I'd seen it or anything. So over a period of a few months I tried to find out whether I could get a copy of the film. I was convinced it was a time when I was living in this house that I used to live in when I was younger, I must have been aged about ten or something, so I called up the BBC and said in between the years 1976 and 1980 there was a film with Jerry Lewis about mind-reading, and they looked through their files...

MS: Were they helpful?

GS: They were a bit helpful, but they said that they didn't keep copies of films so they wouldn't have it anyway, and had I tried the film archives and stuff. So I looked up all the Jerry Lewis films and I eventually found a description that said 'Sci-fi Spoof Jerry Lewis film; Visit to a small planet; Bad B movie' - it didn't get anywhere in the ratings and it was a really bad film. That's all it said and, again, it didn't really help me and I thought I really would like to see the film. So I called up everywhere and nobody had a copy of the film, no video shops, no film institutes.

Eventually about six months later, in between finding it and not having it, I started to remember certain parts; other parts from it. I started to rewrite the script and I wrote it from my memory of it. But I didn't just write the script, I also wrote what was happening to me at the time, so in the book you have my version of the script, you also have my memory of my childhood at the time, and you also have me re-enacting what I thought the script was. Through videos I re-enact certain parts from my version of the script. Apart from mind-reading, I thought he could communicate with animals; I thought he could become invisible, he could mind-read drawings and he could do all sorts of things. I thought it would be fantastic to try and do that myself throughout the videos, and so I did a lot of experiments. I did a mind-reading experiment with a friend, where he made a drawing and I had to make a drawing at the same time over the telephone, and I videoed that. And I tried to make myself invisible by computerised video.

MS: By going to a private view!

GS: Yes. By going to a private view and everyone ignores me! A good way of making yourself invisible on video is to paint yourself blue and you can chromo-key yourself out. So I painted myself blue. And I remembered Jerry Lewis wore this orange helmet throughout the film, so I made myself an orange helmet. I always wore this orange helmet because it was like a sign that he had special powers. It was a playful idea at the time, but some of the experiments I was taking quite seriously, because I thought it would be good to try out things like this.

So I painted myself blue and the idea was that I would take myself out of the image and you would just see things moving, like a glass or a cigarette. I spent the whole day doing this and then when I actually took myself out it was really a bad film. I did a lot of things wrong: like if you hold a glass [with your hand around it] you don't just get rid of you, you get rid of half the glass as well. And then a few days later I watched the video with me in it not taken out and it was just amazing, the way I was reacting, because I was trying to do everything in the right way.

MS: As if you were invisible?

GS: Yes. As if I was invisible. I became almost like somebody from another planet because I looked a bit strange anyway with this orange helmet, but every little thing, even smoking a cigarette - I'd hold it really on the tip - looked like this completely mad person, and looked like I was doing everything for the first time.

MS: In a way you were invisible, because you were not worried how you looked, because you thought you were not being seen.

GS: Exactly. I had lots of T-shirts on because I couldn't get the right blue, so I look really chunky. My shoulders are out here and I look like a completely different person. And my face; I had glasses on which I had painted blue with little tiny holes and I kept knocking things over. So throughout the video you see the orange juice go over, and at one point I got really, really angry, and I've got this orange juice and I throw the orange juice at the wall and run out. But I kept all that in. It was all how it was happening, but I didn't think I'd use it again until - the same old story - afterwards, when I really looked at everything and saw that the fascinating thing about it wasn't me being invisible, it was me actually being visible. And that was far more interesting. So, that's one of the videos.

MS: There's one talking to a cat?

GS: Yeah, because in my memory of the film [Jerry Lewis] could communicate with animals. So I had this whole day when I tried to have a conversation with this cat. And cats are strange animals anyway, because some people think they can have a communication with them, but I don't think I've got any skills whatsoever. Funny things happened: I constructed it afterwards. There were conversations I was having in my head when I was with the cat, and certain things the cat did; I used his movements to help me construct the conversation.

So the conversation really fits to what happens - he tells a story about falling down a flight of stairs and landing on his nose and at that point he sniffs the floor, and says he's lost his sense of smell. So there are all these things that really fit together with the video. When you watch the video it really is like there is some form of communication going on. Then I did this mind-reading one with a friend. I did it about ten different times with ten different people and so in the exhibition you see all the different versions. And only one of them is right, I mean, one of them came really close and we drew very similar things. I don't know how it happened... you just have to concentrate and sometimes, I suppose, it either does or it doesn't. And all the others didn't, but in this one there were very similar elements.

MS: I remember at the time of Uri Geller - do you remember Uri Geller, he was big in Brazil, at least? People would do these experiments and try to draw a cube or trying to draw either a circle a square or... Kids at school would do it and think, yes, it really happens, I was really thinking..

GS: Yes. It's funny because when I was doing it, I really believed that maybe it could be possible, so I was always thinking whatever I am drawing now I'm either trying to transport my thoughts, or maybe it's their's that are coming into mine. I was really concentrating. But throughout all the videos, I played Dean Martin records because the idea was to make me try and remember the film and to help me be able to do these other things. I thought Dean Martin was in the film. He wasn't in fact, but Dean was singing throughout so there's this sort of background noise of him singing.

So I think certain elements of the drawings come out of Dean Martin's lyrics, because I've noticed that certain things that came out are similar. Like he sings that song Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree - and I've drawn an oak tree. And things like that. But one drawing did have similarities, so that's the one I've used in the video. You just see me drawing and you see a bubble above my head with my friend, who was making drawings as well. In the other video I did actually become invisible. I found a book with a text on how to make yourself invisible; it was this special book from one of these healing shops. They say it's actually possible to make yourself invisible; you're still there but in a way that you're not there to other people, so you can actually move around without being seen. And so I read all these things, and I tried it so many times and the text was just fantastic. I changed it a little bit, but it was a really soothing text, you know: 'sit comfortably and direct your eyes to a single point in the room.

This is the point you have chosen and the cloud will collect here.' You're supposed to collect this cloud of orange, this orange cloud that you are supposed to draw toward yourself and cover yourself, and then you're supposed to relax and do some other things and look in the mirror, and you're not supposed to be able to see yourself in the mirror afterwards. So I tried this, and you're supposed to be really quiet. I had this little cubicle-room in my studio, which is like an office with a glass front, so it was really perfect; it was like an experiment booth.

I used this cubicle for all the experiments that I did. And finally it didn't work, the invisible - so I had to falsify that one. But in the video it really looks like this orange cloud takes me away. It's also nice when you see the exhibition because you also have to sit in this same seat and you just hear this voice telling you what to do, so you can actually try it out as well; people who go and see the exhibition can try and see if it's possible - all these invisible people walking around!

MS: The room is divided; we've got a diagonal on [this plan] of the main room divided. Is there a particular reason for this?

GS: There are four cubicles and they are all the same as the one I did most of the experiments in. I remembered that at the time when I saw the film I was eating tinned ravioli, and so the idea was that if I ate ravioli and listened to Dean Martin records I could write the script; things would trigger off my memory, and so I sat and listened and ate this ravioli. In parts of the video you see me eating this ravioli and writing. So one cubicle is dedicated to that; the ravioli and the tape and the record player and also the scripts - you can actually read my version of the script.

The second cubicle is a video of the mind-reading experiment and you can watch that. And there are all the drawings, the different drawings, and instructions of what happened. The third cubicle is the being blue one. You can't actually enter into this one; it's sealed and inside it is the table that I used when I was drinking and eating to make the video. Outside the cubicle there is the video of me being blue. The final one is the invisibility one, which has a back projection onto the screen of the cubicle; there is a glass screen, and you can see me becoming invisible and you can hear the description of how to make yourself invisible.

Then there's another monitor with the cat conversation. So there are a lot of videos going on and there's a lot of sound as well. There's the sound from Dean Martin, there's my descriptions, there's me talking to the cat and there's all the different sounds going around in the space. And then I made a book which has my version of the script, alongside my experiments, and alongside my memory of my youth, of watching this film and what was going on in my house with my mum and dad, and all that sort of stuff. So it's three histories all put together in one.

MS: And it's almost like a Georgina Starr theme park.

GS: Yes. It's a lot to do with memory, obviously, but then, by watching certain things, it triggers off certain memories as well, because there's a lot of really loaded things - like these records, and memories of old films, or wanting to have special powers. I think when you're a child everybody thinks it's possible to mind-read or be invisible or be special.

MS: I read somewhere - I think referring to the Seventh Museum collection - that you hoped that people would be able to look at their own small images and see...

GS: Yes, exactly. I think that it is all these little significant things that, when you put them together, are so important. Like at the beginning, when we were talking about the litte movements of these figures. If you concentrate on them, something really fascinating can happen.

MS: And also with something like a film or a lyric, you can trigger off all these things...

GS: A new sort of history develops as well. Eventually, I saw the film and it's a really bad film. And Dean Martin isn't in it and Jerry Lewis doesn't wear an orange helmet, and there are all sorts of things that are wrong. It's quite nice to remember it, because I think in memory you can make things look much better or much worse. Your memory is completely different to how it really was.

MS: And also they are your versions of it. We were talking when we met before about our love for Burt Bacharach; it's to do with what it means to us...

GS: And what it triggers as well. It's like everytime I hear Burt Bacharach, like certain songs - I really love What's New Pussycat?, the film - when I hear certain songs I just see that film and remember certain sequences and little bits of dialogue. And then you can connect it to who you watched that film with and it's all this little history that's actually inside your head. That rarely comes out, but by making work like this it's able to be seen as well, and it's much nicer than keeping it all in.