A special conversation with Roger Weiss, Swiss artist and photographer, who graduated with honours from the brera academy of fine arts in Milan. His visual curiosity about the body and the physical expressions of mankind paves the way for a new study of the body through the medium of photography. His artistic journey develops from the analytical observation of the body, its possibilities, victories and hidden baggage. Through the medium of photography, he narrates a body in cataloguing, repetition and deconstruction, resulting in a troubling and detail-rich vision. This interview is intended as an insight into the artist’s poetics. Through the use of a new medium, the video, Roger Weiss strives to further investigate the stories that the body reveals, through its actions and movements, during the process of feeding.
A.S. Why a topic related to food and eating?
R.W. Man is a being capable of inventing stories, postulates holding up the entire world as we know it. Behind every human being there is an incredible “architecture”, consisting of “bricks” or items such as knowledge, prejudices, experiences, habits, indoctrination, education, and so on. A vessel that, with time, we structure more and more, until becoming the fortress. The food, the act of eating, creates a spontaneous passage that can allow to get around these fortifications and get past the mask.
Actually, eating is a basic practice derived from the instinct of survival. The act itself is the merging point between two dimensions constantly connected with each other: the deepest one – our innermost and mysterious side – and the external structure well known to all, where sounds, the eyes followed by the mouth, the tongue and the nerve endings translate into the so-called nourishment process. A development that occurs through an unconditional act of confidence that reveals itself in one the greatest human related moments of intimacy: eating. An act of will which allows lowering our defences to favour communication and the transition from what is external and foreign towards the most inner and private part of our body. In other words, this process generates life itself.
A.S. How do you think you can connect videos with your poetics always linked to the photographic medium? What kind of differences have you noticed?
R.W. Archivi Intimi brings together private moments through a collection of videos created in my studio during the break between a photo session and the other. I face the video like a photograph in motion, a still image, by adding the element of sound. I have replaced the research of the detail, its my way of capturing images, with a microphone that let me to pick up amplified vibrations produced by the act of eating. Inserting in the image in the end, they create a real timeline.
A.S. What is your feelings observing the videos? What differences and what similarities among the subjects?
R.W. How much can be natural and spontaneous a person who is asked to eat in front of a camera? I am convinced that no matter the degree of spontaneity but only the repetition of an act; through endless attempts you can arrive at a relevant synthesis in which there are authentic glimpse. What I try to do is to offer an opportunity to catch them.
A.S. What is your relationship with food and what’s your feeling about being observed?
R.W. I am very bashful but I like to observe others. I eat thinking that am gonna choose better the next day. I swallow most of the food without consciousness, for example products that I don’t know so well. I guess I can be more aware day by day and with time, create a more profound consciousness.
