LIAM GILLICK

Liam Gillick’s video Everything Good Goes is set in New York in 2008. An artist is preparing and editing a series of texts and recording of lectures that he presented at unitednationsplaza in Berlin. As he reworks the contents of the lectures, he is at the same time attempting to construct a 3D computer model of the film set of Tout va bien by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin. The process is filmed and co-directed by Laurent Vacher, Catherine Camille Cushman and Stephen Blaise.

Tout va bien may be seen as Godard’s homage to the leftist, activist spirit of 1968, but also, according to critics at the time, questions the purpose of a revolutionary film in a bourgeois society.

The reinterpretation of social utopias in the recent past occupies an important position in Liam Gillick’s oevuvre. He explores not only the theories and strategies themselves, but also the way in which these ideas are translated into architecture and corporate design.

A typical element of Liam Gillick’s art is his skepticism regarding completely autonomous and solitary creation of (visual) art; his approach is closely related to other cultural disciplines, such as contemporary music, film, design and architecture. Collaborations with other people are a crucial element of his practice, in which he assumes the roles of visual artist, musician, designer, writer and theoretician. Everything Good Goes could be viewed as a way of bringing these parallel activities, the recent past and the near future, into contact with one another.

Excerpts from the Stedelijk Museum’s text on The Vincent Award 2008