Interview

Notice the title of her 2005 film: Me and You and Everyone We Know. Or her first collection of short stories: No One Belongs Here More Than You. Clearly, Miranda July is trying to involve us in something. Her latest endeavor, “Eleven Heavy Things,” at this summer’s Daniel Birnbaum–curated Venice Biennale, is another choice step in bringing the audience into the art and also letting the art leave with the audience (here in photographic form). In a small side garden in the Arsenale section of the art festival, the 35-year-old artist erected 11 steel-lined cast fiberglass sculptures that were specifically designed to be climbed over, stood on, and posed under. Many of the pieces come with July’s loaded text messages such as What I look like when I’m lying (notice the cute toddler in our photos) or We don’t know each other. We’re just hugging for the picture. When we’re done I’ll walk away quickly. It’s almost over. Part of the idea was that the project would be completed only in the snapshots of visitors who traveled to Venice for the art and then brought the evidence of July’s work back home with them. In this way, the artist is something of a creative pollinator. July doesn’t want her art to be observed in silence, but rather she wants it to take on new life, to breathe alongside you, sometimes even accuse you of a few indecencies (notice the finger-in-the-hole sculpture). Right now, July is a busy woman. She’s currently working on her next film, and her first novel. But on one afternoon duringthe opening weekend of the Venice Biennale, Interview teamed up with her and invited a number of attendees to pose with the works for an exclusive art-meets-the-world collaboration. For “20 Questions,” curated by Matthew Higgs, friends and colleagues of the artist were invited to pose a single question to July. Here is what they asked, and how she answered.

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1
Cindy Sherman: What is the scariest situation that you’ve ever put yourself in in front of an audience?
Miranda July: Nothing I can come up with these days is as scary as opening for punk bands in bars back before anyone knew who I was. Sometimes these audiences were so confounded, so unfamiliar with the idea of “performance” that they would get angry and yell at me while I performed. I remember searching the crowd for the eyes of one woman who looked like she might know what I was talking about. I would do it for her; that would get me through it.

2
Spike Jonze: Why are we here?
July: “We” meaning humans? Or just you and me? We humans are here because nothing can be perfect. There always have to be some living things that are unsatisfied, itchy, trying too hard. If it was all just animals and rocks and lettuce, the gods wouldn’t feel like they had enough to do.

3
Dave Eggers: As someone who works in different media, when you see or hear something you think you might work into an artwork of some kind, do you automatically know which medium it’s destined for?
July: Usually I do. I write down the idea in my notebook, and then I put a little letter in the corner of the page in a circle. S for story, N for novel, M for movie, A for art, P for performance, B for business. This makes me sound totally rigid. I am also lots of fun! Totally wild! Party!

4
Michel Gondry: Do you define a limit to how clearly the idea or concept is conveyed in your work, and do you consciously change where this limit is when you jump from art to film?
July: I’ve been thinking about this a lot -lately, as I move back and forth among a novel, a -movie script, and making sculptures. It seems like each medium has a different degree of -refinement, and the trick is to honor that. Fiction is the most refined; it’s like working with a watchmaker’s tiny tools. Then I switch over to a script, and it feels like I have big clumsy gloves on, but clumsy gloves are good for symbolic movement. And then art—that’s like no hands at all—is just letting mystery stay inarticulate. Which is its own kind of precision when it works.

5
Debra Singer: What did you do for your birthday this year?
July: It’s in February, and I was in the mountains, so I woke up and went sledding first thing. I remember flying off a high jump and smashing deep into the snow, arms and legs everywhere, thinking: If this is 35, it’s okay.

6
Daniel Birnbaum: What time is it on the sun?
July: Hot-o’clock.

7
Kate and Laura Mulleavy: What is the last word that you erased?
July: Hot-o’clock. I wasn’t sure that was the right way to write it.

8
Hans Ulrich Obrist: Can you tell me about your unrealized projects?
July: I actually don’t have a great surplus of ideas. Some evolve very slowly, over many years, but I sort of trust that all of the interesting ones will become something that I eventually end up doing. Maybe that’s naïve, though. Maybe, in truth, I will never end up having my own televised avant-garde performance/talk show that is a cross between Frederick Weisman, Mister Rogers, and American Bandstand.

9
Khaela Maricich: What is something that you have learned during the past 10 years?
July: I at least got a toehold on how to fight. The kind of fighting where I listen. I don’t agree, but I listen. And, like it or not, listening changes you.