Frieze Projects: Oliver Laric

Date
12 October 2011

In the past, Oliver Laric has admitted making up fake details about his background to bamboozle interviewers but one thing’s for sure – he is an artist who is rewriting all the rules, using the internet to push the boundaries of creation, curation and collaboration. For the second in our features on the Frieze Projects – which showcase up-and-coming artists alongside the main fair – we spoke to Oliver about what he’s got in store.

The German artist is best-known for disseminating video or images, letting anyone and everyone and tweak, play with or re-imagine the source material and showcasing the results. This mediator approach has won acclaim from both the artistic and digital communities and it’s this style he’s bringing to the world-famous art fair this week.

Hi Oliver, tell us what you’ve got planned for the Frieze Projects…

I’m going to film close-ups of art works at the fair using two of the more advanced digital motion picture cameras. One is the Arri Alexa, the other is the Phantom, allowing footage to be recorded at 1,000 frames per second.

The resulting material will be made available through the Frieze website and distributed through channels outside of the art discourse. There will be no intellectual property attached to this material, it will be available for free use.

How does it feel to bring your ideas about ownership into an atmosphere like Frieze which is very much about buying and selling in the very traditional sense?

The buying and selling at Frieze allows the collaboration and free distribution of the material. It’s not cheap to rent these cameras.

How will you decide what to film at Frieze? What do you hope to see, in general terms, people do with it?

I will select subjects that can be objectified and hopefully adapted to different needs. So it won’t be a complete depiction of a recognisable work, more likely a texture.

What will happen with the footage is hard to predict but it’s the most exciting part for me. It could end up anywhere.

Download the footage here.

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About the Author

Rob Alderson

Rob joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in July 2011 before becoming Editor-in-Chief and working across all editorial projects including itsnicethat.com, Printed Pages, Here and Nicer Tuesdays. Rob left It’s Nice That in June 2015.

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