Anri Sala


Martin Herbert: At the Venice Biennale you are exhibiting Uomoduomo (2000), a short video loop that depicts an old man, jerking spasmodically and seemingly half-asleep, in Milan’s Gothic cathedral, or Duomo. It’s evidently a scene that you chanced upon, but how did you feel about filming him?

Anri Sala: Not uncomfortable, because it’s not like spying. Plus, it made sense to me to show it, and when that’s the case, it goes beyond the question of whether I feel bad about it or not.

Martin Herbert: What interested me about Uomoduomo was its implicit question of who was making best use of the church—the man, or the tourists who walk obliviously past him.

Anri Sala: Yes, this is the main point: what does it mean to “use” a church? Is it a shelter, a place to concentrate, to pray, or to take photographs because the church is a work of art? And this is what interested me most, besides the fact that I happened upon this man. You said you found the Duomo singular because it’s in an area surrounded by shops, but the way people go into it, it’s like a shop too, and dependent on visitors.

Martin Herbert: The man’s social status is highly ambiguous.

Anri Sala: This is also very important for me. You can’t tell anything about his character, whether he’s a beggar, a crazy man, a homeless person, or just someone who needs a rest before going the next five hundred meters. So you don’t feel safe with him. If he’s crazy, and you’re not, then that’s voyeurism—but you never know that it might not be you at some point in the future…


The full text is published in "tema celeste" No. 86, Summer 2001.




Martin Herbert