Laure Prouvost: I can't stop filming

Laure Prouvost deals mostly with internal emotions and explores them through the means of video art. Her work was presented in the Czech Republic in May 2014 at an exposition called Recursion in Třeboň. We proudly bring you an exclusive interview.

When did you decide to use video art as the means of expressing yourself and why does it suit you the most?

In 1963 I actually got a present from my uncle and left it somewhere in the house without opening it, because i wasn't very fond of him! When I was 15 he died falling off the stairs in the European Commission where he worked as a translator, and I found the present in my parents wardrobe. Since then I can't stop filming. I have lost about 8 cameras but still do it. And video, I like it also because you can convey all the senses, even smells. My mum later told me that my uncle dreamt of making a documentary about my grans, but couldn't as he spent his time working as a burocrat.
 

We are really curious about the sources of your inspiration. You are dealing with very personal notions, topic-wise. Yet, your visual outcome is very rough and de- aestheticized. How would you describe the process of shaping your work, the story and the visual setting?

Well I wouldn't say personal and de-aesteticised is a contradiction. My greatest inspiration I admit, is my granddad. Before he became a conceptual artist, he told me he had a revelation. He worked as a mechanic and one day lying for hours under a car he got sick and had hallucinations... He saw strange things and shapes in the petrol stains around him and wanted to explore those signs. In hospital he met Kurt who lay in the same room and from then on he dedicated himself to his art.
I remember filming him as a kid, he walked away in a straight line till he would only become a pixel on the video screen. What I love most is the wind blowing on my neck and hair, it's like the best sound you can feel.
 

Your works seem like a flow of short stories, interwoven with very intimate, almost unconscious fragments of mind, for example the dreamy sound of your voice telling the story. Is there a broader story line of your work that you are developing?

It's a continuation of my granddad's work, I want to keep it alive, follow his visions. There are so many facts and stories that are forgotten, and I want to improve it, the studio, the minimalist paintings... Trends come and go. My grandma says his paintings are really out of date now. After he had reappeared in 1999, he realised that love is the centre of the world... He would have done anything for Wantee. She pushed him to go deeper in history and dig the tunnel and question how far society can control traces of a person. Fictions are real too, it overlaps. My granddad always felt misunderstood (esp. being half-Irish half French), and misunderstandings are something he used to expand his imagination.
 

What has had the biggest impact on your visual aesthetics and the layout of the settings?

A lot comes from my granddad's paintings. He started painting bums in the middle of last cemetary asking his wife to pose. He thought it was the most conceptual shape. I also like darkness and everything that happens in the dark, abstract colour shapes etc. A bit like when you put your hands in front of your eyes when they are closed and move them around...
In the summer 2000 in Albania we used to enter strangers' houses at night and grope our way around in a low light, getting glimpses of their interior and lives.

In terms of installation work, it is mainly a display of my grandma's favourite objects. She wanted me to show them all before she went to hospital although I would prefer not to. At one point she wanted to make herself half-human half-furniture, and her legs became at times hard as wood. She believed objects could be transformed and manipulated and a spirit would come forth, like Aladdin rubbing the lamp. She fell in the butter once when changing a bulb and it became brown like bronze and she was convinced it was a sign of God that granddad would be back.
 
When you are preparing your settings and stories, do you work with some archive of yours? Are you "recycling"?
Yes there is a lot of footage from my gran and his friends with John, Bruce Noman and Kurt... In 2020 we hope to build a big visitor centre when granddad comes out. There will be tea slings into a big lake and a big tea pot for grandma and above all a studio reconstruction with all of granddad's sculptures.
 
Taking into account the way you work with "stories" or "scenarios", how do you feel about the blending of film and video art ?
It depends on what you find. I love collaborating with people from the past who are not dead yet. I found various film scripts in the tabacco factory where my granddad lived in Mozambique. I have to sail back there in his little boat. But I need to get the sail fixed.., it has a drawing with my naked grandma on it, and she thinks it is too risky.

 
Thank you for your time.