Zukunftszeugen III - Robert Wilson Index Interview Transcript 1 Transcript 2 Transcript 3 Transcript 4

				1. Robert Wilson, Resident at Watermill, Long Island What is the idea behind Watermill? What did you have in mind when you bought the land at Watermill? Well, I wanted to have a studio, my own workshop. My early pieces were made in a workshop situation in my own studio. I rehearsed there, even sometimes performed there, mostly prepared there what then went out to the world. My first theater works were not made with professional people from theater but friends of mine, people I met on the street, factory workers, students. People from all walks of life. And also your first major work for the theater, "Deafman Glance" (1970), you developed together with your adopted son Christopher Knowles. . . That was a child who was thought to be uneducable - he was going to be locked up in an institution. A thirteen year old deaf-mute boy, who'd never been to school, who knew no words. When he came to live with me, my life was forever changed because of this interaction with a thirteen year old boy. And I think it was also for other people who worked with this. I had about 80 people perform in the work. It was silent, he being deaf. It was based on the boy's observations, dreams he had, drawings he made. He saw things I couldn't see, because I was preoccupied with words. But he could read body gestures and movements very clearly. So he had sometimes a very concrete understanding of what was happening with people because he was reading the body behavior which is a language. This is something you want to teach your students in the summer groups? I don't like the word "teach" it makes me nervous. Why? I think people come together and share something and experience. They can go back to the world and than participate in whatever field of study they are interested in. I don't want to change the world. Actually I think, you can't really teach anyone something. You can learn skills. As Gertrude Stein said: "An artist needs only three things: First, he needs encouragement, second, he needs encouragement. And thirdly, he needs encouragement." So, there's certain things that I have learned during the years, have learned from others. It's nice to pass them on as I get older. But I think basically, that people come together, they have an exchange and they can pick something up. I think when it serves the purpose for them, that we are doing something right. Is this the essence of the "Robert Wilson Philosophy?" I don't want to have a philosophy necessarily - well somehow, this is already a philosophy (laughs). I don't want to have a Robert Wilson method or a Robert Wilson school, where there is a vocabulary that is learned. I think the vocabulary you learn, there is someone coming from Indonesia, someone coming from China, someone coming from Africa, someone coming from Alaska and they come together and have different cultures, different backgrounds, different understandings and they share something and are different. How would you describe the Watermill Center, then? Well, I think it's an institution. It's a center for the arts and the humanities. It's like crystal cube, that exists in an apple. It's the core, it's the center. It can reflect the Universe. It can look at what happened in the past, it can think about what's going to happen in the future. We can see, what is happening right here at the community of Long Island with farmers living around us. It's a whole cross section of America. There's a native American Indian reservation next door, there are fisherman here. So, Watermill is something, that can serve this community and it can serve the community at large, all over the world. This is an institution that is built by artists. This is a different feeling for the space. I think if you are an intern and you are involved with this forum and have any exchange and you have put up the tent, you painted the floor, you have cleaned the chairs or built the chairs or the table. And you're sitting on the chair you built, the table you cleaned or you have sanded, you have a different feeling for the chair, for the table and for what is happening in the space than if you go to an institution where everything is already provided. If you build the chair yourself you have a different feeling for the chair than if you buy it in the supermarket. I think this is done by artists and children and kids. I think it has a different feeling about the space. These people here follow you everywhere, do everything you say with an incredible enthusiasm. How do you explain that? Well we just started in the summer. I think one reason why I have this center is that I learn too. I have a twenty-one year old assistant who is from Salzburg who has been traveling with me for a year. And he told me some months ago: Thank you. I have learnt so much while working with you. But I said: Thank you! I've learned so much from him. I think, as you get older the way I learn is to listen to young kids. It must always be a two way situation, a dialogue that is happening back and forth. I don't want to be a teacher. I want to be someone who can listen. Who are you? I am artist. From Texas. I have the landscape from Texas in my head, this big sky, and I think this is a signature of all my work. TOP
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