The Talks
Viviane Sassen: “It takes time to find your voice”
Ms. Sassen, as a photographer, does art always start with the self?
I think all art is some kind of self-expression! For me, when I'm working as an artist and I have total freedom in that realm, I can totally let go and I can express myself fully — maybe this isn’t always true for commercial work where I have to give the client what they want, but I think even if you make really abstract or conceptual art, it always says something about yourself. I think all artists make self-portraits in some sense.
Has it gotten easier to express yourself through your work over the years?
Well, for instance, I do these large collages nowadays, which can be quite huge, spanning entire walls, they often look quite monstrous, almost like monstrous beings because I work with so many different elements. And I think when I was a young woman, I would not have had the guts to do that, you know? I think you grow over time as a person, as a woman. It takes time to find your voice. Of course, there are also young women who already have this kind of enormous power to just express themselves and go big, but for me, it really took time get there. I had to experience more in life and and go through so many different phases. The transition has been kind of liberating! The woman that I was when I made those early self-portraits, I think she still had a long way to go!
“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.”
“I think it’s really important to not be afraid of failure and to push yourself to try things and jump in the cold water.”
“I would like to think that someday I will be content enough with myself and feel good enough about myself to think I don’t need to do all that sort of shit and I’ll just go and watch tomatoes grow or something.”
“I’ve learned that with time also comes pleasure: the pleasure of creating but also upholding the legacy that’s been passed down to me.”
“During my career I was blessed to be able to constantly be motivated and constantly be pushing myself, because otherwise I never would have achieved what I did.”
“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 don’t want to continue to do what I did when I was 20. I would like to continue to develop myself .”
“Art is about finding creativity in the normal gutter next to you. To see the potential in something where there is no potential in terms of how society sees it is often where art or creativity is a great tool. It’s about making the impossible possible.”
“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 believe anyway that the prime-time for every work of art exists in the time in which it was done. After that it’s transformation, continuous transformation.”
“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.”
“I don’t pander to anybody. I don’t care who it is. I just do the picture I do.”
“The entire aim of my work is to elevate the human spirit.”
“The journey is everything! It’s a cliché, but I have really felt it in my own life, in the 25 or 30 years I’ve been in this… The goal is the process, really enjoying the process.”
“There’s only one of you in the world. No one else is like you and that's a superpower.”
“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 want to be an authentic person. I start to feel that it’s a mission. I am not going to hold back on an opinion I have about something; I don’t know what the point of that would be.”
“I can’t make people happy if I’m not happy myself. That applies to anyone who tries to achieve something in their life: if you’re not happy, you can’t transfer any happiness”
“In the moment when you’re designing a building, it’s the subject. One year later, when you just go back and see it, it’s the object. It becomes part of the city. It starts to sit where it should be sitting.”
“You better make every moment count. Live your life now; start in the morning. You mustn’t sit around waiting to die.”
“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 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.”
“To do something no one else has ever done, it’s satisfying, but the thing is nobody else is really playing the game of free solo climbing, so it's easy to win when no one else plays, you know?”
“I do not consider architecture as art, nor do I consider architects to be artists. However, I do have a strong desire to improve the purity of my expression and put a strong message into my architecture so that I can call it art!”
“The bottom line in the end is to grab the heart of the audience and talk to them directly and tell them: "I share with you my soul and my heart."”
“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.”
“I discovered early on that I’m the kind of person that experiments and makes mistakes but then it’s all worth it because once in a blue moon it hits home.”
“There is something in leaving this place better than where you have left it, working on yourself, doing things with other people, there is something in that that feels right, deep in your core. I go with that.”
“If I should be fortunate enough to make another film, it would be exactly what I have settled upon as what is right for me. I feel that these days, I understand a little more what the cinema is.”
“If it sounds right, then I’m happy, no matter how I got there. I just want to make beautiful music.”
“I try to look at things more from the perspective that everything is happening for us, not to us. And so whatever challenges that were occurring at the time, perhaps they were happening just so this moment could happen.”
“I consider myself a storyteller. I feel that is what good directors do, they are really just following criteria: is this a good story? Is this the story I want to tell? All we’re trying to do is the hard task of making interesting, thought-provoking films.”
“I take everything as seriously as the next thing. I don't differentiate or have a level of commitment based on the kind of project that it is. I believe that there's an equal measure in one role versus another role.”
“Making a movie comes with a great deal of joy, an incredible amount of hard work and equal amounts of stress, pressure, fun, and anxiety. But ultimately it’s extremely rewarding! I have the best job 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.”- “I’m 80 years old now, and little by little over your lifetime you begin to understand things that you didn’t understand earlier.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I think that one should make a house that really fits you like your second soul. It should be your most preferred place on earth!”
“I’m surviving. I do everything I can to speak out and make sure that I keep my humanity.”
Emerging MastersMadeline Woo: “Keep doing what you’re doing”
Madeline, as a ballerina and a principal dancer at the San Francisco Ballet, what is it like to step on stage to perform?
See, the thing is that I’m still very much a bundle of nerves before going on stage. For me, that's the worst moment because I have all this fear of things going wrong, and the dread of getting really tired, knowing it’s going to be exhausting… But then when you step on stage to perform, you stop thinking about any of that. You just really get lost in the choreography and there’s this feeling just being completely and utterly present in the moment. It’s really amazing, and really magical things happen from that adrenaline and the energy of the audience. It’s the coolest thing.
You’ve been dancing since before you could even walk — do you really still get nervous?
Definitely. I mean, I was a really shy kid and I still am shy! I am very easily embarrassed, I’m naturally quite introverted. It’s been a big hurdle for me, but I’ve grown my confidence over the years… It really is all about being prepared to be judged by other people and keep going, even though you feel that. Just keep going, keep doing what you're doing, let them say whatever they want, they're going to get it out of their system, and then no one's is going care. And you can always admire the fact that you kept doing what you're doing.
Gaggan Anand: “I do what I want to do”
Thomas Demand: “That’s all part of the game”
Russell Tovey: “This is for everyone”
Victoria Monét: “Go forth with faith”
Alessandra Sanguinetti: “They live within me”
Jonny Greenwood: “It’s nice to be struggling”
Yannick Alléno: “Keep searching for more”
Jack Antonoff: “It’s a lived life together”
