The Talks
Yulia Mahr: “How deep is that?”
Ms. Mahr, you seem to thrive on making your art exhibitions site-specific. How come?
I'm addicted to it! I think it might have something to do with my background in theater: creating these visual environments for people to come in and inhabit. There are artists who simply ship off their work and allow it to be hung in any way or next to anything, but the thought of that really makes me feel ill. I want to create a complete visual environment, and so I love working outside of a white cube context in that way. I love using your surroundings to speak to the art, you know, so that it's not just one piece, and that's the entirety of it, but for example, thinking about the way that light falls or the way the birds are squawking outside, the ornateness of a more unique space, that all plays into it. And I think it gives an enormous amount in terms of layers of meaning to anything you're doing. So I really love that way of working.
I loved the way the light interacted with your photography pieces at your Unbecoming show in Berlin, for example.
I’m really careful where I place things, because you’re right that light is so important. It affects us subliminally; we don't even know we're being affected. But if we walk into a neon lit room, or if we're walking into something with natural light, we feel different and how that light falls and what it's highlighting, it seems essential to the piece itself.
“From the beginning, I wanted to protect the clothes themselves from fashion, and at the same time protect the woman’s body. I wanted people to keep on wearing my clothes for at least 10 years or more.”
“I dreamed of winning the Olympics since I was nine years old. That was definitely the most memorable race of my career. But the next day I woke up, and I wanted to win the next race.”
“The game of basketball means everything. This is love. Definitely love. I had to practice and I had to make sacrifices, but basketball has given me so much.”
“Happiness for me is just being; just being at any given moment. If you are searching for happiness, you are not happy. It’s the pot at the end of the rainbow.”
“It’s still astounding to me that I have one Oscar, let alone two. Especially because it’s by-product of something that you love so much, it feels like that’s already the gift, that’s already the award.”
“I am not that interested at the moment to work for the sake of others, I’m not interested in doing commissions. I'm way more interested in creating art for art's sake and in order to do that I have to believe in myself.”
“It’s the rollercoaster ride of doing something creative: when it goes well and you enjoy the process then it’s a high and you just want to keep on doing it.”
“We are consumed with existence, mortgages, jobs, cars, houses. It is nice to allow the imagination room to breathe again and see life as something that is spectacular and magic.”
“Every time you hear a piece of music that you’ve written, you remember the joy of it. Even if you don’t remember exactly what the writing process was like, there’s a moment where you hear it and your heart is full. It’s a similar emotion like when you are in love with someone, you feel that internal joy.”
“The first song that I wrote was the way of discovering if I could write a song. And after that one I knew that I understood the form. Everything after that became more personal.”
“I’ve learned not to look at sales reports. I used to, but if I had listened to sales reports at the beginning, I would have given up on things that are some of our biggest successes now.”
“When you keep yourself open, you just might get to know yourself and know the good things about yourself. And that's why I always come back to songwriting. It's the way I kind of try and make sense of my life.”
“I just try to live my life and just be who I am. If people really accept me they have to accept me as I am, you know what I mean? My highs and my lows and my vulnerabilities… It's who I am as a human being.”
“There's going to be a moment where your work challenges you, where you’re at your limit… But if that deep love is really there, you're not going to abandon it. You are going to give your all to it!”
“I always want to take a human portrait. My goal in life is always to enter into everything with great care and with great humanity.”
“I’m 80 years old now, and little by little over your lifetime you begin to understand things that you didn’t understand earlier.”
“For the first 20 years in my career all I did was add things; more courses, more silverware, more ingredients, adding, adding, adding. Only like three years ago or so I was able to really start focusing on removing and felt confident to do so. I finally created a dish where for the first time I felt like I achieved what I tried to do for 23 years.”
“I feel quite free as an artist. I don't feel that I have to prove anything. It’s a liberating feeling. I can go in any directions, I can explore and embrace whatever I want.”
“I think it comes from my desire as a kid to do something artistic that would amaze people, you know? I wanted to do nothing less than that. Those are the projects that I love: figuring out what might just be possible but hasn't been done yet.”
“For me, success is having integrity and really staying true to my own voice. When I was younger, maybe it was more about the big spaces and getting awards. But now I’m prioritizing more this idea of having a beautiful process.”
“I think we've all lived through the pandemic and it has awakened in all of us a concept of time, and how fleeting our time is and can be... I want to apply my energy doing good and creating and hopefully not squandering that. That's what I live for.”
“You can’t measure something like who is the best chef in the world. Whether I’m the best or not, no one can really say. However, my restaurant elBulli was certainly the most influential restaurant in the world.”
“I started a very nice career, became quite successful, and at age 40 I won this prize. But when I got that prize, I realized that I hadn’t yet found my own language of cooking. So I got on my knees and gathered all the tools from my childhood and started working very hard on that. And that’s how it started.”
“People have said that before, “Oh, I'll read a recipe and know it's yours before I see your name on it.” That's the best compliment because I feel like working with food is such an extension of my personality.”
“You better make every moment count. Live your life now; start in the morning. You mustn’t sit around waiting to die.”
“I think the final circle in being an artist is connecting, making some conversation to the world you’re in. I think if you have that feeling of why you need to do something, you’ll find a way. And I think that really takes you forward!”
“I hope the scale of my works is way bigger than what you see. I hope they live in you.”
“I think it’s just been a long slow burn. I’ve worked fairly consistently, and I’m really grateful — even for the years of not getting so many acting jobs because that means I really appreciate being able to do what I love now.”
“You don’t think of your roles as achievements. You think of the roles you play, the paintings you’ve made. I mean, imagine an actor saying, “I don’t want to go on anymore because I can’t do better than the last movie I made. I might as well quit now.” We’d call that resting on your laurels.”
“To fight this game alone is actually every day a struggle. Sometimes you are not in the best shape. The biggest thing is that you must find in it a personal happiness.”
“I struggled a lot. That was the reason I became a champion. A lot of people give up, a lot of people feel sorry for themselves. But I didn't.”
“I don’t want to continue to do what I did when I was 20. I would like to continue to develop myself .”
“Most people make art and movies as a job and if a lot of people go to see it they make money and that is their sign of success. I am not making judgment here, but their goal is strictly business-oriented. I don't do this as a business.”
“Architecture is something that you should be inside and absorbed by. It’s something which convinces you by experience more than impresses you by image.”
“After winning an Oscar, there’s an alertness to what you’re thinking or doing or saying. I feel like there’s an aliveness to the experience that wasn’t as attuned previously.”
“I feel like the best art comes from a sense of necessity and urgency, like I can't help but talk about this.”
“I am very grateful for the films I’ve made. I’ve been able to make movies for $1 million and I’ve been able to make movies for $195 million. I can do what I want in different sizes for different reasons. I have been able to do 10 more movies than I thought I would ever make!”
“I don’t pander to anybody. I don’t care who it is. I just do the picture I do.”
“I think the mark of a great song, photo or a painting is something you can remember. It’s kind of that simple. If you work at it, there will be times when the intangible becomes tangible and for a moment… You are a wizard.”- “To have those magical moments, the ones that require real trust or bravery or letting go, you’ve really gotta swing for the rafters! You’ve got to try and hit it out the park — although you might miss. You’re always trying to hit it into the rafters, and damn the consequences if you don’t make it.”
Alexa Chung: “I don’t like being boxed in”
Ms. Chung, there doesn’t seem to be single interview or article about you that doesn’t mention your outfit that day or describe what you’re wearing. Is it tiring for you to always have to look cool?
I think I’ve just disassociated from that, to be honest! (Laughs) I think those things only exist in interactions with journalists. In my day-to-day life, no one is taking pictures of me or talking about my outfits. My daily reality almost has nothing to do with this other thing I interact with and make money from. It’s quite weird because sometimes I'm actually like, “Do I look okay?” Because no one ever says anything about what I've got on! But I am attuned to how people are perceiving me and sometimes I’m paranoid about it. I never want to admit that I’m slightly famous, but worrying that people are looking at me does have credence, and I don’t really acknowledge it as much as I should.
Do you think those expectations and perceptions have died down a bit as you’ve gotten older?
I think they have, yeah. But fashion is cyclical. Now we're in an era of talking about the past, but in a more comfortable way! I'm pleased to be a bit older and look back at that time and myself and be like, “Oh yeah, it really did have its own aesthetic, and I was a part of that.”
Jan Komasa: “You have to be ready”
Autumn Durald Arkapaw: “It’s an out of body experience”
Hélène Grimaud: “It’s about that moment when time stops”
Helgi Oskarsson: “It’s always been who we are”
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley: “The audience is a vital part of it”
Kristian Baumann: “It’s been about finding peace”
Aziz Ansari: “That’s all I can do”
Matthew McConaughey: “What’s the film I’m living?”
