Jumpsuits & Teleporters

Slvie Fleury Interview

• PETER: And then you began to make rocket ships that look almost like cartoons of rockets, very simple. Of course, they're very phallic, but they're also painted in all kinds of feminine colors. When I see one of those pieces, it puts me in a good mood, because nothing is being taken too seriously.
• SYLVIE: They're like huge vibrators. They have a sound element, which I worked on with Sidney Stucki from Geneva he's called DJ Sid. We made a very beautiful soundtrack where you hear weird sounds, and from time to time someone yelling, "Egoiste," which is a very well-known perfume for men by Chanel.
• PETER: Did you have a lot of ideas about the sound, or was Sidney in charge of that?
• SYLVIE: Most of the time I would come up with the idea for a sound and he'd record it. Then we started playing around. The name of that piece is First Spaceship on Venus, so I guess the soundtrack is almost like when a ship is landing on the moon in a B-movie.
• PETER: People often discuss your work in terms of fashion, but I'm thinking that the language of your work is very much the language of film your installations are like a film experience.
• SYLVIE: You know, I tried to make a little movie about vampires once. But I realized it was way too much effort for me, because I'm a lazy person. But yeah, I love how old B-movies would reuse sets in order to save money. I love it when I recognize a set from one film in a totally different scene in another movie.
• PETER: One thing I love about the rockets is how alien they look in the formal setting of an art museum.
• SYLVIE: I like that. I also like the idea of life on other planets, in the sense that it recalibrates our own perception of ourselves. Last year I made a couple of UFO landing sites in front of museums and galleries. I was really hoping that aliens would recognize the sign, and that they would land during my openings. Unfortunately, they didn't. I guess they were shy.
• PETER: Do you think there are UFOs?
• SYLVIE: Of course, I've seen some.
• PETER: Why would people who were so sophisticated that they could travel from solar system to solar system bother to hide?
• SYLVIE: Because they want to take over, maybe. Or perhaps they're not hiding maybe we know a few.
• PETER: Probably. When you read a magazine article about science about the shape of the universe or something do you find it all believable?
• SYLVIE: I think what interests me most is what cannot be proven. If something's kind of foggy, I'll go for it and I'll believe in it much more than anything that can be proven.