Name: James Nares

Age: 59

Occupation: Artist and Filmmaker

City: New York City

Current Exhibition: New Media Series—James Nares: “Street” at the Saint Louis Art Museum, through January 27, 2013

Your film “Street,” now on display at the Saint Louis Art Museum, was shot from the back of an SUV on the streets of Manhattan. You edited the footage down to a glacial pace to make quotidian movement look like an elegant dance. How did this project develop?

This film emerged from the marriage of two longstanding fascinations of mine — the “Actualité films,” which were made around the turn of the last century, and high-speed photography. 

Actualité films offer a particularly clear and unfiltered lens through which we can look at the past. Coming so soon after the invention of cinematography, they are fresh and vibrant with their enthusiasm for seeing and recording life on the street — as they found it. At about the same time, filmmakers realized that they could use film to manipulate reality too — by constructing a narrative, then acting, editing, and [using] other kinds of artifice to create a new and imaginary reality. But the formal beauty of Actualité films comes from their willingness to simply look, and their being shot in a single, long take without cutting or other manipulation of their world (it wasn’t until Andy Warhol trained an Auricon on his subjects that the thread was resurrected). The camera, of course, by virtue of its presence, changes what it sees, but even this participation is recorded intact, with the way people react if they see the camera — some frown, some clown, many just return the stare. Video has now opened wide the door to “real time,” but Actualité films were the first reality films. 

To my mind, looking back through time at the “way things were,” both confirms and reveals things about the “way we are” today.

These [Actualité] films were not necessarily intended as historical documents, but that is what they have become. When I first tried raising money for this film, it was a bit of a hard sell, especially since I proposed it along with a working subtitle — “A Film to be Seen 100 Years from Now.” It was tongue in cheek, but I was serious too. We do create our own histories after all. 

High-speed photography fascinates me quite simply because it reveals things which are invisible to what we call, most poetically, the “naked eye.” By filming on the street in Actualité style, I hoped to capture increments of moments within moments in time, that revealed human interactions and gestures and thoughts in action that are too brief to be observed in “real time.” 

I wanted to have the observer/camera in constant motion to give the feeling of floating through a city where time stands still. To this end, certain conditions had to be met to be able to film at all. The car that carried us had to be moving between 30 and 40 mph and we had to be as free as possible of other cars, whether parked or in motion, coming between us and the subject of the shot. I then had a maximum of six seconds (because of the frame rate, averaging 780 fps, at which I was shooting) in which to adjust focus and aperture, choose focal length, frame, and shoot a given subject — all whilst traveling at speed with rapidly shifting light conditions. 

Your paintings — which feature a long ribbon of paint applied with a single stroke — and “Street” both arrest moments in time. What interests you about capturing and suspending movement?

My paintings have an ongoing dialogue with photography. There are many painters who would say the same, I’m sure. The difference is that I’m thinking more about the temporal aspect of photography, rather than the visual. My paintings are made in a similar time frame to the taking of a photograph. They also have a “photographic look” because of the strength and nuance of the “modeling,” combined with the flatness of the surface. Malevich talked about his paintings being like “Photographs of the mind.” I would concur. 

What really interests me about capturing and suspending movement is that I get to experience something invisible and inaudible, as elusive and fleeting as thought itself, and give it form. The Hindu god Shiva is said to have danced the world into existence. I like that. Maybe my paintings are all just little fragments of the Cosmic Dance suspended in time. 

This year you have a monograph coming out with Rizzoli that chronicles the past four decades of your artistic career. As someone whose work is about the fleetingness of time, what’s it like to look back this far?

Looking back on my own history in this way, as I prepare for the Rizzoli monograph, is like opening a storage locker for the first time in many years. There are things that look really good, things that verge on embarrassing, things I clean forget I ever made... The real joy is in discovering that the twigs and branches of my practice are all firmly rooted in a single tree, even as time goes by and I become increasingly aware of the fleetingness of all things.

You’ve said that you’re actually related to the other famous James Nares, the 18th-century English composer and organist. In “Street,” you collaborated with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth on a rambling guitar soundtrack. You also make music yourself. What role does music play in your visual art?

Yes, James Nares (the elder) was Organist and Composer to King George III (“Mad” King George to most), who did so much to revolutionize America. Maybe it was the music of James Nares that drove him over the edge or maybe it was just those royal genes. We shall never know...