One, two, three hands. Q and A

 

Contactsheet 2

1.
Drawing (repetitively) after the hand of a painter's model
(with my own hand)
tracing the hand of the painter


2.
Animating the drawing hand of a man
through replacing the sound of his image
with recordings of my own hand mimicking him

 
- What is the similarity of the hands in Hatterman's Hand (1) and the hands in This is about a line that is not there   it has to do with the horizon (2)? 


= There is a particular repetition of gesture in both works; rehearsals that become a kind of meditative practise. The drawings (1) are traces of the movement of the hand. 


- Who's hand?


= First of all they are traces of my own hand. But then, because I am making a lot of them by looking at one particular hand, that of the painter's model, I think I am also tracing the hand of the painter.


- So it could have been anyone's hand then in that painting?


= Well, no. Nola Hatterman had the tendency to exaggerate the African facial features of her black models, in order to confront Amsterdam's art scene with another aesthetics, instead of the usual Western Greek's. 
What I see in the painting is that Nola had more difficulty painting the hand of her model, than she had in painting his head. This makes me wonder if she had less interest in the hand, or less practise, maybe.
By repetitively drawing after the painted hand, my drawings became more and more ‘slick’, just like the painted head is already. Hands are the first thing one touches of another person. But one’s eye touches someone’s face first.
I am not sure where I am going here.. 
(check Nola on film in Documentary 'Hatterman en de konsekwente keuze' by Frank Zichem)


- Do you mean that Hatterman was not interested in making a real portrait of that man? And that she was more interested in confronting the Dutch world with the image we repetitively keep producing of the black body?


= I read a thesis by Lia Ottes from 1999, about Hatterman’s life and work and Ellen de Vries’s Biography of Hatterman from 2008. In their texts there is little mentioning of Hatterman’s reflections on her own Western Perspective, for example during her drawing classes in Surinam. I think if Hatterman had painted the portrait in our time, this confrontation would have been her aim. But because she made it 76 years ago, my guess is that she didn’t realize that she was herself part of the same production of this particular western aesthetics. 

- How about the hands you’ve drawn then, are they also part of that production?


= Even though the hand is never completely reproduced, they are part of it too. But between the many rehearsals, I feel there is something growing outside of that production. I am not only tracing his hand anymore, but I am following her gesture. Revealing this distance that exists between her and her model. The space of looking.

 

Contactsheet 1

- Back to the hand in the video This is about a line (..) horizon. There is a man drawing, but the sound does not belong to the image. What was your aim by animating his hand?


= My aim was to make the paper a kind of meeting place. The man is drawing on this paper surface, which resembles the skin of a drum, highly sensitive for his touch. On the other side of the paper surface his movements are recorded and amplified.


- Is it important for the viewer to know that it is you that is making the sound?


= Yes, I think that after watching the work for a few minutes one understands that everything about the image and the sound is edited: cropped, enlarged, selected and otherwise post-produced. My many rehearsals in Premiere Pro, are never a real repetition that drawing. 

- Here I see a parable with the drawing series Hatterman’s Hand. In both works you reveal the construction, or production of the image of the hand.


= Yes, but how are these hands alike?


- Both the drawn hand (1) and the animated hand (2) are a constructed image. By showing the layers of construction, another hand appears, that draws the image, which would be you.


= Is there a third hand in my video too then?


- If there is a third hand I am doubting if it is Louise Bourgeois's hand, like in Hatterman's hand.