The Interview
Ana Plà Deu
Eleanor Moses Waty
How did it all start?
Ana - I saw an ad on Facebook that was looking for girls for a photo/video shoot in Berlin, it looked interesting so i sent a mail and was accepted for an interview, when i first met Waty, i was expecting to meet a typical old pervert, so it was a great surprise to see the person i had in front of me. When we met for the shooting we spent the rest of the day together cause the girl who was doing the afternoon shooting cancelled her appointment. That whole day was like a gust of fresh air that blew me off of the grey zone. I ended up asking him to dress up like a girl and do the shooting that i had done. He accepted. We decided to keep in touch and eventually he proposed me to work with him on an undefined project that we would create with a mix of our spurious thoughts no matter how crazy they could be.
Waty - Well, I’m sorry but I think Ana doesn’t want to tell you the truth here. So, you can imagine it’s kind of difficult for me to contradict her. Let’s leave this question open for now.
Why Berlin?
Ana - It's big, but not overcrowded and there's a lot going on. Oh, and you can drink beer on the street.
Waty - To be honest, it could be anywhere. As far as people speak german, and it’s a capital.
What are your influences?
Ana - Mainly bad influences.
Waty - I hope we are not going into those kind of typical boring interviews where someone has to mention his tastes and cultured references. Because if it’s the case, we better quit immediately.
Let’s go then, what are your tastes?
Ana - Spicy noodles and rock.
Waty - I’m leaving
Ok, sorry, but can you at least tell me what is Art, to your point of view?
Waty - Skills and imagination.
Tell me, the “Lab-Oratory”, what is it all about?
Waty - The Lab-Oratory is our studio in Berlin. We gathered here all the material we needed to play with our skills. Cameras, video cameras, inks, painting, projectors, you name it. The purpose was to give us some time to play with ideas, thoughts and everything we could put our hands on, and see what happens. See what triggers our imagination and gives us a lot of pleasure.
What is the outcome?
Waty - Well, we discovered quit quickly our ability to make up stories with anything that passes through our mind. Experiencing all kind of weird situations also made us very curious. Especially when it comes to put ourself in someone else’s situation.
Basically, we love playing different roles, different lives. But most of the time, things were getting boring when they became static.
So, the outcome became clear to us, we just have to follow our own obsessions. Live a thousand lives.
How can you do that?
Waty - "Thousand Lives" is a photography based project.
We find and select people whose lives and environment seem interesting to us.
Ana transforms herself to match the new environment and we take a portrait of her with the new partner (father, lover, daughter, whatever...)
The idea behind all this, is to picture the ultimate fantasy of playing with constantly changing lives, surroundings and atmospheres.
This work will be compiled on a blog. (www.thousandllives.com)
The project starts in Berlin this July.
We will be working on it also in the States in September 2010.
What are your plans for the short term?
Ana - These last five months, we’ve been working hard, playing a lot with ideas, sorting and trying some of those for real. Basically, we naturally put ourselves in the situation of constant brainstorming and a lot of action. We gathered all this work, i mean, not exclusively the photo sessions we organized, but also pictures of the work in progress. We are busy now, compiling those on our internet site “thelab-oratory.com”. We are now also busy organizing our “thousand lives” photo sessions in Berlin for July. Then we will travel the States from Salt Lake City to Burning Man Festival, and from there to Houston, this will be our first big "Thousand Lives" trip and we will post our new life photo sessions on the blog along with other photo shoots we may make during our travels.
Ana Plà Deu
Eleanor Moses Waty
How did it all start?
Ana - I saw an ad on Facebook that was looking for girls for a photo/video shoot in Berlin, it looked interesting so i sent a mail and was accepted for an interview, when i first met Waty, i was expecting to meet a typical old pervert, so it was a great surprise to see the person i had in front of me. When we met for the shooting we spent the rest of the day together cause the girl who was doing the afternoon shooting cancelled her appointment. That whole day was like a gust of fresh air that blew me off of the grey zone. I ended up asking him to dress up like a girl and do the shooting that i had done. He accepted. We decided to keep in touch and eventually he proposed me to work with him on an undefined project that we would create with a mix of our spurious thoughts no matter how crazy they could be.
Waty - Well, I’m sorry but I think Ana doesn’t want to tell you the truth here. So, you can imagine it’s kind of difficult for me to contradict her. Let’s leave this question open for now.
Why Berlin?
Ana - It's big, but not overcrowded and there's a lot going on. Oh, and you can drink beer on the street.
Waty - To be honest, it could be anywhere. As far as people speak german, and it’s a capital.
What are your influences?
Ana - Mainly bad influences.
Waty - I hope we are not going into those kind of typical boring interviews where someone has to mention his tastes and cultured references. Because if it’s the case, we better quit immediately.
Let’s go then, what are your tastes?
Ana - Spicy noodles and rock.
Waty - I’m leaving
Ok, sorry, but can you at least tell me what is Art, to your point of view?
Waty - Skills and imagination.
Tell me, the “Lab-Oratory”, what is it all about?
Waty - The Lab-Oratory is our studio in Berlin. We gathered here all the material we needed to play with our skills. Cameras, video cameras, inks, painting, projectors, you name it. The purpose was to give us some time to play with ideas, thoughts and everything we could put our hands on, and see what happens. See what triggers our imagination and gives us a lot of pleasure.
What is the outcome?
Waty - Well, we discovered quit quickly our ability to make up stories with anything that passes through our mind. Experiencing all kind of weird situations also made us very curious. Especially when it comes to put ourself in someone else’s situation.
Basically, we love playing different roles, different lives. But most of the time, things were getting boring when they became static.
So, the outcome became clear to us, we just have to follow our own obsessions. Live a thousand lives.
How can you do that?
Waty - "Thousand Lives" is a photography based project.
We find and select people whose lives and environment seem interesting to us.
Ana transforms herself to match the new environment and we take a portrait of her with the new partner (father, lover, daughter, whatever...)
The idea behind all this, is to picture the ultimate fantasy of playing with constantly changing lives, surroundings and atmospheres.
This work will be compiled on a blog. (www.thousandllives.com)
The project starts in Berlin this July.
We will be working on it also in the States in September 2010.
What are your plans for the short term?
Ana - These last five months, we’ve been working hard, playing a lot with ideas, sorting and trying some of those for real. Basically, we naturally put ourselves in the situation of constant brainstorming and a lot of action. We gathered all this work, i mean, not exclusively the photo sessions we organized, but also pictures of the work in progress. We are busy now, compiling those on our internet site “thelab-oratory.com”. We are now also busy organizing our “thousand lives” photo sessions in Berlin for July. Then we will travel the States from Salt Lake City to Burning Man Festival, and from there to Houston, this will be our first big "Thousand Lives" trip and we will post our new life photo sessions on the blog along with other photo shoots we may make during our travels.