Last spring, actor Matt Dillon and artist Jesper Just struck up a conversation about currywurst outside an old World War II bunker in West Berlin. It was during the opening of Dillon’s painting exhibition To The Spiegel the art space of art critic Ingeborg Wiensowski, where Just was also participating in a concurrent group video art exhibition.
“I’ve always had more connections with artists than people in my industry,” Dillon told Artnet News.
Shortly after, the duo reunited in New York, where Just asked if Dillon could star in his next video work, interferes. THE A 16-minute film follows the contemplative reflections of a man locked in an MRI machine. He takes the viewer into his brain – literally and allegorically – where he tries to achieve different emotions, much like in acting, the results of which appear in his neurological scanner.
Dillon had just finished filming in Greece, so the timing worked out. And, although the actor didn’t feel like sitting still in a MIR tube for hours, the challenge intrigued him. Last October, in a research center and a Parisian hospital, the film was shot for two days, between two emergency uses of the machines.
Perrotin Gallery made its debut interferes at the historic Del Mar Theater in Los Angeles in February. (The first was the gallery test for the venue, which will become its permanent West Coast space later this year.) It is currently In view at MAC Lyon until July, and has just gone up to Just’s exposure at the Nicolai Wallner Gallery in Copenhagen on April 14.
In Just’s signature style, clinically sharp shots are contrasted with the sound of the cold industrial noise of the scanner, as well as the brooding melodies of Gustav Mahler’s 5th Symphony Adagietto. At the same time, the tongue-in-cheek protagonist recounts spontaneous experiences that he tries to rekindle inside himself, while peering into a scanning tube decorated with soothing images of palm trees.
Recently, we sat down with the duo at a table in the Perrotin gallery in New York to discuss how they relying on each other’s intuitions, the difference between real and artificial emotions, and how Dillon overcame his claustrophobia.
Jesper Just, production photo, 2023. Courtesy Perrotin and Gallerie Nicolai Wallner.
Matt, what was the experience of acting almost entirely inside the MRI?
Matt Dillon: The doctors were very helpful and they told me that I could always manage, which helped me. I was happy to serve Jesper’s vision. We were going back and forth with ideas and I even contributed some of the words the character says. I had also felt this type of collaborative energy with Lars von Trier. When I was playing a character, I was slowly understanding what he was really trying to TO DO.
What is the difference between working with a director and an artist who makes video works?
MARYLAND: There is a trust factor in both. But I would give an artist a lot more leeway, because it’s a conceptual idea and it’s almost entirely their vision. If I agree to do that, then I agree to go to the end of the artist’s vision, unless it’s something extreme that I won’t do.
There are films that the producers call “art and essay” of course, like those of David Lynch or Jim Jarmusch, for example, but Jesper’s medium is art. Commercial considerations may be less, but of course art is also a business. There are fewer compromises in this experience – film industry executives are obsessed with the route characters take, and there are so many moving parts in a movie. But in short, I told Jesper “let’s go with what you want”, and my only concern was how to spend so much time inside the MRI machine.
Jesper Juicet: The doctors were actually amazed that you came back again and again, despite your claustrophobia. We actually did real MRIs, so what the audience sees in the artwork is Matt’s brain. Doctors called him one of the 20 best brains they had ever seen. They wouldn’t be allowed to release the footage if they found anything wrong with the results.
Jesper, did you have a vision for a work about the performativity of emotions for a while or did the idea come about after you befriended an actor?
not a word: I had the idea for this for years, initially as a prologue to a bigger project to set the tone, but it eventually became its own work, partly due to Covid. The idea kind of came from my project with ballet dancers, Corporalities, that I had shown at Perrotin just before the pandemic. Romantic classical music was sent directly into the dancers’ bodies with electric pads to control the muscles. The idea was to remove this sensitivity of harmony with the music of the dancers. The muscle stimulation that is part of the dance suddenly became visible with the wires. This leads to another idea about play and the representation of emotions. I was curious to exploree the emotional topography of an actor creating emotions. This is not science but something else. What do you do with your ego when you play a role? Are you possessed? Are you still aware of who you are?
Jesper, your work has mostly been about stimulation that interrupts the body from the outside, like the project with ballet dancers, but this time the idea was to cultivate emotions from inside the body.
not a word: There are several layers of this representation. Matt is there of course as the real person whose brain scans we see. But at the same time, he also acts like a person who is not able to feel an emotion. We watch his brain from there to start feeling something with the music playing. In studies, some psychopaths who are not able to feel empathy begin to feel things when they imagine music; they are triggered by the audio cortex. I was very curious about this effect of music. We see him being more and more analytical about his feelings and talking about them. I see it a bit like the border between the person and character, that I like to blur.
Did shooting a piece of video art give you the freedom to improvise with your text and acting?
MARYLAND: There was a clear written monologue, but I was largely improvising. Directors rarely say “slow down”, except Scandinavian directors. The idea of the audience becoming uncomfortable, agitated, or confused has nothing to do with the length of the film, but has to do with the pacing. A short film can also seem very long.
Matt, how did you connect with the character, who is mostly aloof?
MARYLAND: In this particular case, there was no background or a fully constructed script. You can’t play a character if you judge the character, so I had to go there to reflect the emotional life of an individual. Music was an important part because someone’s emotional reaction to the music says a lot. I felt empathy for the character. What we do is more about equities. We don’t focus on emotion – it’s all behavior. And then the emotion comes out.
Jesper Just, production photo, 2023. Courtesy Perrotin and Gallerie Nicolai Wallner.
The MRI room must have created its own challenges for you two.
not a word: The neurologist was there to help us with the scans. I’ve always been interested in pre-cinema concepts, for example garden design. When you enter a romantic English garden, you see that they have created a narrator with the way they invite you to discover emotional feelings around different little paths. The experience comes from moving, which is also very important for the camera. We were inside a magnetic field, so we couldn’t have a dolly or move the camera. The camera was outside filming through the window, but I still wanted that motion effect. As a result, the camera constantly rotates with zuhs in the brain.
Matt, how did you feel shooting something that wasn’t a feature film? Have those feelings changed after it took place last fall?
MARYLAND: The thing that applies to both experiences is to keep things emotionally truthful. When I did The house Jack built with Lars, I talked about it with [actor] Bruno Ganz—after spending 10 days in a freezer for the movie, it just made a lot of noise. In this case, I didn’t have to engage in things like learning a dialect or studying a long text, but rather working on the emotional environment. In my experience, it’s not chemistry, it’s what we do, not necessarily technical, but more of a craft.
Is there a trick you’ve used to spend your time in the MRI tube?
MARYLAND: At one point I was listening to this 1920s dance song called Focus (on you) by Jack Purvis. It was constantly playing in my head, and I slowly realized that the song was about focusing, in this case on the woman it was singing about, but it occurred to me later that it helped me through the process.
It must have been fun to engage with the idea of the artificiality of emotions, which is a core experience of traditional filmmaking, but almost never its subject.
MARYLAND: It is said that directors make a film three times: once before making it, later during shooting, then in the editing room. I wonder if Jesper felt that.
not a word: Once the film is shot, I no longer look at the script. I look at the material and try to make the best possible film out of it.
MARYLAND: And that’s usually where movies come out the best.
Matt, you’re also a painter. How did you feel exploring video art?
MARYLAND: I’ve always been interested in conceptual art. I used to hang out with Mike Kelley through a gallery friend in LA And, I did some weird movies, like Imitate with Yorgos Lanthimos, in which we shot Mexico City– without a doubt one of the weirdest films I’ve ever made. Finally, it is the director. Responsibility ends with jesper— I respect him as an artist. Deep down I know my ideas aren’t as good as my mistakes, or that’s how I work. I need ideas, everything is an idea with paint or another medium. Jesper and I recently went to Nino Mier Gallery‘s opening for André Butzer who is a great painter and a friend of mine.
Jesper, how was it different working with ballet dancers and then working with an actor? They are all performers, but different in their training and approach.
not a word: With the dancers, I had to learn to work with them because I was invited for the project. The dancers express a movement with their body, then they are criticized for it. Actors are used to talking with the director before acting. The challenge for an actor in a project like this is probably the reality that nothing is really simple, but rather quite abstract.
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