See Tommy Hartung's Project Space here

Tommy Hartung is a New York based artist who first came to our attention with his video The Story of Edward Holmes, a disorienting stop-motion tale of a colonial expedition, told in a deceptively comforting storybook-style. Hartung is working on an extrapolation of the story, and we see a foretaste of this in his Project Space work, edward holmes & the family tree...

artreview.com: Where does the narration come from? 'I pity English boys...'

Tommy Hartung: The narration is a from the BBC series The Ascent of Man. The narrator, J. Bronowski, is reading a quote from Alfred Russell Wallace's account of his Amazonian exploits.

artreview.com: Is this the next chapter of your recent video The Story of Edward Holmes? Is it the further adventures of this gentleman — who is he?

Tommy Hartung: It's more or less a second chapter or phase. I am very interested in episodic storytelling. Edward Holmes is a caricature of a noble savage and a white western explorer. Caricature is a way of over-generalizing a character. Every mainstream movie's main character is a kind of caricature, and I am interested in holding a distorted mirror up to this cliché. Holmes himself is an echo of adventure characters, from Robinson Crusoe to Decker from Blade Runner.

artreview.com: You use some very clever lo-fi effects in your videos. Can you talk about your relationship to craft, and to studio tinkering?

Tommy Hartung: I wouldn't say they are necessarily lo-fi. Some of them are complicated and use standard techniques from the history of cinema. If they are, some of the best and most memorable effects are lo-fi. Take the scene in Nosferatu where the vampire disappears. It is very simple, just a half silvered mirror on a forty-five degree angle, but it still works today. These direct physical manipulations of light, materials, and imagery on film are my entry point in my studio practice. My practice is process oriented. I rely on an indulgent process and reprocess of the physical objects I produce, as well as in the development of animated sequences.

artreview.com: How does this relate to conceptual basis of your work? You've said that your works are intended to be political — how so?

Tommy Hartung: I make constructions with knick-knacks, curios, and whatever other rejectamenta that strikes me as fascinating. Bricolage creates an aggregate content that energizes my work. There's always a balancing act between immediacy and structured, overwrought planning. Even in this most basic way, the process of making a movie reflects the cat and mouse of politics. Making objects and characters in the way I do allows me to craft any kind of narrative I choose. This kind of mutability also imitates politics, in the way that any word or story can be transformed as if by magic. The subjects of my movies deal with vaguely political topics like imperialism, cultural equity, and conquest. These issues act as a smokescreen for the social and cultural assessments that I pursue.

artreview.com: You aim to distribute your videos beyond standard artworld circulation — is that right? How are you doing this, and what's your motivation?

Tommy Hartung: Yes, my movies are produced in large editions and are priced accordingly. Soon I will be making low-res versions of my movies and trailers available at edwardholmes.com. The motive for this kind of distribution is availability and audience. I'm not sure that courting a strictly artworld audience suits my purpose, and I like the idea of free access to media.

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Previous Project Space artists:
Per Hüttner
Nedko Solakov
Lu Hao
Cory Arcangel
Darren Bader
The Errorists
Miltos Manetas
Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries
Uri Aran
Amina Bech
Takuji Kogo
Dorothy Yoon