Ebony Porter Interview
…Might be good (issue #62)
Ebony Porter on The Greatest Secrets
On view through January 28, 2006
Ebony Porter’s solo exhibition The Greatest Secrets opened at Art Palace on January 14, might be good spoke with Ebony at her opening and invited her to discuss her work in greater detail.
Might be good: Ebony, for readers who might not know your work yet, what would be the best way for us to introduce you?
Ebony Porter: I carry a film or video camera with me as much as I can and I want to film everything. Sometimes I make short visual poems from my archive and other times I build an environment around one or more particular works of cinema. The motion picture is like my tubes of paint. I’ve gone from thinking of myself as a filmmaker to now thinking of myself as a multi-media artist.
mbg: You work in film, video and installation. You write poetry. As your career progresses do you think you’ll continue working in all of these veins?
EP: I’ve always found myself drawn to artists who were capable of successfully crossing between literature, performance, visual arts and music. Joseph Beuys comes to mind. Stan Brakhage is also a good example. Most people think of him as an experimental filmmaker, but he was first and foremost a painter and also happened to be a great writer. My poetry becomes my films and my films become my poetry. Each informs the other. I think there is a tremendous amount of possibility when we can make unexpected combinations collide gracefully. I’ll definitely continue combining all of the things I’m interested in. I play music too, which has already entered my film and video work. I’d like to extend that even further and develop a way of performing inside my films, inside my installations.
mbg: How do you see the two portions of your exhibition at Art Palace working together?
EP: Both sections of the gallery show how I photograph people and their landscapes, the forms I enjoy capturing and the colors and perspectives I am drawn to. The installation gives the viewer an opportunity to experience my images in motion and how I choose to present the motion picture when given a space to enter and transform. The opportunity to show film and video stills was exciting because of their original source. Both the video in the installation and the stills were filmed with the same spirit; something wonderful was unfolding in front of me. But, it just so happened that the kids swimming off the coast of Mexico wound up as the centerpiece for the installation.
mbg: At your opening you had some pretty interesting things to say about how science, or more precisely our culture’s faith in science, informs your work. Could you talk about that a little more?
EP: I had to wrap my brain around a few simple laws of physics to understand how the projected light was to respond to a reflective surface, in this case the water and mirrors. But while there is a calculated understanding of how certain materials operate, we can’t assume we know everything that’s going on everywhere. That’s where the title of the show [The Greatest Secrets] comes from. We are guided by what science tells us and one of the exciting things about the installation at Art Palace was getting to throw my own interpretation of the night sky onto the gallery ceiling, but I don’t think there will ever be a final frontier of knowledge.
mbg: Finally, you mentioned that you were taking off to Australia. What are your plans for that trip?
EP: I’m treating it as a self-made residency. I recently wrote my mother a letter and asked if I could come and stay with her for six months on the peninsula she lives on, to focus on art, writing and music. I’m looking forward to seeing parts of my country I’ve never explored, Tasmania being one of them. I’ve never shot film or video in Australia either, and my dear co-workers recently bought me an antique 16mm film camera and a few rolls to go with it. I’m also looking forward to finding out what’s happening in the Australian art scene, mostly in Adelaide and Melbourne. I think it’s going to be transformative, don’t be surprised if I return with an accent and a fist full of Vegemite!