Katerina Gregos: Your work is decidedly anthropocentric in nature in that it revolves around the human experience and/or plight. Giving voice to the marginalised or underprivileged is, it seems, one of your primary goals. Where does this interest come from?
Mario Rizzi: Socially “underprivileged” people, as you call them, are strongly “overprivileged” in terms of sensibility, humanity, capacity to discover and share the poetry of the simple acts of the everyday. My personal history and a basically introverted character, together with my studies in Psychology, have brought me a particular proximity with people who are “marginalized”. Art has offered me the pretext to communicate with many people in different contexts. Making Art is for me engaging in a voyage to the “other”, not concentrating on myself.
KG: In 'using' ordinary people as the subject matter of your work, what would you say is your primary concern?
MR: My main concern is an ethical one: being sure that those who take part to a project of mine are completely aware of the ideas behind it, the creative and working process, the extent and risks of their involvement.
KG: You invest a lot of time in on-site research and engagement with the people who form the focus of your films. You spent 3 months in Istanbul developing 'Murat and Ismail' and 6 weeks in Limerick to develop 'nextdoor'. Inevitably you touch upon intimate or private aspects of those people's lives and maybe even change something in them. Is this something important for you or merely consequential? Do you think you have some sort of responsibility towards these people?
MR: I refuse the idea of being parachuted into a given situation and asked to serially reproduce a process experimented somewhere else, responding to the site in a week’s time. I am unable to create my work without a clear understanding of the specificity of the context and a full awareness and responsible interaction with people’s lives.
KG: How do you think you can avoid the obvious but also easy accusation of exploiting the people in your films?
MR: My work is about private stories and the identity of the heroes of these stories, about the need for roots, about private and collective memories, uncomfortable or forgotten truths. I never use my artwork as a political tool, also because Art and politics have very little to share. “The difference between an artist and a politician is that an artist, to be true to himself, has to have the courage to be totally uncompromising.” (Daniel Baremboim)
As for the best way to avoid the accusation of exploiting people, I simply ask any potential critic to see my films/works and judge themselves.
KG: How would you describe your working process, from the initial conception of a project to its final result?
MR: It is a navigation without a map, but with an inner vision. When a creative process begins, I don’t know precisely where it will end. At the beginning I have few certainties and many perceptions. I read a lot about the site, about its cultural and social backgrounds, and highlight the aspects which strike me, the stories which attract me for their potential to “communicate”. It is a slow-motion walk with little adjusting steps, full of “What if instead…?”. During the process I look for people who can challenge and contradict me, I have long conversations to “understand”.
KG: As the ‘auteur’, to what degree do you direct the responses of the involved parties and where does your artistic authority stop?
MR: In the past I fixed the frame and post-produced the outcome of this interactive process. In the last years my work has become more and more intimate and personal, less relational so to say. And I am more careful about the aesthetic quality of the work. What is also happening is that I need to collaborate with local creative realities, as in Limerick with the Daghdha Dance Company and Impact Theatre. I don’t see my authorship as an authority, as a fixed entity so to say. It is something which I believe it is more perceived from the outside than from inside myself. Authorship is an ongoing process which first involves the people I meet during the project and then the viewers that react to my work.
KG: As an itinerant artist working in a variety of locations, on the basis of what do
you choose your subject matter? What kind of research is involved and what are the most frequent problems you encounter in working with people who may not be accustomed in making public facets of their private lives?
MR: Curiosity is my guiding star. Research happens mainly through people, books, internet sources. I never experienced any relevant problem in working with people: communication is a personal need and a kind of self-therapy. I am particularly careful about the impact the media could have on people’s privacy, sometimes this aspect is the one which worries me most.
KG: What are you working on at the moment?
MR: In Palestine/Israel for three months I am working at a video-photographic
project, "Neighbours". It will consist of a multi-screen video reflection
on "states of exception", as Agamben names them, through an introspective
analysis of personal memories and ad-hoc footage, and a photographic work,
based on the collaboration with university students from Ariel and Jenin.