As part of the innovative art campaign funded by Beck’s, here’s Warpaint’s Theresa Wayman and Stella Mozgawa to discuss their contribution to the ‘Green Box Project’ and go behind-the-scenes of their surreal commission and the inspiration that the band find in collaborations, artful mediation and altered moments of time.
Stella Mozgawa: I think what’s most exciting for me is that we’re dealing with a new medium that we’re not used to as musicians. We’re interested in the aesthetic aspect of not just our music but the way we want to express ourselves. This seems almost like throwing us in the deep end which is good creatively. We’re not video installation artists by any means but we’re fascinated by that world. Collaborating, that’s number one.
Theresa Wayman: It’s been totally thrilling the entire time because it’s all new and it’s liberating for us to exercise different parts of ourselves and create us in a new way. We did something that was confining ourselves and our expression while also expressing something pretty intense. We altered our appearance using dried clay, and then we sat with ourselves looking at ourselves, and just sort of zoned out on our own image.
Sort of like a meditation. We couldn’t really move because our skin and face were trapped by the clay, which became really irritating after a while and it was the process. We slowed down the film while we were filming. It looks kind of bizarre and surreal.
Stella Mozgawa: There was this moment where we were both looking at each other, and we couldn’t laugh because the whole thing would just crack off and it would be a waste of time. We were laughing inside and were appreciating the humour of the situation. It was quite a challenge and we had our friend Ritchie film and help us edit the footage. He placed a series of lights and the camera in my living room, we made it into a green screen studio. You can see yourself in the screen of the camera, and imagine looking at yourself from maybe four metres away, and all you can see is this really distorted image of yourself with just white clay, and it starts to just morph into different things.
Theresa Wayman: You can’t look at anything else.
Stella Mozgawa: Your movements can’t be too severe or erratic because it’s going to show up on the loop. Then the next step was we painted each other’s faces, but we take out the actual person, the artist, out of the frame, so it’s like a night and day image. There’s this quite grotesque confronting image of us with this clay that doesn’t really make sense, and then when you paint over it, it’s like that’s the blank canvas. Then we work the whole visual piece with the music that is a little eerie, some of it’s a little more melodic, it’s…
Theresa Wayman: It’s our thing.
More:
The Beck’s Green Box Project (Becks)
Beck’s Green Box Project (LondonNet)
Interview: Warpaint – The Beck’s Green Box Project (LondonNet)
Interview: Nick Knight – The Beck’s Green Box Project (LondonNet)
Art in London (LondonNet)
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